Healthy Eating

 As a Nutritional Therapist, ‘healthy eating’ is a subject that is extremely close to my heart, through my own experience, I cannot stress enough how important eating healthy foods is.

Many think it’s all about ‘diet’ personally I don’t like that word as it comes with the idea of deprivation and limiting what you eat, whereas Nutritional Therapy is all about giving your body everything it needs to thrive.

Because we live in a fast paced, demanding and often stressful world – there are many of us who regularly find ourselves stuck in a permanently stressed state or the ‘flight or fight’ mode. Whilst this is useful when escaping a sabre-toothed tiger, it isn’t necessarily helpful when we are trying to digest a plateful of food.

When we are stressed our heart rate increases, blood pressure spikes, more adrenalin is produced and the body moves blood away from the digestive tract and into muscles as digesting food isn’t a priority. Constant levels of stress open you up to potential diseases; because the immune system suffers due to a lack of nutrients, as the body isn’t able to digest food properly.

Therefore, by making some simple changes to your lifestyle, you will be able to support your bodies digestive system, enabling nutrients to be adsorbed properly, and ensure your immune system is working to its best ability, leaving you with a healthier and better version of yourself.

Here are my 9 top tips to help you make those simple changes:

1. Find some time for you, a hobby, meditate, sport, something you like and enjoy doing.

2. Exercise it can improve your mood, help with weight loss, is good for your muscles and bones, increases energy levels, reduces risk of chronic disease, improves skin health, brain health and memory.

3. Get outside daily, it regulates your melatonin levels enabling a better night’s sleep and increases Vitamin D, made in the skin when exposed to the sun.

4. Sleep, most require 7-8 hours, this is when our bodies regenerate and heal.

5. Eat from 5 portions of vegetables and two portions of fruit a day, pack even more in with a green smoothie.

6. Eat the rainbow, full of antioxidants.

7. Eat whole unprocessed foods as often as possible, if you can cook from scratch

8. Swap the white/processed carbohydrates and replace with complex carbohydrates such as brown/whole wheat, brown rice, sweet potatoes, squashes, quinoa, buckwheat

9. Drink 2 litres of water a day

If you want to find out more about how your lifestyle could be affecting your health, or to get advise on some simple nutritional changes you could make, please contact Rebecca Hancock at Reform Physiotherapy on 07970 932296.