Ep 6 - How What You Eat Impacts Physical AND Mental Health: Food and Mental Health

Ever feel sluggish, foggy, or anxious after eating? It's not just your imagination! This episode discusses the connection between food and mental health, specifically anxiety. I'm talking about:

• The science behind the "sugar roller coaster" and its impact on mood and brain function.

• How gut health plays a crucial role in anxiety management. (Did you know 90% of your serotonin is produced in your gut?)

• The connection between leaky gut and anxiety symptoms.

• Foods that can help heal your gut and calm your anxious brain and body.

• Practical tips for creating a personalized food plan for mental well-being.

This episode is perfect for you if:

• You experience anxiety or stress.

• You're curious about the gut-brain connection.

• You want to learn how food choices can influence your mental health.

• You're looking for practical strategies to manage anxiety through diet.

Enjoy the episode.

Episode 6 of the More than Anxiety Podcast - How What You Eat Impacts Your Physical and Mental Health

Podcast Transcript: Food and Mental Health

Welcome to episode six of the 10,000 Swords Podcast. My name is Megan, I am super excited to be talking today about my favorite topic, food. Also anxiety. But food is fun, everybody loves it, or we really hate it. We're gonna talk about how food and anxiety actually go together. We're going to talk about how what you eat really does influence who you are; that old idea of you are what you eat. There's a lot of truth to that, and I sometimes like to spin it into garbage in garbage out. But I remember hearing as a kid you are what you eat and thinking that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If I eat this playdough, I'm not going to turn into playdough. I kind of knew that was just didn't make sense to me. Then in the 90s, we fast forwarded to this idea that if you ate fat, you'd get fat. So I remember everybody going on this, "Well, I just ate it and it was fat free". Well, we actually know that that is the exact opposite of true now. So we updated our processes and our thoughts on what we should eat, and that continues. So we're going to cover all of that in this podcast today and talk about this real life understanding of how food can make you feel, and help you understand what's going on in your body to benefit not only your energy, and how your body looks, but most importantly, your mental health. So let's get busy. We have a lot to cover today. 

02:08

I want to start with these traditional ideas about food. So I want you to put yourself back into elementary school for a minute, and think about the four food groups, and what you might have learned when you were in elementary school about the food pyramid. Now it's called My Plate, they've updated it and made it a little cooler, but the idea is the same. You have the different food groups, and there's a prescribed amount of what you should eat based on the general population of people and averages because they can't make it specific for everyone, right. But you have the meat group and the dairy group, the vegetables, the fruits, the bread, the fats, the sugars, all of those things. Its a great starting points, and it was a great way to teach us what to eat when we were little because we would have a picture to go with it and your brain could attach to the picture and remember that the pyramids said at that point in time that you should eat...This killed me when I read this six to 11 servings of bread, grains, rice or pasta a day. WHAT?! Can you imagine trying to shove 11 servings of pasta into your body every day, or rice or bread? Right now in 2022, it is October of 2022. And the idea of eating six to 11 servings of carbohydrates a day seems crazy to my brain, because now we recommend equal parts of a whole grain not just white bread or something like that, and a protein kind of equal parts. And we know that vegetables should take up over half your plate, it's the base of the pyramid now; fruits and vegetables are on the base of the pyramid, and it used to be grains. We've updated our understanding of food. We understand that less carbohydrates and more vegetables is actually better for our bodies, and for our brains. So our bodies don't really require as many carbohydrates as they used to. And we saw all the effects of that excess sugar because guys, carbohydrates are really sugars. If you eat pasta, or any carbohydrate, it turns to sugar in your body, which isn't a bad thing because you need energy to do all the things. But we also don't move as much as we used to., and we know that sugar has some pretty bad side effects that we weren't aware of before that can really affect your mental health and the way your organs work, the way you think, and all of the stuff I'm going to get into as we go through this episode. So this idea of the traditional dairy eating you know, remember again, that school lunch tray if you think about you got the cute little carton of milk, we know there's other sources and that maybe dairy isn't so great for a lot of people. After all, you're not a baby cow, you were a baby human. And sure we can tolerate it. A lot of people tolerate dairy just fine. And we love ice cream and cheese is super addictive. But we have other sources of calcium that we didn't necessarily have back when I was in elementary school. Like, we know that broccoli is great tofu, which I'm sort of meh on. I don't love tofu. I want to - I love the idea of tofu, but it's not my thing. Almonds, yeah, sure. Chia seeds, love them. Orange juice with calcium adde, all these different ways to get calcium outside of traditional dairy. The point of what I'm saying here is that time teaches us so many incredible new things about what our bodies need, and how we can become healthier and stronger. So imagine, for a minute if we lived by ancient food standards, or old time food standard. Our bodies would be shorter, our lives would be shorter. We'd be tinier people, we wouldn't be as healthy we'd have things like rickets and scurvy, which people still do have. That's not just for pirates. It didn't go away. When we stopped sailing on big ships with masts. Imagine if we went back to like a 1950s, or earlier view of smoking. Did you guys know at one point in time, they thought that smoking cigarettes would actually cure tuberculosis, which seems insane, like, oh, you know what, you've got tuberculosis here, here's a pack of cigarettes, try that out, see if it helps. This is why we update our processing, not just on nutrition, but on everything in life. I mean, even on something as simple as, think about where we started with COVID, and what we know now. We learn and that is powerful! 

06:50

Today, we are looking at what you eat, and how those foods might be influencing your mental and physical health. What do you need to know to get better and to grow?

07:03

When I started my coaching career, I actually was certified as a health coach first, I don't know if I've ever told you guys this before. When I got my coaching certification, I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but I knew that I understood nutrition. And I knew that I understood how to teach people things. So I was like, "Yeah, I'm in!" I got my health coaching certification and I learned a whole lot of things, some of which I knew, and some of the things I didn't know that were new to me. But I learned the things, one of the things that really impacted me was learning about the sugar roller coaster. So yeah, I knew you shouldn't eat that much sugar, but I don't know that I knew why when I started. What I can tell you that is really important right now is that you can get stuck on a sugar roller coaster. So maybe you already know that sugar is super addictive, it has the same kind of effects on your brain as drugs, even like cocaine. It's pretty powerful thing. When you eat sugar, especially in excessive amounts, or that really refined sugar like candy or soda, your body gets this big burst of sugar into your bloodstream, and what happens is your brain says, "Oh, crap, oh, crap. It's way way too much!" And it tells your body to shoot out a bunch of insulin. Unless of course, you're diabetic. And then you have to give yourself insulin. When you're diabetic, your body doesn't necessarily produce the right amount of insulin, or sometimes any insulin at all. So you eat the sugar, your brain freaks out and says insulin now and you get this huge surge of insulin, and your blood sugar drops; sometimes really fast. And then you crave more sugar. When that happens, if you've ever had that happen, how do you feel? I sometimes get this thing where my blood sugar will drop superduper fast. It's hyperglycaemia, I believe is what they told me it was. But I can feel it coming on, and I get kind of hot, definitely confused, really shaky and I feel kind of weak, and tingly. And I start knowing that something's off. It feels very familiar to me, because my friends it feels just like the beginning of an anxiety attack or panic attack for me. This is where sugar can get really sneaky. When your blood sugar drops quickly because you've had sugar to make yourself feel better and your blood sugar drops, if you don't know what's going on your brain can mistake it for anxiety or panic. And that can cause you to downward spiral very quickly into a panic attack. So recognizing what happens with sugar, this is really the big problem with mental health and sugar, art of it, is that when your blood sugar drops, it can mimic the feeling of an anxiety attack. If your brain doesn't know how to interpret that feeling in your gut If you don't know what's up, be prepared. Because you can quickly fall into that. 

10:07

Another thing that happens and why we eat so much sugar is because sugar gives you a very quick hit of feel good. Right? When you eat it, you're like, Oh, I was good, do a little dance that was delicious. I loved it! I got energy! Oh my gosh, my cortisol levels gone down, I don't feel anxious, I feel happy. Boom! We tank and we feel terrible. That's part of the problem was sugar. And you can easily get addicted to sugar, which makes you crave more sugar. So it also has physical effects, right? You can obviously put on weight, it can cause problems, especially if you're diabetic. 

10:48

So we can find ways to swap out that sugar in our diet to keep your blood sugar level - one so that you don't crave more sugar, and two, so that you can have a really good check on how your body feels. Instead of having a giant roller coaster hill up and a giant drop. We can learn to make swaps in the foods that we eat to keep it into a gentle roll, like just a slight up and down motion so your blood sugar isn't flying all over the place. These healthy swaps help keep your blood sugar level and help to heal your gut biome. This is going to be super important! This is the key in mental health and physical health. So swapping out some of the sugar for things like, for example, if you normally put sour cream, or maybe you eat those little containers, like the cute little containers of yogurt like the blueberry or the cheesecake yogurts or things like that, you can swap those out for Greek yogurt - the unsweetened Greek yogurt. It's really thick. It's got a ton of protein in it. It's got great probiotics in it. You can add your own fruit, put a little honey on top, or cinnamon or chia seeds, or all of them like I do. And you can use it for the sweet little yogurts to do it your own way. Or you can swap it out for sour cream and put it on a taco. It's delicious either way. That's a swap you can make. 

12:17

Another way that you can cut out that sugar to avoid the fall could be swapping out juice for kombucha. If you've never tried kombucha, it's kind of fun actually. It's a little bit fuzzy, because it's fermented. It's great for your gut. It's sweet, but also, I'd call it kind of tart. It's different. And it might take you a minute to adjust. But there's some really good kombucha out there. Far less sugar, amazing for your gut and a simple swap. Another one that I'm going to recommend personally because this made a huge... this was without knowing it, without knowing where I was going to be now, this was the first swap that I made back when I was still critically anxious that I noticed a difference. If you've not heard of the effects of aspartame on your body, aspartame can cause all kinds of physical sensations. And it can even cause anxiety and panic attacks. But my guess from this place where I am now is simply because of how it makes your body feel, tingly muscles, vision disturbances, all kinds of things. So you can look up aspartame effects or aspartame poisoning. If you drink a lot of diet soda, which by the way just makes you crave more sugar anyway, if you chew a lot of sugar free gum, if you eat sugar free foods that have NutraSweet or aspartame in them, you might want to read about that. And I'm not gonna go into that too much today that could be for a different episode. And maybe it will be for a different episode. I think that will be a great one. But really paying attention to the food you eat. Because as Hippocrates said, If you don't know who hippa blah la la lal la, he was a Greek philosopher back in like 450 BC, so a very, very long time ago, Hippocrates understood that food is medicine. And remember back in 450 BC, we didn't have antibiotics, we didn't have vaccinations and things that we have now. We had food and he got it. He just said you know what, eat well, and your body will stay healthier. So the idea of using food with medicine, but then also using food to avoid medicine. And one of the things that you can do with the idea of using food to keep you healthy as opposed to thinking oh, whatever, I'll just go get an antibiotic or I'll just, you know, I'll just take this medicine later. I'll just take heartburn medication or whatever it is; what if we just ate differently in a way that allowed our body to really feel good, be healthy,have incredible mental health and physical health and keep the medication for the things that you absolutely need medication for? Like strep throat or, God forbid chemotherapy or something like that. One of the ways that you can start to really heal your immune system, and do incredible good for your brain is by healing your gut. Have you ever heard of this before, healing your gut while also taking anxiety medication, so that maybe you don't have to take that medication forever. So often I hear from people who say, I don't want to have to take this medication forever. And my answer is you don't you but you may not, I'm not a doctor... you may not have to take that medication forever. So let's do all the great things that we can to support you so that you don't have to! 

15:54

Your gut biome is the very best place to start creating a healthier life. Take a minute and think of your favorite food; something that you just can't say no to so for me, pie or cookies. I love pie and cookies. And I can think about this right now. Like if I can think about my grandma's rhubarb pie. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Okay, think about that food. How do you feel just thinking about that food? Are you like, Oh, I'm gonna have to go find some of that for later. I'm gonna need that for a snack later this afternoon. Mmm! Megan? Why'd you do that? Now, I have deep pie later. How do you feel before you eat that food? Unless you're eating it right now. And if you are, I'm jealous. If you have rhubarb pie in front of you right now, call me come over and eat pie with you. So how do you feel before you eat that food? Is it kind of this anticipation? Do you get the whole My mouth is watering thing? That's that's real. Your body is preparing to eat it? Do you get this like giddy feeling like, WOO HOO it's time to celebrate? And then how about as you eat it. My daughter yelled at me at a restaurant not very long ago, because I did a little food dance. I have to admit, I'm one of those people that when you bring me my food, I'm probably going to like wiggle and I clapped my hands when she told me that was embarrassing, but she's 14. So I get really excited about food, especially food that I love. How do you feel before you eat your favorite food? And then how about as you eat your favorite food? How do you how do you feel? Are you relaxed? Are you happy? Are you stressing out? Probably not. 

17:38

Now, I want you to think about when do you crave that food the most? When do you crave that food? Often we crave the foods we love the most due to stress, or sadness, or some negative feeling. It's like the idea of bringing a casserole or cookies to the funeral home. It's very rare that you would see someone show up with a comfort kale salad. Or, you know, I brought you I brought you some water. That was nice, right? But we don't we show up with like macaroni and cheese or a big thing of brownies. So here's why. Comfort foods are comforting because of the sugar. They give you this really quick hit of serotonin, and they temporarily lower your cortisol level. And cortisol is a stress hormone that gets stored in your body so that you feel anxious, and you feel the results of the stress. It takes a while for those levels to go down. But if you can get that level to go down very quickly, by eating cookies, or high carbohydrate foods, you feel better for a quick fix. The problem is that they leave you in this cycle of eating to relieve stress, which is actually building more stress. We just don't feel it. Our brains want quick satisfaction, and they want to feel good right now, so to get that we turn to crutches like food or alcohol or cigarettes or whatever else that is. It's an addiction. And everybody has them guys. I mean, some people are addicted to their cell phones. Some people are addicted to working out. Somebody's probably addicted to kale. I mean, I like kale salad, but I'm not addicted to it by any means. But people are definitely addicted to sugar and social media and porn or sex or any of the other things that you can get addicted to because they give you that quick hit of feel good. There's really no reason to always try to say no to your favorite comfort foods. That's not what I'm saying here. For crying out loud, life is too short, you should definitely eat the mac and cheese - just not every day. Or not as a substitute for doing something that can relieve your stress and your anxiety and your negative feelings in the short term. 

20:03

Negative feelings are meant to be experienced the same way the positive feelings are. You need to feel those so that you can process through them and let them go. And we need to come up with ways to lower that stress level and lower that anxiety level so that you're not relying on sugar or foods to make you feel better. Are you with me here? Food is also for pleasure, right? It's not just nutrition. It's not just medicine. This is why we celebrate with food, it's good, good thing. But when you really start paying attention to what you're eating, how you feel when you eat, and how your body reacts, as well as your mental state before you eat, but also after you eat, you start to notice what works for your body and what doesn't. And sometimes we don't like what we learn. For me, I know if I eat carbs for lunch, I will be tired, I will be sluggish and really unmotivated in the afternoon. I can have them for breakfast, I can have them for dinner. But at lunchtime, I don't do well with carbs. That doesn't mean I'm don't ever eat them for lunch, it just means that if I know I need a productive afternoon, that's not for me. My daughter can't eat raw apples. She loves them. They give her a terrible stomachache. Her body is telling her Hey, maybe not. Sometimes she'll try it anyway. And sometimes she gets away with it. We haven't exactly figured out the apple thing for her. I was told that it might be cross pollination. So I don't know. 

21:34

But listening to your body is super important. The part of your body that you really want to focus on healing when it comes to lowering your level of anxiety, or stress or really healing your brain and having the best mental health. This goes for anxiety, depression, ATD, ADHD, there's even been some studies that have shown that this can benefit kids with autism is your gut biome. Okay, your gut, I'm not talking about your gut as in like a round beerbelly. Although that's the right area, I'm talking about your intestines, your large intestine, your small intestine, your gut is called your second brain. Because it communicates directly with your brain in terms of mental health and clarity of thinking. It's not just to digest the food that you ate. 

22:26

There are 100 trillion, 100 trillion micro organisms that live in your intestines that communicate with your brain. That's a lot. In a healthy gut, the bad bacteria die off and the good bacteria thrive. There is good bacteria in the world. We tend to think if we hear bacteria, we're like, ooh, bad kill that. How Oh, no, no, no, there's really good bacteria. It lives in the dirt in your backyard. You want to get that stuff under your fingernails. You want to get it on your bare feet so that good bacteria can go through your skin and into your gut. You guys, you actually need that - it's good to get dirty. It's good to let your kids play in the dirt. Yes, no, I'm not making that up. It's totally true. Here's the part that's just amazing 70% of your immune system, the stuff that fights off colds and stomach bugs and the flu and even helps you with COVID, is found in your gut. In your gut! Not in your blood cells, not in your brain, not anywhere else in your gut. 

23:28

The guts job is to process food, and give your body the nutrition that comes from the food, and to produce and absorb serotonin. I'm gonna say that again. Your gut's job is to process food and give your body the nutrition that comes from the food that you're eating and to produce and absorb serotonin. Eating foods that are good for your gut feeds your brain because your gut produces and absorbs serotonin. Not your brain. This is why the gut is your second brain. And when those serotonin receptors get clogged, or aren't functioning properly, or can't send those signals up the vagus nerve that I talked about a couple of weeks ago, into your brain, you don't feel right. You get anxious, and foggy headed, and depressed, you can't focus. You get stressed out easier. This is your guts job not your brains job. Your brains job is to read it and since signals. 90% of the serotonin is produced and absorbed in the gut. That is an incredible reason to start paying attention to what you are eating. 

24:46

When your gut is a mess you can experience this syndrome kind of thing called leaky gut. Leaky gut is where the bad bacteria the food particles and all these other things move through the wall of the intestines and into the body, and they cause all kinds of physical problems. They disrupt the absorption of serotonin. Remember that anxiety is your brain's perception of how your body feels. It produces thoughts to try to explain those feelings. So here are some of the feelings that you can get if you might be experiencing leaky gut and lots of people experiencing these things, because we tend to be stressed out and eat a lot of garbage. I'll talk about that in a minute. But notice how many of these are also symptoms of anxiety, or stress. So like anxiety, leaky gut is different for everybody, but they all have common symptoms. And it's kind of hard for traditional medicine to define or diagnose this because there's so many of these symptoms. 

25:48

So here they are ready, cramps, gas and bloating. I don't know if I just think I have IBS. Maybe you do. Or maybe you have leaky gut, or maybe it's the same thing. Achy joints and soreness. When those food particles or the bad bacteria go out into your body. You could get really achy joints and be sore. Depression and anxiety, brain fog, memory loss, both huge with anxiety and depression. Headaches, fatigue. Skin issues like dryness and rashes and acne. ADD or ADHD. Leaky gut and autoimmune disorders go hand in hand, so if you suffer for things like IBS, or celiac, type one diabetes, lupus, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, allergies, chronic fatigue, arthritis, all of those things. That can be a gut issue. If you crave a ton of sugar or carbohydrates, like you just give me a potato with some sugar on it, craving more sugar is very definitely a gut issue. Your body needs more to feel better. 

27:03

So there's some other causes of leaky gut besides what you eat, I don't want you to be, you know, I don't want you to think that this is all about food. Because if you suffer from, let's see, if you're HIV positive, or you have AIDS, you could have leaky gut. That's an immune issue your body doing like fighting off your immune system, of course, and that is why your gut might be compromised. Also, if you're getting chemotherapy, chemotherapy wreaks havoc on your whole body to try and get you healthier, but that can really cause leaky gut symptoms. Also, if you take a lot of Advil or Tylenol, that can mess with your gut, it breaks down that barrier and allows those food particles and the bacteria to seap out. Stress. You know, when you get stressed out and you get an ulcer, or if you're just stressed, and every time you get stressed out your bowels do crazy thing? That can cause excess stress. Stress can cause leaky gut, and then leaky gut can make you more stressed out. And then it gets worse and worse. That's part of that stress and anxiety cycle that comes with a leaky gut. Also, if you take an antibiotic for whatever; acne - they used to prescribe antibiotics for acne when I was younger, I don't know if they still do that. But, lots of antibiotic use or using lots of hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap. Antibiotics and antibacterial hand sanitizer. Here's the thing about hand sanitizer, I realize we just came off of a pandemic, and it was great in trying to stop COVID. Although I don't know that. I think hand sanitizer, I mean, killing the bacteria isn't killing COVID because COVID is a virus. So that would be like taking an antibiotic for cold, which won't work because it's a virus. When you do that, you're not just killing the bad bacteria that can make you sick, you're also killing the good bacteria. And that needs to be replaced. 

28:57

So when we talk about nutrition, it's not just for your physical health, it is absolutely 100% tied to your mental health. And what we normally eat in America and some anybody that eats a Western diet, so even parts of Europe, it's highly processed. It's got tons of saturated fats and preservatives and sugar, and we like it because it's quick and simple and tastes good. It's super easy to drive through McDonald's and get yourself a cheeseburger and get back to your next job. But you're not processing the food, and half the time it's not even real food anyway. This is why we have so many cases of high blood pressure, stress, anxiety, depression, even things like Alzheimer's, which they're starting to call diabetes type three because they're finding it's so tied to gut health and sugar consumption. Also things like diabetes, cancer, ADD, learning disorders, obesity. 

29:57

So I was a teacher for a little over 20 years, and even just stopped. I just put in my notice in June and I'm just moved into being a full time coach. But when I was in the classroom, I had kids who would show up who had hot Cheerios and Monster Energy drinks or iced coffee and pop tarts for breakfast and then they wondered why they didn't feel good, and we're so tired, and had a headache and ... I had kids who chronically threw up every day! "I don't know what's wrong with me with stomach hurts. I keep throwing up" and I'm like, "Well, man, I don't know. Stop eating hot Cheetos, a monster energy drinks for breakfast. See if that helps." I mean, not to be snarky, or anything, but come on. And yes, I realize that junk food is more expensive than health food, but you know what? Medicine is more expensive than not taking medicine? How much is your health worth to you? I say that from a place of privilege where I can afford food. I recognize that, I really do. We have to do better in this country at what we're feeding ourselves and what we're feeding our kids. 

31:06

So how can I... Okay, this sounds good. I get it, Megan. But where the heck do I start? Right? How do I heal a leaky gut? Start by cutting down how much alcohol, caffeine sugar, processed and fast food you're eating, and also paying attention to how much gluten and dairy are eating. Now I'm going to get some like... Ick, on this because people have been eating gluten and dairy forever. I get it. That is true. Why no dairy? Dairy is full of extra sugar, saturated fats. It can cause hormone disruption. It's very acidic, and it's not good for the good bacteria to grow in your gut. On a side note, unless you're a baby cow, cow's milk may not work well for your body because we feed baby humans human milk... or not. I'm not telling you never to drink cow's milk or eat ice cream. I am telling you that your body may not like that so well. Sometimes we don't like the answers we get. Find a substitute. If you're like, "I just love ice cream." Okay, try coconut milk ice cream, or try almond milk ice cream or try sherbet, something like that for a while. Allow your body to heal itself. 

32:19

But "okay, but why no gluten? People have been eating bread since like... Jesus gave people bread!" Yes. And... there's more gluten in the wheat that we're growing right now than there were than there was in the past. 120 years ago, the gluten levels in wheat were actually lower. So why? A lot of this from my understanding is based on environmental conditions. Part of it could be that we are growing different kinds of wheat to be able to feed more people, but environmental conditions actually seem to be a huge culprit in this, and it's funny because the sensitivities to gluten happen to line up very well with an increase in precipitation and temperature from climate change. So they found that the years that we have more rain, the wheat actually has more gluten in it on those years. So we have are very sensitive to this protein, this gluten, which can cause you to have reactions, so sensitivities, celiac disease, and allergies are up more than they were in the past, partially due to environmental conditions, or modified plants, or whatever were spraying on the plants. All of those things can go together. Is there a definitive answer on this? No, we just know that there's more people who are more sensitive to gluten. Gluten and dairy are both highly inflammatory foods. If you are inflamed because your gut is wrecked. Those are two foods that lots of more holistic practitioners will tell you to cut out first. I'm also going to tell you the alcohol, sugar and processed food. If you read a box of food, first of all if your foods in a box but second of all, if you read processed food labels and you can't read the label because the words are too long and you don't know what they are, maybe you don't need that. Instead, you can follow the sunshine diet. Okay, the sunshine diet is the idea that if your food has been exposed to sunshine, dirt, rain, and there's no long list of extra ingredients; so for example, an orange. An orange grows in the dirt, it's been rained on and it's had sunshine on it. Chicken. A chicken can go outside in the dirt, in the rain, drinks water and can get sunshine on it. Lettuce, nuts, even cheese if you're not giving up dairy. Right because cheese comes from a cow. If you stick with a plant based diet or plants and meat because animals are technically sunshine, they have to have sunshine. They have to have rain and they have to have dirt. What I'm saying here is cut up the chemicals basically. That's a great place to start. 

35:06

Another really simple thing you can do is go to the store and buy a pro and prebiotic. I have one I buy from Target, I started taking it. A couple of years ago, I got a really weird gut thing - I actually think I might have had COVID and might have had it for a long time. I'm not sure because it was before we had COVID tests, but I ended up starting to take a probiotic and a prebiotic at that time, and it was amazing how quickly it helped. You can get one. There's all kinds of different kinds, you can ask your doctor about it, I just buy mine at Target. But a pro and prebiotic, but then also fermented foods like sauerkraut, Greek unsweetened yogurt, kimchi, sourdough bread, kefir, miso soup, all of those things are so so good for your gut health and getting that good bacteria and the right pH balance back into your gut. 

35:59

Another thing that you can do to start healing your gut is learn to manage your stress. Get that cortisol level down naturally without needing sugar, so that you can digest your food properly, and carry less anxiety in your body. And the less anxiety you carry in your carry in your body, the more your brain is going to calm down on its own because it's not trying to figure out what to do to get your body to feel better and stay safe. Healing, that breakdown of that gut brain barrier is going to allow your body to feel better, which will naturally bring down that level of anxiety. 

36:35

And remember, this is about balance. I'm not saying don't ever eat something from McDonald's again You have a life to live. And if you're me, if you're like me, for kids, you've got occasionally, but this is a treat and not the norm. Make it few and far between. Create a meal plan so that you can eat things that you really, really love that follow this guideline. Get creative. Pinterest is there for a reason, right? Knowing what to eat, to help heal your gut and calm down your brain is so powerful. 

37:09

You can grab the What To Eat Guide in the show notes I created a list of foods that are really great for your gut and for your mental health. It's free, go to the show notes, click the What To Eat Guide and it'll give you some great suggestions. Then take those suggestions, go to Pinterest and find some really yummy recipes. Get creative and let yourself be brave here, right? Like you don't have to be the little kid that's like I don't eat green beans. Try stuff! Try new stuff! 

37:38

And of course, always talk to me about how we can work together and lower your stress level, start creating new habits on what you eat, or how to incorporate more movement to lower stress, or more mindfulness and creativity. Because movement bites stress and lowers that anxiousness in your body so that your muscles can relax. Foods have a direct influence on how you feel. And when you create more energy and a more positive overall feeling, you don't have to rely on those comfort foods! You could do it for yourself without food doing it for you. We can talk about how to sleep better so that your body recenters and repairs and just find out what works best for you, and for your life and this so that this whole process isn't so overwhelming! Because I know that food is like "Oh, but I love my food!" Me too. Me too. So let's make it doable. Let's make it fun and creative. I know it can feel like a lot, but as your coach, I get to be right there next to you and help you take one step at a time so that you don't feel overwhelmed, but you feel energized and less anxious! And you feel healthy.