I love how we have so many great resources for health and wellness! Each one of them is so important! At the same time, it is important to know when to implement various healing modalities.

Today, we will talk about nutrition. Nutrition is incredible, BOTH as a means to healing for the body and brain, AND as a protective factor for mental well-being.

Please know that I’m about to give you a pretty big list of nutritional tips. Unless you’re getting professional help, I don’t recommend trying all of this at once. It is usually beat for people to move at a slow enough pace that they can assimilate the information and changes they are making.

The first thing to understand about nutrition as it relates to mental well-being and trauma recovery is that stress causes inflammation. Alongside this, when we’ve been through chronic trauma, we have a heavy load of stress induced inflammation in our bodies and minds.

The next thing to consider is using the idea of “crowding out” rather than “cutting out” foods that aren’t the best for us.

The idea behind crowding out is that we add in healthful, nutrient packed foods for more of our calories. This naturally helps us reduce calories of the foods that are not best for our individual bodies.

The best place to start with this is by adding in or increasing vegetables. Veggies are a great way to start crowding out other foods because they give us incredible nutrients with very few calories. It gives us lots of room to explore!

You could even do something fun to get in nutrients such as learning how to forage! This provides many sources of healing power, as it gets your brain learning and your body outdoors! For those living in WI, feel free to contact me for Foraging Classes right on your property or public lands near you!

Then we would do “food swapping”. Do you eat a lot of breads? Swap white, enriched flour breads for whole grain breads.

Swap strongly caffeinated beverages with green tea. Swap sods for electrolyte drinks. Or learn to just drink more water. (You could crowd out other things with water)

There is a list of foods that are beneficial to reduce or stop eating for a time while we heal. Those are: sugar, dairy, gluten. Or one could do an elimination diet.

The reason for reducing or eliminating certain foods, whether temporarily or permanently, is that they naturally cause inflammation. These foods don’t need to be “demonized” or considered as “bad”. They just create inflammation in the body. When we already have high amounts of inflammation, reducing it while we heal is very important.

Another note: high carbohydrate foods and caffeine also speed up our brain processes, cause adrenal releases, and increase anxiety. This anxiety increase can eventually cause burnout and depression.

Finally, it is important to know the balance for you on making changes versus having your comfort foods. There are times where it is important that we give our bodies those comfort foods to help us in our felt sense of safety. I really enjoy making different versions of my comfort foods. For example, the featured image for this post is a pear bread. I made this pear bread with sourdough starter, and my own gluten free flour mix that has whole grains and high fiber/protein flours.

Again, it’s good to make changes slowly. Too much change, too quickly, can cause additional stress. If you would like help with these processes, consider my 1-1 or group coaching programs.

Be well, Beautiful friends!

-Kayleen Soden, Wellness Coach