Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's Carli Taylor here for this week's Mojo Monday.
Speaker 1: So today we are going to talk about food as
Speaker 1: a foundational pillar of mental fitness. So this is part
Speaker 1: three of the Becoming Mentally Fit series. And look, we're
Speaker 1: talking about these pillars of mental fitness, but we know
Speaker 1: that they're not separate. They're all intertwined. So what we
Speaker 1: eat and drink is very much influenced by our mindset.
Speaker 1: Can be our overall mindset, So our overall attitude towards
Speaker 1: food or our mindset in the moment and the choices
Speaker 1: that we make of what to eat or drink, our
Speaker 1: mindset has a huge impact on that. So becoming aware
Speaker 1: of your mind and the chatter in that moment is
Speaker 1: really crucial. We'll always justify a glass of wine after
Speaker 1: a stressful day. So if I'm not aware that that's
Speaker 1: where my mind will go, and it's Tuesday, which is
Speaker 1: an alcohol free day for me, then I can easily
Speaker 1: fall into this sort of reactive mode just doing what
Speaker 1: my mind says based on how I feel in that moment,
Speaker 1: which might not serve me well the next day. So
Speaker 1: awareness of your inner chatter around food is really crucial
Speaker 1: because that's how you take control over whether you reach
Speaker 1: for that wine or the chocolate or the chips or not.
Speaker 1: And that can take a lot of discomfort tolerance too,
Speaker 1: because giving, in let's face, it is a lot easier.
Speaker 1: So I've been watching the SBS series alone and it's
Speaker 1: really it really sparked me thinking about why we eat.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't seen it, it's a fantastic series.
Speaker 1: It's a reality series and it's very raw, very real,
Speaker 1: and it's quite rutal because contestants are dropped into these
Speaker 1: remote wilderness areas and they're dropped there alone and they've
Speaker 1: got to survive. And the one I was watching is
Speaker 1: called a Loone Frozen and it's based in Canada, Canada,
Speaker 1: which has brutal like the weather, conditions are insane, and
Speaker 1: one of the contestants, Amos, said something that does really
Speaker 1: stuck with me. So when you're out there, you're not
Speaker 1: eating for enjoyment or pleasure or from boredom. You're eating
Speaker 1: to survive. And he referred to it as the survival diet,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure is the language for survivalists, but it
Speaker 1: was it was new to me, and so every decision
Speaker 1: around food when it's about survival, is about calories, so
Speaker 1: it's about fuel and preferably protein and fat, but it's
Speaker 1: whatever that you can find. There's no there's no abundance
Speaker 1: of food, especially when the winter sets in and you
Speaker 1: burn more calories looking for food than you actually eat,
Speaker 1: and if you lose too much weight, they pull you out.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole different relationship to food that they
Speaker 1: have food on a loan. When they find it, it's
Speaker 1: like it's sacred because it's about survival. And when they
Speaker 1: do get protein from a hunt, the gratitude and the
Speaker 1: emotion as they eat it is quite incredible. They're so
Speaker 1: present with every bite and so connected and grateful to
Speaker 1: the animal that they've just hunted. You know, their mindset
Speaker 1: towards food is incredibly primal. So let's propel ourselves into
Speaker 1: our modern world, which you and I live in right now.
Speaker 1: So we're on the opposite of the survival diet, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the time we are actually on a
Speaker 1: pleasure diet. So we base our decisions on what to
Speaker 1: eat around how we feel. We ask our partners, our kids,
Speaker 1: what do you feel like for dinner? If we're hungry,
Speaker 1: it's like, what do I feel like eating. We don't
Speaker 1: ask ourselves what does my body need right now? I'll
Speaker 1: base dinner around that, or I'll base my snack around that.
Speaker 1: And we have this abundance of calories that we could
Speaker 1: consume all day long if we wanted to. And we
Speaker 1: can eat for dopamine, we eat for distraction, we eat
Speaker 1: for comfort, we can eat based on our mood, we
Speaker 1: can eat for entertainment. And unless you are eating with
Speaker 1: some sort of intention for training or building muscle, or
Speaker 1: aging or weight loss, the issue is that there are
Speaker 1: so many choices to make, and those choices include food
Speaker 1: that is highly convenient. Because we're busy, we have less
Speaker 1: time to be preparing food, food that's made in a factory,
Speaker 1: made by man and not nature, and made to be addictive.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about ultraprocessed foods here, food that you
Speaker 1: cannot recognize as once being alive. It's full of non
Speaker 1: food substances, full of chemicals, and research is now showing
Speaker 1: that ultra process foods, which is a dominant part of
Speaker 1: the modern diet, are directly linked to poorum mental health outcomes,
Speaker 1: including high rates of depression. That anyone that tells you
Speaker 1: that food doesn't make a difference to your mental health,
Speaker 1: is not up with the research and is living in
Speaker 1: the dark ages. And I get really frustrated when I
Speaker 1: hear trusted medical practitioners tell their patients that food doesn't
Speaker 1: make a difference. And don't get me started on the
Speaker 1: hospital food, which I'm completely digressing. But there was a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three systematic review, a meta analysis that included
Speaker 1: over two hundred and sixty thousand adults, and it found
Speaker 1: that higher ultra process food consumption was linked to a
Speaker 1: twenty eight percent increased risk of depression, and every ten
Speaker 1: percent increase in ultra processed food intake led to an
Speaker 1: eleven percent rise in depression risk. So I will put
Speaker 1: the research into the show notes if you're interested in
Speaker 1: diving deeper into that. But think about that. We're not
Speaker 1: just talking about junk food here. We're talking about food
Speaker 1: that is engineered in labs to be hyper palatable, shelf stable.
Speaker 1: And I remember when it first came out, I think
Speaker 1: in the seventies, like my mum getting so excited about
Speaker 1: these foods that were going to last for weeks and
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks. So there's shelf stable. They're addictive and
Speaker 1: that includes the majority of breakfast cereals, and it includes
Speaker 1: super market breads amongst all the obvious stuff. So ultra
Speaker 1: processed foods and nutrient poor, they're full of additives that
Speaker 1: may negatively impact your gut microbiome, which we now know
Speaker 1: plays a crucial role in brain health. So every time
Speaker 1: you eat, there's a chemical message to your brain. So
Speaker 1: real food nourishes your body and your brain. Ultra processed
Speaker 1: food starves it. So when you eat, think of it
Speaker 1: as feeding every cell in your body. Every cell has
Speaker 1: this energy center called the mitochondria, And think of the
Speaker 1: mitochondria as a mouse spinning on a wheel. If it's fed,
Speaker 1: it's going to spin all day long. It's going to
Speaker 1: have loads of loads of energy. But if you starve it,
Speaker 1: it's going to slow down. It's going to become sluggish
Speaker 1: and struggle. And that's what happens when we eat a
Speaker 1: lot of crappy food. We slow down, we get tired,
Speaker 1: we feel sluggish, and it affects our mental fitness. That's
Speaker 1: because we're not feeding the cells in our body. We think.
Speaker 1: So what we need to do is really think beyond
Speaker 1: our stomach and beyond pleasure, and we need to think
Speaker 1: of every cell, every cell that's in our body because
Speaker 1: they're relying on us to feed them. So I'll take
Speaker 1: you through a guide that we have in our house,
Speaker 1: and it's called the eighty twenty rule. So eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the time we eat real whole food, So think
Speaker 1: vegetable fruits, quality proteins, raw nuts, olive oil. Twenty percent
Speaker 1: is the treat food. So whatever you consider the best
Speaker 1: treat for you, like, you want to get full enjoyment
Speaker 1: out it. You want it to be the best quality.
Speaker 1: You want to have no guilt around it because you're
Speaker 1: giving yourself permission to eat that. And what that means
Speaker 1: is that there's a trade off. So my kids have
Speaker 1: been brought up and we did Poul and I do
Speaker 1: this as well, with this skill of trading off. So
Speaker 1: if you do you know your treat for that day,
Speaker 1: then you may need to have a trade off with
Speaker 1: another treat when another treat opportunity comes along. So you
Speaker 1: know your treat is chocolate after dinner, which is my treat,
Speaker 1: So I'll turn down the biscuit or the chips during
Speaker 1: the day because I know I want to have my
Speaker 1: chocolate later on. So pole's trade off when we're out
Speaker 1: for dinner, it's saying notice to the dessert because he's
Speaker 1: drinking wine. So that's the trade off, So try it
Speaker 1: next time you're out for dinner. Make an intentional decision
Speaker 1: based on the attitude you want towards food, because attitude
Speaker 1: is a choice. So choose your attitude around food, like
Speaker 1: sit with that discomfort that that may bring in that moment,
Speaker 1: knowing that their choice is under your control. And a
Speaker 1: really great guide for this to help with awareness of
Speaker 1: what to eat is the Nova Classification classification System. So
Speaker 1: it's n OVA. You can just google it. And what
Speaker 1: it does is it ranks food based on how processed
Speaker 1: it is. So Group one is your unprocessed, minimally processed,
Speaker 1: the stuff your great grandmother would recognize, and then it
Speaker 1: goes up to group four, which is your ultraprocessed, factory
Speaker 1: made food like substances, which is still designed for that
Speaker 1: long shelf life and maximum bliss point. So yeah, really
Speaker 1: really good guide, very very simple. There's a visual on there,
Speaker 1: and yeah, a good one to show the kids as well.
Speaker 1: So here's your mojo mundane nudge for this week around food.
Speaker 1: When you reach for food, consider the reason you're reaching
Speaker 1: for it? Is it for mood regulation? Are you bored?
Speaker 1: Are you hungry? And if so, is this food in
Speaker 1: your eighty percent? And will it nourish yourselves? Will it
Speaker 1: feed that metaphoric little mouth us that needs nourishing energy
Speaker 1: to spin that energy wheel? And what is your twenty
Speaker 1: percent treat food? What are you willing to trade off
Speaker 1: for it? And decide your attitude towards food. You can
Speaker 1: intentionally choose your attitude. There is going to be a
Speaker 1: part of your mind that's not aligned with that attitude,
Speaker 1: and that's okay, that's normal. We all experience that, expect it,
Speaker 1: but then choose not to give into it. Because there's
Speaker 1: another part of your mind that wants a healthy body
Speaker 1: and brain, that wants energy, that wants to age well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't want to get preventable diseases. And that's the
Speaker 1: part of you you want to listen to. That's the
Speaker 1: part of you that you want as your guide. So
Speaker 1: allow that part of you to shine through and take control.
Speaker 1: So I hope you've got value from that one. Food
Speaker 1: is another huge topic, but I think if we can
Speaker 1: simplify with our eighty twenty rule and the nova classification system,
Speaker 1: it can certainly help us when we are making choices
Speaker 1: every day around food. So I have a great week everybody,
Speaker 1: and I will catch you next week. See ya.