Does Our Current Mood Affect Our Foods Choices?

#Mind #Health #Nutrition #Food #NWWR

"Mood influences the choice between healthy versus indulgent foods through its impact on temporal construal"

According to a recent study, a positive mood helps us focus on our long-term goals, such as health, and so leads to a greater preference for nutritious foods.

And when we’re emotionally off-kilter (+ other factors), it is really hard to make healthy food choices.

How?

Making healthy food choices involves making a short-term sacrifice (such as forgoing that second or third chocolate chip cookie) for future benefits (like feeling good when we step on the scale or get the results of our cholesterol test). But when we’re in a bad mood, those future rewards just seem less compelling than the concrete but short-lived pay-off from eating the cookie.

So, What Affects Our Mood to be Positive or Negative ?

From Physiological aspects, we've all heard of “stress hormones”, chemicals that our bodies produce when we’re under emotional or psychological pressure or when we don't get enough sleep.

Another hormone called cortisol is produced when we go under psycho-social stress, like: feeling overextended or under appreciated, having to deal with difficult people, feeling out of control.

One of the effects of cortisol is that it increases appetite, particularly for foods that are high in fat and sugar. So when your boss chews you out for something that’s not your fault, it’s no coincidence that you find yourself heading to the vending machine for a king-size chocolate bar.

So, How Do We Prevent High Levels of those Hormones?

1- One way to combat cortisol-fueled stress eating is to make sure you’re getting enough sleep.

2- Regular exercise, meditation, spending time with friends, and other stress-management tools are also helpful.

These two practices doesn't necessarily remove stress from your life, but they can help you—and your hormones—be a bit more resilient to life’s inevitable stresses, in order to maintain a healthy food choices.

#stay_health #choice_right #control_your_mood