Eat Smarter to Think Clearly
KEY POINTS:
1. Good nutrition is critical for your brain to function optimally.
2. Slow-digesting complex carbohydrates fuel your brain for thinking, solving problems, being creative, and instilling memories.
3. High-quality fats build the structures in your nerves and speeds communication between neurons.
4. Healthy proteins provide the precursors for the neurotransmitters used to communicate between nerve cells.
5. Vitamins and minerals enable the nerves to function and prolong the survival of individual nerve fibres.
Food has a tremendous impact on your brain and how it functions. The individual cells in your brain are called neurons and you have about 80-100 billion of them. Each neuron has about 2000 connections with other neurons, which creates trillions of links (called synapses) between brain cells. These connections are what enables you to think, learn, create, solve problems, and build memories.
Those links are gaps between neurons called synapses, and that’s where the action in your brain takes place – thinking, learning, creativity, problem solving, and memory building. When the neurons of a particular part of the brain are activated, a given synapse can fire up to 200 times per second! That’s a whole lot of energy getting consumed.
With all that activity, quality food is critical to achieve optimal brain function. To perform at your absolute best mentally – and to be uber healthy so that you can go after your passion and purpose – you need to eat as well as you can.
You need slow-digesting complex carbohydrates to provide a steady source of glucose, which is the fuel your brain uses for thinking, solving problems, being creative, and instilling memories.
You need high-quality fats, because fats are used to build the structures in your nerves like cell membranes and the myelin sheath that protects the nerve and speeds communication between neurons.
You need healthy proteins to provide the amino acids that are the precursors for the neurotransmitters used to communicate between nerve cells.
You need vitamins and minerals from fruits and vegetables for the intracellular processes that enable the nerves to function and even prolong the survival of individual nerve fibres.
Guess what you should be eating to fuel your thinking, creativity, problem solving and memory? That’s right – whole, fresh, unprocessed foods. Cold-water fatty wild fish. Fruits and veggies. Raw nuts and seeds. Olive oil. Coffee, green tea and black tea are all good options.
Get cooking!
This Week's Exercise: Prep your meals and snacks!
When we get to the point where we’re really hungry, that’s when we make poor food choices. When we get to that point, it’s hard to say no to fast food or to the vending machine snack that’s right there. However, if we plan ahead and bring healthy snacks to work or when you’re traveling, you can avoid that extreme hunger situation.
This week, use the My Fuel Plan tool to help you brainstorm, plan, and prepare healthy foods for your meals and snacks. This tool is also located on page 42 of The Ripple Effect Workbook.
Have fun!
Bonus Content
Here's a bonus video about why healthy fats are important for your brain to function.
The information and advice provided in this program is intended to assist you with improving your performance, as well as your general health. It is not intended and should not be used in place of advice from your own physician or for treatment or diagnosis of any specific health issue. By participating in this program you acknowledge that undertaking any new health, diet and/or exercise regime involves certain inherent risks, that you assume such risks, and that you release Wells Performance Inc. from any responsibility or claim relating to such participation.