There isn’t much specific nutrition advice that works across the board for all bodies. But the gist of it was best expressed by Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. 1
Additional pointers
- Eat a variety of whole foods that work for you. 2
- Try to eat in a resting state: not doing other things simultaneously, and giving mind & body time to rest afterward.
- Leave at least 3-4 hours between meals and around 10 hours overnight with no food or beverages (except water, which is helpful).2
- Amid all the hype, gastroenterologists want to clarify a few things: namely, that there are ways to help the gut, but few are trendy. Eat plenty of fiber, limit processed foods and lower stress to keep your belly happy and healthy. (NY Times Well newsletter)
- If you buy any packaged foods, check their nutritional labels and focus on the % daily value column, particularly for sugar and sodium. Is it a high percentage? Compare a serving of that with other foods you might eat in a given day: is that food in combination with other foods you eat likely to put you way over the daily value limits for sugar or sodium? If so, don’t buy it, don’t eat it!
What a lot of us are missing is a healthy rhythm. Digestion takes a lot of energy. So does stress. These two end up in a battle for resources. When you are anxious and you feel butterflies in your stomach, that’s likely blood and energy leaving your guts to head to your extremities so you can fight or run away. Sometimes the body signals to the digestive system to eject whatever is in there so it can commit all its resources to the battle at hand. That’s why we sometimes get nausea, diarrhea, or even vomiting before doing something scary like giving a speech or going on a first date.
In order to properly digest our food, the body needs to be at rest. It needs to deal with the massive project of turning something from the outside world into a properly functioning body. Many of us do not give our bodies this rest. We eat while we’re working, when we’re anxious, when we’re on the go. Eating can help calm us down—there probably aren’t any saber-tooth tigers chasing us if we’ve got a bag of Cheetos on the go. But food is not metabolized that well when we are stressed. Brain fog, exhaustion, and unbalanced mood might simply be an issue of the brain and the stomach battling for limited resources.
Constant snacking also interrupts the migrating motor complex (the MMC), a muscular sweeping mechanism where the digestive system clears out particles of undigested food, ensuring the bacteria in the gut is balanced. When the MMC is inhibited, we can get bacterial imbalances and other problems, impacting our ability to digest our food well. The MMC only functions when no new food has entered the system in at least 90 minutes and will stop the moment it encounters a new calorie. In order to best support the MMC, we should leave at least 3-4 hours between meals and around 10 hours overnight with no food or beverages (except water, which is helpful).
So if you want to improve your digestion, detoxify your gut, process your food better, and support your body’s other systems, choose a variety of whole foods that work for you (with a few Cheetos in there if you want!), relax while you are eating them, and focus on other things between meals, letting your body do what it does best. 2
Water and unsweetened coffee and tea do not activate MMC and are great to drink between meals while still allowing your gut to focus on digestion and absorption. However, drinks like juice, milk, sweetened coffee and tea, and sodas have carbs, fat, or protein - or energy/calorie-containing nutrients. When the body detects calories in food or drink, it triggers the MMC to stop - switching back to digestion, not gut movement. Research is still exploring how non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) (or alternative or artificial sweeteners) impact MMC. The switch: choose water and unsweetened drinks between meals. 3
Systemic nutrition issues:
- processed foods are often much more affordable than whole foods or minimally processed ready-to-eat foods. This pushes poorer people into bad food
- eating more slowly
- ”the rule of thumb from nutritionists is to spend at least 20 minutes eating every meal.”
- protein: too much or enough?
- retraining our craving brains
Readings, Research
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There is accumulating evidence that the gut microbiome may be atypical in ADHD, and therefore, manipulating gut bacteria in such individuals may help alleviate some of the symptoms of this condition. The aim of this study is to explore the effects of supplementation with kefir (a fermented dairy drink) on ADHD symptomatology, sleep, attention and the gut microbiome in children diagnosed with ADHD.
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Intuitive eating
- https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/intuitive-eating-nervous-system
- Boredom can cause us to overeat, ensuring we are engaged in meaningful activities can help us relate to food more skillfully as nourishment rather than entertainment.
- https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/intuitive-eating-nervous-system
Tips on Portions
The solution, in theory, is simple: portion control. In practice, not so easy.
Not because we are gluttons. But because there is a ~20min lag between our stomach being full and that signal reaching the brain. And we take less than 20 minutes to eat. So we feel we have more space, and we overeat. That’s why it’s 10 minutes after a large meal you realise how large it was!
Here are my four hacks to beat this lag:
A) Prioritise quality, eat real: Try over-eating a salad. You probably can’t because nutritious food satiates you. It doesn’t make you want more and more. But food with empty calories makes you uncontrollably want more. Eat burgers, fries and coke every other day, and you would cross 3500 calories without knowing. Nutrition-deficient meals make the tongue happy and the body deprived of nutrients, which keeps asking for more. My soup and salad combo is better any day than this junk. Yes, I overshot my goal, but not as much.
B) Eat fibrous: Fibre is low on calories, bulks up food, slows down digestion, and helps stool formation. It’s found in fruits and veggies. Eat more of those. Hack: add some veggies to every meal. Please.
C) Eat slowly: That helps reduce the signal lag to the brain. The best hack? Don’t pick the next bite until you’ve chewed and swallowed the first. Try it.
D) Eat till you’re 80% full: Learn to stop eating when you feel you’re almost full, but not quite. Because you are, but you’ll know it in about 10 mins.4