Your hormones are your body’s busiest chemical messengers. The level and balance of your hormones sends signals to the rest of your body, resulting in serious impacts to both physical and mental health. It’s no secret that hormones can have a great impact on your mood. Anxiety, for instance, can be caused by an imbalance of serotonin and cortisol. An imbalance of hormones can also exacerbate depression or ADHD. Medication can help to balance your hormone levels so that you can better manage your mental illness. You can also balance your hormones through healthier eating and exercise.
Here are a few tips to ensure you’re eating a hormonally balanced diet.
Incorporate Cruciferous Vegetables
Cruciferous vegetables are vegetables that, when consumed, produce a phytochemical called indole-3-carbinol. Indole-3-carbinol is important for your liver health and function. A healthy liver can help to balance your hormones, by cleaning out the hormones that have been used up and keeping them refreshed.
Cruciferous vegetables include:
- Bok choy
- Broccoli
- Brussel sprouts
- Cabbage
- Cauliflower
- Kale
- Radish
Consider incorporating these vegetables into a salad or cooking them into your dinner dishes.
Eat Three Meals Per Day
You’ve surely heard the phrase “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” While breakfast is important for giving you the energy you need to meet the day and jumpstart your metabolism, breakfast is also important for keeping with the routine of eating three balanced meals each day. Skipping meals can lead to issues with metabolism and hormonal imbalance. This low metabolism rate can impact your mood as well as your body.
When you’re eating three meals a day, don’t worry so much about counting calories. Instead focus on portion control. Your metabolism is at its best around noon, so lunch should be your largest meal. Consider eating a snack of protein or unprocessed meat around 4pm to keep serotonin and sugars from dropping.
Don’t Skimp on Protein
Protein has a number of health benefits, but especially when it comes to hormonal balance. Consumption of protein releases the hormones ghrelin and leptin. While both of these hormones inform your appetite, they also have a profound impact on your mental wellness. Leptin helps to regulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which impacts depression. Some studies have shown that ghrelin can reduce stress and anxiety.
Try to get 25-30 grams of high quality, lean protein in each meal. You can find it in things like:
- Eggs
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Chicken
- Fish
In general, while red meat is fine in moderation, white meat such as fish or chicken is better for overall health.
Include Good Fats
Fats are not always a bad thing. In fact, fat is necessary for your daily intake. Some fats — such as those high in omega-3s — can raise your vitamin D and lower female testosterone levels. It also helps to improve hormonal communication overall. So where do you find these “good fats”?
Once again, fish is an excellent source here. Salmon and tuna, for instance, are excellent options high in omega-3. Flaxseed and chia seeds, avocados, and walnuts are also sources of “good fat.” Try to cut back on saturated fats and avoid trans fats entirely if you can in order to get the best benefits from this.
Add More Fruits and Vegetables
Have you ever noticed yourself feeling refreshed and clean after biting into a delicious apple or eating a dinner salad? You can never go wrong with fruits and vegetables, but they’re especially good at boosting your antioxidant intake. Those antioxidants are what give you that clean, refreshed feeling. Raw fruit and vegetable intake has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and improve mood.
Three Cheers For Avocados
In addition to being high in omega-3s, avocado is one of the best sources of plant sterols, or phytosterols, natural compounds that can be eaten to help you lower your cholesterol. The plant sterols in avocados can help to regulate estrogen and progesterone. Avocados can also help to reduce cortisol, the stress hormone.
Avocados taste delicious raw and sliced or spread on pieces of toast. You can also add avocados to a salad or mash them to make your own guacamole.
Look For High Fiber
If you have a hormonal imbalance, fiber may help you flush some of that out of your system. When ingested, fiber binds itself to those excess or spent hormones in the body. From there, fiber is flushed out of the body through the colon. This is the natural process for refreshing and keeping your hormones balanced.
But if you don’t have enough fiber in your diet, those excess hormones have nowhere to go. They are absorbed back into your body, and your hormones become imbalanced. As we’ve discussed, that can lead to big changes in mood or exacerbate mental health conditions.
Some sources of high fiber foods include:
- Apples
- Pears
- Strawberries
- Bananas
- Avocados (again)
- Beets
- Broccoli
- Lentils and beans
- Chickpeas
- Air-popped popcorn
- Oats and almonds
- Sweet potatoes
- Dark chocolate
Everything In Moderation
Of course, moderation is good no matter what you eat. Dark chocolate may be a great source of fiber, but that doesn’t mean you should eat ten dark chocolate bars in a day. Even apples have a limit at which point they would be too much. The point of adding these things to your diet is to balance your diet, which means your diet itself should be balanced.
It’s also important to note that your diet should not replace things like getting regular exercise, going to therapy, and taking your prescribed medication. A balanced diet can help regulate your mental wellness. Ultimately, however, your prescribed treatments for mental wellness should still be your primary method of treatment.
Rivia Mind believes in a holistic approach to mental wellness, including taking care of yourself both physically and emotionally. Our mental healthcare professionals can help you make a plan for mental wellness. We even have nutrition counselors specializing in psych nutrition as part of our whole list of services. Contact us today at 212-203-1773 to learn more about how we can help you or schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
