IF YOU’RE MAKING plans for this bank holiday weekend, chances are that some of it will revolve around food.
Maybe it’s a barbecue with family or friends, maybe it’s making that fancy meal you’ve been putting off, or maybe it’s going out for food.
Whatever it is, food plays a huge part in how we feel. Eating a healthy, balanced diet has been proven to have a positive impact on how you feel (and the opposite is true too, as anyone who has eaten takeaway food for more than two days in a row can attest to).
That’s not just old-fashioned Irish-mammy-style advice: recent high-profile research found that good nutrition is essential for mental health.
A huge study of 14,000 people found that eating fruit and vegetables was consistently associated with positive mental well-being.
The British study found that almost two-thirds of people who did not have daily mental health problems ate fresh fruit every day, compared with less than half of those who did have daily mental health problems. The pattern was repeated for fresh vegetables and salad.
People with mental health problems also ate more unhealthy food such as takeaways, chocolate and crisps.
“There is a link between what people eat and how they feel about themselves,” says clinical psychologist Dr Eddie Murphy.
Our food environment has changed considerably in the past few decades and there is much more access to fast food and convenience foods, so it can be difficult for people to change their habits, but it’s worth it.
He says one of the problems when people are thinking about how to eat healthier is that they often have poorly defined goals which are not sustainable.
“It should be more about wanting to eat healthy food because it will help you to feel well or maintain good energy or to look good or feel good,” he told TheJournal.ie. “It’s changing the focus from weight to health”.
If you shift that conversation then it’s more sustainable, because focusing on weight can become self-defeating if you start beating yourself up over it. You can be more compassionate and forgiving if you fall off the wagon when you have a clear focus on being healthy.
How to make the shift
So what to do? If you’re hovering over that second chocolate bar or planning to hit the takeaway later, think about how to get into the habit of eating well.
Try to eat regularly, don’t skip meals and only drink alcohol in moderation. And, crucially, aim for a balanced diet every day so that you’re eating a varied mixture of foods.
So what does a balanced diet look like?
Dr Eddie Murphy also suggests a food diary to keep track of what you’re eating.
“One of the most useful things about a food diary is that it’s a good way of tracking what sort of emotional factors are impacting on your eating,” he says.
“People come home in the evening, sit down and watch tv, and think that they’ve had a hard day and deserve a bottle of wine, for example, so they’re treating food or alcohol as a reward,” he says.
A lot of people eat emotionally: they eat because they’re bored or frustrated or stressed, and a food and mood diary is a great tool to track the emotional factors which are impacting on eating.
And what about alcohol?
Unsurprisingly, alcohol is not great for your mental well-being. It’s a catch-22: people can turn to alcohol to deal with or forget about problems, but it can make it even more difficult to cope.
Research has found that drinking too much alcohol can contribute to problems both big and small. From sleep difficulties to memory loss and anxiety, all the way up to more serious problems such as liver disease. Plus it won’t help to deal with the stresses in the first place.
For an average Irish drinker, cutting down the amount of alcohol you drink will have a positive impact on both your mental wellbeing and your health. It’ll also mean cutting out extra calories, make you feel better the following day and overall make everything just a bit easier.
The HSE’s drugs.ie website has a useful toolkit to figure out how much alcohol you’re drinking and whether you need to cut down. Here, for example, is what a standard drink looks like in Ireland:
The recommended weekly guidelines are fewer than 11 standard drinks a week for women and fewer than 17 a week for men.
If you think you’re drinking more, or would just like to keep an eye how much you’re drinking in an average week, this alcohol diary is a good way to keep track.
So if you want to feel better, taking a look at what you’re eating and drinking this bank holiday weekend could be a good place to start.
“It can be challenging to change habits but look at it as a choice switch,” says Dr Eddie Murphy. “It’s about having an awareness about whether what you’re eating is the right choice to make.”
If you feel you are – or someone you know is – experiencing a significant dip in mental wellness, you may need some more direct help:
The #LittleThings campaign from yourmentalhealth.ie is a national effort by the HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention and scores of partner organisations and support groups to bring information, awareness, advice and support around mental health for you and your loved ones.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say