January’s CALM hub workshop saw our community joined by nutrition coach, Emma Rowett who spent some time with us joining the dots between stress, energy and nutrition. Emma left us with lots of food for thought 🙂 and some great 1% CALMer takeaways.
Following a fast paced career in management consulting which led to burnout symptoms, Emma made a step change, slowing down to go faster and taking up the study of naturopathic nutrition. She now works with individuals looking to make positive changes around their health through a more holistic and balanced approach to nutrition.
Our stress and energy levels are closely linked to the quality of our nutritional intake. The currency of our health is energy but when stress gets out of hand and becomes chronic, this has a serious impact on our ability to maintain our energy levels sufficiently. The stress/energy link then compounds itself by triggering our brain and body to respond in ways that can induce more stress and reduce energy levels even further in an attempt to keep us from perceived dangers.
In today’s world, given the pace of change and constant uncertainty, particularly within the workplace, many of us are living with chronic stress without even realising it due to the way we work and live. This leads to further poor choices around nutrition as the brain and body responds accordingly.
High levels of the cortisol (stress) hormone in the body will also slow down your metabolism, meaning that if you are struggling to lose weight, it may well be stress at the core of the issue rather than diet. Therefore dealing with stress triggers and symptoms is an important foundation step in improving what and how we’re consuming.
Emma’s top tips – her advice is to start small with just one or two to begin with (1% CALMer):
– Practice structured breathing every day
– Drink more water
– Move your body daily
– Go outside
– Eat food without a label as much as possible
– Eat local where possible
– Eat more oily fish (SMASH – sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, herring)
– Increase your magnesium and zinc uptake (spinach, avocado, pumpkin seeds, chickpeas, kale)
And Emma’s advice for where to start with 1% CALMer: eat something green every day. I’m going for apples (and pumpkin seeds :))
