Food and Mood

What you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat sends direct signals to your nervous system—signals that either tell the body it is safe or it must stay on high alert.
 
This matters more than most people realize, because many of the symptoms that drive women to “do something dramatic” with food—rapid weight gain, fatigue, frequent illness, brain fog, poor sleep—are not problems of excess. They are signs of systemic stress. When the body is out of whack, stress is usually at the center.
 
When the body is under chronic stress—emotional, physical, hormonal, inflammatory—the nervous system shifts into survival mode. Cortisol rises. The sympathetic (“fight or flight”) system stays switched on.
 
Calorie restriction, long fasts, and aggressive cleanses are forms of physiological stress. Even when done with good intentions, they send a powerful signal to the body:
 
Resources are scarce. Stay alert.
 
For a body already stuck in fight-or-flight, this compounds the problem. Cortisol stays elevated. Thyroid signaling slows. The gut becomes less efficient. The nervous system remains dysregulated.
In this state we do not add stress by calorie restriction or fasting. This is not the time for a broth cleanse, juice cleanse or Deep Reset. 
 
This is time to nourish - to use food to tell your body all is well it can down regulate - it is safe. For this you need an abundance of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, good fats, and amino acids.
 
You need nourishment that gives the body what it needs to function . We are not talking empty calories or what we traditionally think of as comfort food . We are talking about focusing on high impact foods in quantities that nourish (clean protein, plant based fats like olive and avocado, vegetables, nuts/seeds, spices, herbs). 
 
This is time for jolie Complete Nutrition, Strong & Lean, 10 Years Younger, Hormone Reset, jolie Monthly. These programs are deeply reparative to the body under stress. They will address all the symptoms that drive you to want a cleanse - but through a different pathway.
 
When the body is deeply nourished, the symptoms of brain fog, fatigue, slow recovery, rapid weight gain, loss of sex drive, and frequent colds dissipate. Your psychological stress has dropped, cortisol is lowered, your body is thriving.  Now you can do fasting and targeted caloric restriction.  Its effect now will be to boost immunity, rejuvenate you, and optimize your health.
 
In this way - I want you to start thinking of food as medicine in a different way. How we nourish ourselves must correspond with our stress levels. How we eat can amplify stress or decrease stress.