Serotonin is produced from the amino acid tryptophan and therefore eating foods rich in tryptophan is an important first step in raising serotonin levels.  Excellent sources of tryptophan include oats, tofu, eggs, fish, beans, turkey and chicken. 

Noradrenalin is produced from the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine, and therefore eating foods rich in these amino acids are ideal for helping to raise noradrenalin levels.  Excellent food sources include almonds, butter beans, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, oats, fish, eggs, meat, soya and poultry.

Therefore to help keep the January blues away, try to increase your protein intake with these amino acid rich foods, so that you can bounce out of January and into February!

Julia

• Don’t hold back on the turkey.  It’s low in fat and high in protein, and particularly the amino acid tryptophan which is needed to make serotonin the feel good neurotransmitter.  It’s also an excellent source of selenium and vitamins B3 and B6.
• Pile up the Brussels sprouts – they are a wonderful cruciferous vegetable that should be on every Christmas plate.  They are high in sulphur which is needed to support detoxification in the liver, as well as being rich in vitamins C, E and A and flavonoid antioxidants to support the immune system.
• Snack on walnuts and tangerines.  Walnuts are an excellent source of the essential omega-3 fats, which have many health benefits including cardiovascular, immune, metabolism and mood benefits.  They are ideal teamed with immune boosting, vitamin C filled, tangerines.
• Season with cinnamon – use it liberally in home-baked mince pies and Christmas cake.  Cinnamon has many health benefits, but what is particularly important at Christmas is its ability to help lessen the impact of carbohydrates on your blood sugar levels.  It improves the insulin response, meaning you’re less likely to suffer from a blood sugar slump in the afternoon.
• Cook your vegetables in a steamer, or lightly boiled, or if you’re roasting them then why not try using some coconut butter.  Coconut butter contains lauric acid and helps support metabolism.

So focus on all the nourishing qualities of your Christmas meal.  With all this goodness we promise you there’s no need to feel guilty when you indulge in that chocolate father Christmas… which after all is nourishing for the soul!

Wishing you all a nourishing time.

 Julia

We associate certain foods with particular memories and the mood or emotion that the memory evokes.  Therefore the memory of special times infuses foods eaten at that time with warmth and happiness.  For example, many people long for foods that they’ve eaten on holiday, or foods eaten with people they loved.  Therefore, the particular food isn’t as important as the mood that it evokes.  If you have a particular comfort food, think back to when you first had that food and how it has before a comfort.  Is it connected to a story that triggers happy emotions and a connection to other people?

Many people are aware that they eat in an attempt to fill a hole, not in the stomach but in the heart.  For example, eating when they are lonely or when a relationship ends.  These are ways that we try to take care of ourselves, but we need to be mindful that filling the stomach doesn’t ease emptiness in the heart. 

Over eating comfort foods wont satisfy heart hunger, but we can start to feed our heart by preparing food for ourselves, and treating ourselves as well as we would a guest.  It only takes a few minutes to arrange food nicely on a plate, to sit down at a table set with colourful utensils and a candle, rather than standing up at the kitchen counter.  In this way we are eating in the present and connecting with the experience, which is far more fulfilling and comforting.  According to Zen teachings, whenever we eat, we take in the energy of many other beings.  The food on our plate, for example, is the product of the sun, the earth, the rain, the insects that pollinated the plants, and many people along the food supply chain, including farmers and grocers.  When we eat we are therefore connecting to this flow of energy that has enabled to food to get to our plate. 

If you feel hungry and recognise that it has arisen from heart hunger, then try to deliberately nourish the heart, by doing something that you love.  For example, talk to someone you love, create something, listen to your favourite music or do anything that you really enjoy.  If you eat, then be mindful to prepare your food as if you were preparing it for a guest and eat slowly with mindfulness of the many steps that have brought the food to your plate.

Heart hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating, overeating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or to book a consultation at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia

‘I should eat more protein’

‘I deserve some chocolate today’

‘I should drink 1.5 litres of water a day’

Mind hunger is often based upon absolutes and opposites i.e. good food versus bad food and what you should eat versus what you should not eat.  However, becoming caught up in extremes can become a dangerous pattern, as you end up clinging on to certain foods and hating others.  It is of course very true that some foods are more nutritious that other foods, but what really matters most is the quantity and frequency that certain foods are eaten.  Blueberries, for example, are a nutrient dense fruit but if you were to eat tonnes of them every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you would set yourself up deficiencies in the nutrients that not found in blueberries and your body would soon be longing for more variety.  Similarly, chocolate eaten daily in large amounts isn’t nutritionally advisable, but a small amount of chocolate on occasions is certainly fine, and not something that needs to be avoided for life in order to achieve good health.  It is therefore often the middle way that emerges as the more sensible way to eat. 

Many people have learned to choose food by numbers, such as by how many calories, carbs, protein, fats, RDAs or the price of food, rather than relying on their sense of taste and smell.  When taken to the extreme, this sets the scene for a society of anxious eaters.  When the mind is fretting about what you ‘should eat’ and ‘should not eat’ your enjoyment of what is actually being eaten evaporates.   There are a number of great studies showing the power the mind has over our eating habits, and how easily people can be convinced to like or dislike certain foods based upon false information. 

The ideal to eating the ‘middle way’ is to eat a nutritious diet, but to be mindful of your individual needs and to have a relaxed attitude towards food.  For example, whilst most people might do best with 1.5 litres of water per day, if you go to the gym and sauna every day then your requirements will be higher.  Similarly your needs might vary in the winter and summer months.  Likewise, your mind might say ‘It’s 7pm, I need to have dinner’, but if your body isn’t hunger then why not wait until 8pm or later when it is hungry for dinner?  

As with the other types of hunger already discussed in this blog, in order to reduce mind hunger and re-engaged in real body  you first need to become  aware of what your mind is tell you about your food.  Before you eat, pause and look at your food and hear what your mind is saying about the foods.  If you are hungry for the food, identify where in your body the hunger lies. 

The difficulty with the mind is that it’s constantly changing.  For example, one day it might decide that you need to diet, and the next day it convinces you that you need some chocolate cake. The mind also contains the inner critic, so can often end up criticising you no matter what you eat or drink.  The mind is only truly content when it is quiet, when the many voices around eating are still and you can become fully present as you eat.  When you are filled with awareness, you become filled with satisfaction.  So take time to be still before and after eating to taste you food and how it makes you feel, rather that how you think it should make you feel.

Mind hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or to book a consultation at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia

As babies, we have an instinctive awareness about what we need to eat, but as we grow older this inner connection gets lost as we are bombarded with advice on what food to have and when to have it.  Let’s take salt as an example.  Most of us have lost our ability to know whether our body has too much or too little salt.  For example, people are prone to heat stoke if they spend a long time in the heat and sweat excessively, due to the loss of mineral salts, whilst others suffer with high blood pressure due to excessive salt consumption.  Our dietary habits tend to reflect what we think we should eat, based on what we’ve been advised, rather than listening to our unique individual needs.

You may notice seasonal aspects to cellular hunger.  In the winter, for example, as the temperature drops your body is likely to call for more food to keep you warm, whereas in the summer you’re likely to want less food.  This is natural, as we need more calories to keep the inner furnace going in the winter and shivering burns extra calories. 

Through mindfulness we can become more sensitive to cellular hunger and learn to separate what the body actually needs from what our mind is demanding.  If we listen carefully enough we can step in the right direction of being able to do what animals do – that is to taste a food and know it is what we need.  In this way we would eat a banana when our cells called for more potassium, sea vegetables when we needed more iodine or peppers if we needed more vitamin C.

The essential elements that satisfy cellular hunger are water, salt, protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.  Being deficient is any one of these will therefore result in cell hunger.  Normally we aren’t very good at identifying which one our body needs, but when we are ill and our attention is focused in on ourselves we often get a clearer message about what we need to eat. 

To satisfy cellular hunger we therefore need to get in tune with our body and to ask it what it needs.  Take time to stop and pause both before and during a meal to gauge what it is that your system wants.  What is it hungry for? Solid or liquid? Vegetables?  Root or leafy? Citrus? Salty?  Taking time to focus your awareness on your body will allow you to tune in and give it what it needs, rather than what you planned to feed it when you drew up your meal plan last weekend.

Cellular hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or to book a consultation at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia

I’m sure everyone can relate to hunger pangs coming from their stomach, but what signal does your stomach really give you when it is hungry?  It may be an emptiness that wants to be filled, or a constriction as if the space is being ground up. 

From an evolutionary point of view, hunger pangs from the stomach are essential as they are a reminder that we need to eat.  However, as well as the stomach telling us when to eat, we also tell the stomach when to be hungry.  For example, if we travel to a different time zone, the stomach learns when to expect food according to the new time zone and therefore when to be hungry.  Similarly, if we’re used to eating three course meals then that is what the stomach expects and will growl at only being given one course until it re-adjusts.

Emotions can often be confused as stomach hunger.  Anxiety, for example, can make the stomach growl and grind.  However, trying to satisfy anxiety with food will only make the stomach growl and ‘act up’ even more.

In order to help satisfy stomach hunger it is therefore important to:

• Tune in to your stomach and identify whether it is actually signalling hunger pangs, rather than anxiety or stress.
• Eat slowly so that the stomach is not overfilled, as it can do its job best when it is two-thirds full rather than over loaded.
• Eat at the times and the quantities that you aspire to eat.  The stomach will grumble for the first day or two, but will then quickly adjust and learn the new eating patterns.
• Rate you level of stomach hunger from zero (not hungry) to ten (‘starving’) at the beginning and end of a meal.  Once you have this awareness of how your stomach feels it will be easier to tune into it and eat accordingly.

Stomach hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or to book a consultation at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia

Mouth hunger is the mouth’s desire for sensations.  It likes variety, particularly variety of flavours and textures.  The mouth is also easily bored and if it becomes accustomed to always being stimulated then it won’t be happy being empty.  You will then begin to snack continually, putting food and drink into your mouth in a continuous stream throughout the day.  In addition, the food industry has increased the level of sensation in food, particularly snack foods, to include more salt, more sugar, more spice and more fat.

Our food preferences with mouth hunger varies between person to person and depends on factors such as genetics, food habits in your family, cultural traditions and conditioning – where you may develop associations of particular foods with pleasant or unpleasant experiences.  For example, strawberries will have an entirely different appeal if you enjoyed them on your wedding anniversary, compared with if you ate them on a long journey where you were travel sick. 

To satisfy the mouth’s hunger for sensation, it isn’t enough to put food into your mouth, chew and swallow it.  In order to feel satisfied, the mind has to be aware of eating and the sensation of chewing.  For example, if you are at a restaurant, the first bit of your meal might taste delicious, as does the second bite.  However, as the conversation begins you can quickly finish your meal and look down and without realising it your plate is empty. After the first few bites you didn’t taste it, as you were busy talking and your mouth has therefore not been satisfied with the food and wants a second helping. 

To satisfy mouth hunger, you therefore need to move from mindless to mindful eating.  Try to have a variety of flavours and textures with your meals and engage in chewing and tasting the food.  During the day, observe mouth hunger and what it is asking for and whether it might be thirsty instead of hungry. Is the rest of your body hungry, or just your mouth?

Mouth hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or to book a consultation at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia

Smells play a huge part in hunger and eating.  Our ancestors would have had to depend upon their sense of smell to locate food and distinguish which foods were good and which foods were bad.  It’s therefore not surprising that smells exert a primitive and potent effect on us.  What we call the ‘taste’ of a food is almost entirely the smell of the food.  Try tasting your food whilst holding your nose and you’ll find it’s a very unsatisfying meal, as when you can’t smell food, it’s almost impossible to taste it.  On the other hand, imagine walking through a bakery with freshly baked cinnamon rolls without feeling hungry.  If the smell reminds us of something that we like to eat that it can become almost irresistible.  The right smells will make us eat more.  This has actually been confirmed by researchers who demonstrated that people ate more oatmeal when the bowls that they were eating from were scented with the artificial odour of cinnamon and raisin, compared with people who’s bowls had been scented with macaroni and cheese!  

This is a wonderful reminder for us to bring awareness to our sense of smell and to really inhale our food and enjoy the aroma both before and whilst eating.  If we rush through our meals whilst multi tasking (e.g. at the computer or watching t.v.) then it’s difficult for the sense of smell to really engage in the experience and it’s likely to feel unsatisfied.  To make the experience of eating as complete and satisfying as possible, really inhale your food before tasting it and notice what smells and scents you experience.  You can also try this with other aspects of your day, such as smelling incense, flowers, washing powders etc.  Next time you’re hungry try and identify whether your hunger has been triggered by the smell of food, and if so, whether your stomach and rest of your body are actually in-line with your nose and hungry for the food too.  With the awareness of the power of smell, you are then able to stop and tune in with yourself before eating when the rest of your body isn’t hungry.

Nose hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or to book a consultation at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia

The basic principle with eye hunger is that our eyes like food, and particularly food that looks good.  As a result our eyes really can be bigger than our stomach, and we can continue eating even when our stomachs are full. 

Imagine this.  You’re at work and you’ve just finished your lunch when your colleague comes around with some freshly sliced birthday cake.  Your eyes roam over the appealing dark chocolate fudge cake and are enchanted by its beauty.  Therefore, even though your stomach is protesting that it’s already full from lunch, your eyes want the cake and eventually eye hunger wins.  Sound familiar?  Similarly, if the rest of the cake was then put on the table in front of your desk… your eyes would continue to see it and want it throughout the afternoon, even though your stomach is far from hungry.

In addition, people generally decide how much of a given food they are going to eat based on feedback from the eyes, rather than feedback from the stomach.  The eyes might say, for example, ‘let’s eat half of this’ or ‘let’s eat all of this’.  Research has shown that when people are given soup from a bottomless bowl (the bowl continuously refills as they eat, without them knowing), they ate 73% more soup that people with normal bowls, but they estimated that they had eaten the same amount as everyone else.  This shows how important visual engagement is in eating and satisfying hunger. 

Luckily the power of eye hunger can actually be used to our advantage, once we have an awareness of it.  Tips to help satisfy eye hunger include:

• Using smaller plates or bowls satisfies the eyes that they have eaten a full bowl or plate full, but actually much less is consumed than if larger dishes were used.
• Using a mix of colours and shapes on your plate so that it looks visually attractive helps to satisfy the eyes, so try to add as much variety as possible (aim for a rainbow plate).
• When you eat, make sure that you stop and look at your food and let your eyes connect with it.  It might sound simple, but if you eat whilst on the computer or watching TV, your eyes don’t have a chance to observe the food being eaten and are therefore dissatisfied and disconnected, which means that eye hunger will be shouting again before long, even though your stomach is full.
• Sometimes when you feel hungry, it may not be that your body actually wants food, but that your eyes are hungry for beauty.  Experiment with feeding eye hunger, without eating any food.  Stop and look at something that you find beautiful, it may be a flower or a picture on the wall – look for colour and variety and really see things.  Feeding your eyes in this way will help to satisfy you without having to eat and go against the protests from your stomach.

Eye hunger affects everyone, but can be a particular problem in cases of binge eating and other disordered eating patterns.  If you have a question about disordered eating then please do give us a call to see if we can help you, or for more information.

Julia

For people with disordered eating patterns, a key step in moving towards developing a happy relationship with food is to practice mindful eating and developing awareness in the body of how hunger arises.  You may be surprised to read that there are actually seven different types of hunger.  These are: eye hunger, nose hunger, mouth hunger, stomach hunger, cellular hunger, mind hunger and heart hunger.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be addressing each of these types of hunger in more detail and exploring how they arise and how we can satisfy them.

There is a Zen saying ‘When hungry, just eat’.  Whilst it sounds simple and obvious, unfortunately it’s not.  Children know instinctively what, when and how much they should be eating, but as we get older, eating is no longer just about re-fueling.  Instead, food can begin to serve many other purposes.  It can be used to sooth, distract, numb, entertain, reward or even to punish.  Therefore, the once straightforward relationship between hunger and eating and satisfaction becomes mixed up in an array of thoughts and emotions.  By developing an awareness of mindful eating and the seven types of hunger, it’s possible to learn how to start going back to having a happy relationship with food.

To start the journey of mindful eating, try observing these steps:

1. Always sit down when eating (even for snacks).
2. Engage the senses with the food that’s being eaten.  Look at it, smell it and taste it.  This means that your attention needs to be focused on eating and not distracted by the TV, computer, phone etc.
3. Eat slowly and chew your food well.  Follow the principle of eastern traditions that solid food should become liquid before swallowing and liquids should be chewed.
4. Don’t worry about leaving food on your plate.  Listen to your body and stop eating when your body has had enough.

Eating in this way is being respectful to your body and engages the body and mind in the process.

If you suffer with disordered eating patterns, or have any questions then please do give us a call and we would be more than happy to help you at one of our London nutrition clinics.

Julia