Food for Thought

As a fitness professional, nutrition is often considered in terms of performance (eat this to go faster, further or improve recovery times) or appearance (body composition, lose or gain weight or improve muscle definition and shape).  Whilst many fitness professionals do have an understanding of how food affects the emotions, very little thought is given to the impact of what we eat on how we feel or why we eat what we do.

Curiously, the impact of food on how we feel is also rarely considered by those in the mental health services - specifically I'm thinking of counselling and psychotherapy professions.  Yet what we eat can have a profound affect on how we feel.

For example, it is known that caffeine and sugar can increase feelings of anxiety and depression despite giving an initial lift to our feelings, therapists will rarely suggest to clients that an alteration in diet may reduce the burden of difficult feelings like anxiety and depression.

This knowledge is often known by fitness professionals, but rarely is it asked for by clients - this is one of the examples of where counselling and personal training can actually meet: the mind and body is ultimately part of a single unit that should be treated as an integrated whole: YOU!