I don't know about you, but I'm all for helping my metabolism fire on all cylinders. When it comes to obtaining a healthy body inside and out I'm shooting for the moon. It's hard enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and the physique of your dreams, on a normal day in this stressed out and fast pace world; much less adding chronic anxiety or anything else to your body's work load. I have battled with anxiety attacks for exactly a year this month, but I am here to happily say that it is very possible to restore your body and mind back to 'normal', any probably even better than you were before your battle began.
You are what you eat. Okay, so maybe you don't morph into a giant cheeseburger while driving, or frost over like a pint of ice cream while running errands, but don't be fooled about what's going on inside your body. What we choose to eat directly affects our health, energy, and outward appearance.
If you do struggle with anxiety or depression it is absolutely crucial that you understand how processed foods (most the boxes of "food" on your grocery shelf) are affecting you. I highly recommend reading this book. It helped me gain so much information on what the best nutrition and natural supplements are for my body to kick panic attacks and occasional depression to the curb. Since finishing the book, which was an easy read, I started taking 100 mg of this natural little gem each evening, and felt a huge difference in just a few days.
For the past year I have been eating a rather clean (limited processed foods) and raw (uncooked veggies) diet. As I've continued to learn about nutrition and how it directly affects the mind and body I have adjusted my nutrition plan even more so that my body is getting the right nutrients, not only to help me get rid of my anxiety but to also aid me in obtaining the physique that I desire. If we are unaware of how different foods, natural and processed, interact with our body then we will most likely never achieve our goals for our physical appearence, much less heal from anxiety, depression, obesity, etc.
I have included some of Dr. Mercola's post below and hope that it helps shed a little more info on how to help boost your metabolism; and as a result get you fired up to do whatever it is that you haven't had much energy to do in the past :o).
"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you'll land among the stars."
Happy Learning, Meg
How Your Hunger-Satiety System Affects Your Physical Shape
Your hunger-satiety system consists of multiple neuro-peptides that act to initiate or terminate your feeding. These are your hunger-satiety hormones. Their signals are integrated by centers in your brain to modulate how you consume, spend or store energy. The balance between these signals dictates whether your body is in a fat-burning or a fat-storing mode.
In order to maintain a healthy body weight, your hunger and satiety signals must continually adjust your food intake to your energy expenditure. Any imbalance between these two will affect your fat stores and physical shape. Obesity, for instance, is a result of a disrupted energy balance in which a surplus of accumulated food energy is stored as body fat.
Again, your physical shape seems to depend on the ratio between your hunger and satiety hormones and so is your biological age. Both hormones regulate your eating behavior and metabolic rate, albeit with opposite effects on your body.
Food restriction, exercise and weight loss increase the sensitivity and effectiveness of your insulin and leptin while potentiating the actions of your other satiety hormones. This means that with proper diet, exercise and restoration of a healthy body weight, you can increase the efficiency of your satiety hormones to allow you be at your peak physical potential. But how do you put this in practice? How do you put your satiety hormones in charge?
There are three ways to achieve that:
- Eat satiety foods
- Avoid hunger foods
- Train your body to endure hunger
Eat Satiating Foods
The food that promotes satiety most is protein. It yields satiety more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Out of all proteins, the one with the fastest satiety impact is whey protein – that's if the whey is whole and non-denatured.
Studies reveal that consumption of whey protein before meals can swiftly boost the satiety peptides CCK and GLP-1, which have been shown to decrease food intake and increase weight loss. Whey protein is also beneficial when consumed before exercise. Having a small serving of whey protein (with no sugar added) about 30 minutes before exercise seems to help sustain intense muscle performance and increase the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. A pre-exercise whey meal has also shown to boost the body's metabolic rate for 24 hours thereafter.
Other satiety-promoting foods are low glycemic plant foods including raw nuts, seeds, legumes, roots, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes, eggplants, grasses and green leafy vegetables.
Being low glycemic and fibrous, these plant foods are a great fit for your insulin and leptin as well as your whole satiety system. Nuts and seeds trigger PPY – a satiety peptide which is highly sensitive to dietary fat. PPY shifts your cravings from carbohydrates to fats and increases your metabolic capacity to convert fat to energy.
That action counteracts your hunger hormones, which typically shift your cravings towards carbohydrates. Note that it's the shift towards refined carbohydrates that has been linked to chronic cravings and excessive food intake. This is the reason why once you open a bag of potato chips and start crunching, you may find it difficult to stop.
And note that your muscle isn't programmed to do well on hunger foods; it rejects fructose and has a limited capacity to utilize high glycemic foods. But your muscle literally thrives on satiety foods. Combinations of whey protein and berries, eggs and beans or meat and nuts have unmatched muscle nourishing properties. Furthermore, being satiety oriented, these food combinations promote the right hormonal environment for muscle rejuvenation and buildup...
(For Mercola's Full Article Visit: The Best Foods That Fill You Up and Boost Your Metabolism and Shed the Pounds)
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