Are You Missing One of the Biggest Influences on Your Emotional Wellbeing?
In 2015, after two decades of intensive psychological and spiritual personal growth work, I made a revelatory discovery about the influence my food choices were having on my emotional wellbeing. I significantly shifted my diet and was shocked to discover just how much of an impact proper nutrition had on my general mood and psychological wellness.
Sure, I always knew it was important to eat well and exercise for good overall health. But could a change in my diet really rival all the psychological development work I had done on myself up to that point? In fact, yes, I was more than surprised to learn that it helped me to feel more grounded, self-connected and securely functioning in my life and the world around me.
I’d never really heard about food having this degree of an impact on one’s emotional development and proper mood functioning — and I was relatively plugged into health and nutrition research.
Having now learned and experienced all this for myself, I must admit I have some real concern that the power of nutrition to enhance our emotional development is NOT getting the wide-spread attention or credit it deserves. It’s time for that to change. In the ensuing years, I’ve done a deep dive into the research and learned much more about these dynamics, which has backed up my own lived experience. One significant example is that 90% of the neurotransmitter Serotonin, which helps regulate our emotional wellbeing, is actually produced in our gastrointestinal tract, not our brain. And good gut health is heavily influenced by the food we eat.
The Wondrous Dance
There is a wondrous dance going on between what we allow into our body and what it offers us in return. This means everything, though: our thoughts; hopes and dreams; fears; stressors; current and past traumas; our intentions/prayers; how we work it via movement and exercise; and, of course, the nutrients we invest into it, or do not. All of these elements influence our physical and emotional being. They alchemize deep inside a wildly intricate system of life-force creation that is constantly churning. All these factors work in careful conjunction with the countless variety of nutrients our body has available, to generate either a vibrant and healthy flow of energy, or a stunted and even diseased flow.
Collectively, we are starting to better understand the negative influences of things like stress and lack of exercise on the body and mind. More of us also recognize the benefits of practices such as mindfulness, meditation, personal growth/spiritual work, a good therapist, and movement practices like yoga, among countless other approaches.
We also frequently hear the adage: “You are what you eat.” I believe this reflects the fact that many people understand nutrition’s impact on the body in relation to effects like our energy levels, disease, weight and other physical biomarkers; however, even in psychological and spiritual seeking communities, I believe that few people deeply understand the impact of nutritional influences on our mood, psyche, spirit and general emotional wellness.
I would like to see us explore this area more in our mainstream discourse.
My Big Ah-ha Moment
I have been a serious student of psychological and spiritual practices for more than 20 years, and have learned from many great teachers, thinkers and practitioners. I have degrees in the fields of psychology and cultural transformation. I spent a career researching and advocating for various forms of personal and collective peacebuilding. I have benefited significantly from a lot of great therapy work. I do yoga and breathwork daily, consciously practice mindfulness and meditate with some regularity. All of this work has had a tremendous and positive impact on my life. I know this because over the years, I’ve been able to track and feel its tangible impact on my expanding joy.
Despite all this great progress, however, I was still feeling disappointed by anxiety and mood swings which I was too frequently experiencing. It had improved much for sure, but why was it still hanging around so stubbornly?
When I finally decided I’d tackle my diet more head-on, to see how it might improve my overall health, I was pretty stunned at the result. Simply changing my food had almost as big an impact on my emotional wellbeing, in some key ways, as almost any of the other work I’d done before — more rapidly and noticeably. This included significant improvements in my energy levels and overall vitality. It was a discovery I had not expected but for which I was elated.
When I first started making these nutritional shifts, I ferociously studied many of the leading-edge experts in the health field and landed on some good protocols. These included paleo and anti-inflammatory style dietary approaches, which, essentially, focus on whole, unprocessed foods that are low in sugar and refined carbs, higher in healthy fats, and have loads of vegetables and some fruits.
I got in a good groove with my diet, and surprisingly found that it wasn’t that hard. I was eating really delicious and satiating foods, some of which I previously thought were bad for me. Within 3 months, I was feeling in many ways like a new person. The sense of calm and peace I felt was, at times, like I was a carefree child again. It was a pretty radical shift.
A bit later on, I also started working with a great Functional Medicine doctor who really helped me fine tune what I was doing and take my healing even further. It’s not that my emotional state is perfect, I still work on it and tend to it, but this whole track of nutrition sure did help.
We Cannot Continue to Ignore This Crucial Part of the Equation
My success story is only one of many, and that’s why I’m committed to seeing as many people as possible awaken to the astonishing relationship between food and mood. Fortunately, the research is beginning to show, pretty unequivocally, this strong link.
I believe that nutrition represents one of the great unsung contributors to an emotionally fulfilled life, and we have to consider this far more, both individually and collectively, if we want to encourage the deepest potential for psychological wellbeing. Every bite of food we eat, every choice we make, can put us closer to or further from alignment with our utmost potential and highest self.
Matthew Albracht is the author of the new book entitled: Nourish Your Self Whole: A Guide to Core Dietary Pillars, with Achievable Steps for Vibrant Health. His writings have appeared on CNN, HuffPost, Medium and other outlets. He is also a co-founder and a Board Member of The Peace Alliance (www.thepeacealliance.org), a U.S. based NGO which advocates for domestic and international peacebuilding priorities.
He has a B.A. in psychology, with a focus on ecopsychology and an M.A. in Humanities and Leadership with a focus on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community.
