The 6 Pillars Of Wellbeing: Nutrition

To celebrate our recent partnership with Betterspace, we are going to be sharing ways in which you can improve your mental health and wellbeing using some of the tools and resources available through their platform. Betterspace give you personalised recommendations based on 6 pillars – Sleep, Stress Management, Social Connections, Exercise, Helping Others or Meaningful Activity, and Nutrition. Each week we’ll dive into one of the pillars, exploring why it’s important alongside some ideas for what you can do to ensure you are managing it as well as you can. This week we’ll be delving into nourishment through nutrition.

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Nature And Nurture

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The word ‘nutrition’ conjures up different mental images for different people - from the latest fad diets, to boring and bland salads, superfoods or expensive supplements. As chliché as it may be, we are what we consume, and that extends beyond the realms of food to include information consumption, and other lifestyle factors.

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Nutrition is a mix of nature and nurture - meaning that whereas our genetic code is like the soil that prepares the ground for life to grow, nourishment is akin to the fertiliser that ensures strong and healthy plants. In the move towards a more holistic approach to health, we are seeing greater autonomy and personalisation taking centre stage.

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However, there’s no need to start buying up expensive genetic tests for personalised recommendations. Although these can be interesting and thought-provoking, the technology often isn’t quite yet there to give us the detailed insight we crave. But through scientific knowledge, small lifestyle adjustments and new habits, you could soon be on your way to an optimised sense of mental and physical self.

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The pandemic has brought health and wellbeing to the forefront of our priorities. As more people re-evaluate what’s important to them, we are seeing a large shift towards better work-life balance, more meaning through work, and a prevention is better than cure approach to burn out and holistic wellbeing.

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Given that nutrition is something that concerns us on an every day basis, whether we like it or not, becoming more conscious about our daily food habits can have a wide-reaching impact. Our current lifestyles are still set-up predominantly for pleasure and convenience - meaning that tasty croissant and coffee every morning could be an easy option, but it’s unlikely to be the best one long-term.

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Shifting into a more self-aware state of self-nourishment means moving closer towards an 80:20 approach: eating well for the body and mind at least 80% of the time, with tasty food for the soul around 20% of the time. Where many people go wrong is in attempting extreme diets based around prolonged periods of fasting, or incredibly restrictive foods in an effort to lose weight. When you make health the focus, instead of physical appearance, it’s easier to adopt a positive mindset of self-care, over a more punishing approach to achieving ambitious goals.

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Nourishing Nutrition

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While knowledge is power, there’s never been such an abundance of information available at our finger tips. The problem we have in the modern era is not access to information, it’s access to good quality, evidence-based information, over misleading marketing, negative propaganda or plain misinformation.

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It’s also about assessing your authentic internal motivators, personal opportunities and trade-offs, and own set of values. For example, some people find sustainability in a vegan diet, whereas others may prefer to eat meat just once a month, and for a different set of people pescatarianism may be more achievable. The first thing to note is that there is no real right or wrong approach, just alternate ways of living that are worth experimenting with at different points in time.

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Eat food, not too much, mostly plants - Michael Pollan

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In large part, owing to crises such as the obesity epidemic and the rise in chronic conditions in the West, governments are attempting to introduce measures to ensure a healthier workforce - including better labelling of foods by supermarket chains. This can help to counterbalance some of the misleading advertising.

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For example, just because a product is labelled as ‘vegan’ or ‘low fat’ does not mean that it’s healthy. Such foods can still be highly processed and refined, and contain high fructose syrups that are known to contribute to modern health conditions. The key is to opt for low processed, natural and organic foods that are rich in nutrients.

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Because our food chains are increasingly being disrupted by the addition of factors such as antibiotics, pesticides and leaching, our produce is becoming less and less nutritionally dense, compared to the past. This has contributed to the rise of nutrients being artificially added back into foods, as well as the rising popularity of expensive powders and supplements.

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However obtaining your nutrition from whole foods is always going to be better than a supplement. This is due to bioavailability - how much of the nutrient is absorbed once it enters your body. When vitamins and nutrients are in their natural context, they can work together with pre-existing co-factors to be delivered to your cells, as they should be. This is why a vitamin C from a tablet will never achieve the same effects as vitamin C from a kiwi or orange, no matter what the strength may be. The same applies to topical skin creams, which often cannot keep something like isolated vitamin C stable enough for it to have any real level of efficiency.

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So if our foods are becoming less nutrient dense, and pills are not an option, what is the solution? Eating foods with minimal processing is still better than giving in to convenience foods such as refined carbohydrates and sugars. To ensure good quality, sustainable produce, it can also help to do your grocery shopping at the local deli or farmers market.

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As global supply chains have seen immense disruption during the pandemic, we have seen a shift back towards more local, smaller scale production. If this only continues to grow during the long-term, this could be a positive effect of the recent COVID outbreak, as such approaches to farming and land management are often more sustainable, organic and reduce some of the pressures and side-effects of mass scale production.

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Going With Your Gut

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The first place that food reaches is our digestive tract - the second brain. This is like a living organism all on its own, with an extensive and diverse range of living bacteria, forming one giant super-organism that creates new molecules out of the material that its fed. One of the best things you can do for your gut, is to eat more healthy fibres from natural fruits and vegetables, which is where the advice of getting your five a day stems from.

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Changing your diet impacts the biodiversity in your gut. Meaning that it alters the ratios of different bacteria, affecting how your nutrients are absorbed and altered. While some of our gut flora is affected by our genes, there is a lot of synergy between which genes are switched on and off depending on lifestyle factors such as diet, sleep and exercise. Creating one giant feedback loop that is constantly in flux.

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Pro-biotics are a way of artificially attempting to alter the gut fauna and flora by introducing certain strains of bacteria into the gut using tablets. Whereas pre-biotics are nutritional foods and supplements that can be consumed to feed the bacteria that’s already there - including different fibres and sugars.

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Many of the expensive probiotics on the market are low in efficacy. They need to contain billions and billions of live bacteria, in a capsule that is resistant to stomach acid, in order to make a difference. Unfortunately many supplements contain far fewer than this amount, are delivered in sugary drinks or chocolates that counteract any of the positive effects, contain dead cultures and are not delivered in a suitable format.

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Pre-biotics are a slightly better option. But it is often much easier to get pre-biotics from a healthy holistic diet that is rich in natural plants and fibres, as taking too much in a highly concentrated format can have side effects such as constipation, diarrhoea or bloating depending on the product. As with any dietary change, giving your body some time to adapt and adjust is always beneficial. For example if you are not used to eating legumes and fibrous foods, it can take a few weeks for bloating to subside.

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Better Basics

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Platforms such as Betterspace make dietary changes easy, using personalised recommendations that forgo the expensive fads and products. It includes tips such as mindful eating, which brings a more conscious approach to meal times, ensuring presence and calm. Leveraging the principles of meditation and applying them to the kitchen can help you to better enjoy your meals, while making healthy eating fun and engaging.

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Mindful eating also helps you to slow down and reduce distractions, as well as understanding your cravings and tackling bad eating habits. Acknowledging what’s in your plate every day will help you recognise what food you should reduce and make better choices. Some simple tips for a more mindful approach to meal times include: avoiding eating in front of the laptop or TV, becoming engrossed in the sensations and flavours of what’s on your plate, remembering to put your fork down as you consume, and not feeling the need to finish everything, but instead keeping left-overs for another time.

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This can also help you to get to know yourself better - for example, noticing when you crave certain foods because you’re stressed or upset, asking yourself if you’re really hungry or just bored, and replacing thirst with food instead of hydrating. Because Betterspace are science and evidence-backed, you can rest assured that the information you’re getting is accurate and designed with you in mind.

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The Betterspace platform puts people in the driving seat – allowing you to choose the wellbeing resources that work for you. The power to change your life, work and relationships for the better is in your hands. But the main thing to note is that this can be a wholly enjoyable and nourishing process that needn’t feel conventionally restrictive or punishing. It starts with simply bettering the basics.

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x+why give every member free access to Betterspace. Find out how you can join today.

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