What Are Some Simple Steps I Can Take to Start My Journey to Better Nutrition and Mental Health?

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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What are some simple steps I can take to start my journey to better.

Nutrition and mental health?

This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Tanya K. From In Goop Health asks, what are some simple steps I can take to start my journey to better nutrition and mental health? Hey, it's JJ And I've got the perfect person to answer this question. I've got nutritional psychiatry pioneer Dr. Uma Naidu with me. So Michelin starred chef David Boulace describes Dr. Uma Naidoo as the world's first triple threat in the food is medicine space. She's a Harvard trained psychiatrist, professional chef, graduating with her culinary school's most coveted award and a nutrition specialist. And fun fact, as a child she was fascinated by space travel and wanted to be an astronaut. She'll be right back to answer this question.

Stay with me. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest.

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When patients come into my office and ask about how they can start a journey to better nutrition and mental health, I usually try to understand where they're at in their individual journey. Because I've come to understand over time that everyone's journey is slightly different. And someone you know who may appear to be physically healthy may not necessarily be feeling mentally fit. And it's therefore important to understand what someone feels could be their very first step, that they could make a difference. I feel that the very first thing that people need to know, jj is that we've understood for years that what we eat affects our physical health. We've been told by our doctors for years that we need to understand how to eat for hypertension, for high cholesterol, for diabetes, for obesity. And we seem to understand these foods a little bit better. But what I need for people to know is that better nutrition also means better mental health. Cutting back on processed and ultra processed foods, sugary beverages, the added sugars and fruits, food especially savory foods, and opting for more whole grain options together with fruits and vegetables will help you lose weight, but it will also help you feel emotionally better. It's as simple as that. So start simple and make small changes in your habits in terms of eating that you will be able to sustain over time. I mean, have you ever tried out a diet where you made some extreme changes for a certain period of time and you white knuckled it through the first few weeks? But what ends up happening to many people, including those who have undergone large weight loss goals, there tends to be a bounce back, almost a boomerang effect because when people tend to restrict and, and acutely restrict and suddenly restrict certain foods in their body, the body just naturally starts to crave these. So I really work with individuals on starting simple with simple sustainable goals. And what do I mean by that? If you're eating too much of a certain unhealthy food? Which reminds me of a patient of mine who loved potato chips that was just despite a soup super healthy diet, the rest of the time, she always had a habit of keeping Potato chips in her car at her desk at work. And even though these were small bags of potato chips, not the family size, it was an unhealthy habit that was not helping her in any way. She decided that when we identified this to be a problem, that the best way to handle this would be instead of eating those empty calories, that we'd make a better plan. So she followed one of my recipes for tasty oven roasted crispy kale chips. And so instead of keeping these in her car, she would make sure that she had some ready on hand to put in the oven the moment she got home, so that she knew in about 10 minutes she'd have a really tasty snack while she was preparing the rest of dinner. And something that appealed to her because she liked that crunchy, slightly salty taste. And she could get this in a much healthier way than a processed or ultra processed store bought snack. She then also learned, she expanded her repertoire by learning to use an air fryer oven to cook other healthier versions of foods that also brought back in that crunchiness that she liked about food. So she learned to make zucchini fries, which had no oil. And as she grew to really appreciate these foods, she understood that there wasn't any reason for her to keep potato chips at every corner, either at a desk at work or in her car, and really started to embrace healthier habits that she and especially when she found the food tasty. If you start to pay attention to eating healthy, you will start to feel emotionally better over time. This is what all of my patients say to me. And the wonderful thing is that they ultimately do end up losing weight, even though that may not be the first goal that they start with. You may also heard the term eat the rainbow. And what do we mean by that? Well, it's the phytonutrients in these brightly colored fruits and vegetables, broccoli, carrots, beets, peppers, berries that bring back these healthy nutrients to our brain. But the other advantage is they also contain fiber, which, as I mentioned, helps our gut and the gut brain connection with fiber. With eating. Sufficient forms of healthy fiber are really super important to balancing out the biodiversity in our gut and thereby helping our mood. The other factor that I like people to really pay attention to is the added sugars in food, both savory and sweet. So salad dressings, things like ketchup, many things that we don't assume have sugar in them have added sugars that we should be paying attention to. And these are a few very basic, very simple, very easy ground rules that people can start with when they're trying to embrace a healthier lifestyle and starting to take some easy steps that will start their the start of their goals toward feeling better.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetoj.com.

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