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!

Weighing on your mind?

The problem with any weight loss strategy is that you cannot stop eating!

Obviously, this can cause problems when dieting, when trying to lose weight through never use or using a combination of the two. Often people over-compensate for the energy expended during exercise by eating too much ("I've earned this"). Many people also drink energy drinks while exercising - these are fatal to weight loss as they almost certainly have a calorie content greater than the energy expended and the calories ingested wont register on the brain's feeding centre … as a result you may feel even hungrier after exercise and drinking these sugary drinks than simply on exercise alone as they can spike insulin levels.

Many people become discouraged with weight loss if it doesn't happen quickly. Others abandon the process after losing a lot of weight initially and the plateauing. Those that do best are those that work to a gradual, sustainable weight management programme and gradually make behavioural changes.

That is why I partner with a professional counsellor to tackle the psychological aspects of diet and weight management to help tackle the mind as well as the body.