13 Foods That Fight Stress - a2z TipsWorld

Rethink your comfort foods
What makes a food calming? Too often, a client will wave me off when I bring up this topic and say, "Oh, Keri, all foods are calming foods. Whenever I'm eating, I feel better." But there's a huge difference between tapping into a food's inherently calming properties and using any food as a kind of emotional anesthesia. That kind of eating may buy you a temporary sense of calm, but it's a quick fix that wears off way too fast. And where does it usually leave you? Weighing more than you'd like and muttering at yourself, "Yuck, how could I have eaten all that?"

Stressful events—and they don't even have to be big, just the daily hassles of life—cause our cortisol levels to rise. Cortisol causes food cravings, and in women those cravings tend to be strongest for carbs, especially sweet foods, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. The more of them we eat, the worse our mood gets. As if that weren't bad enough, the cortisol then makes more trouble for us, triggering an enzyme in our fat cells (it converts cortisone to more cortisol). Since our visceral fat cells (the ones in our abdomen, packed around our vital organs) have more of these enzymes than the subcutaneous fat cells (the fat on our thighs and butts, for example), stress causes many women to accumulate more belly fat. The more stress, the more this abdominal, or central, obesity occurs. Some research has found that these belly fat cells, which have been linked to a greater risk for heart disease and diabetes, have four times as many cortisol receptors as regular fat cells.

So when I talk about calming foods, I don't mean so-called comfort foods. I mean meals and snacks that will truly soothe and calm you. Whether it's because of the specific nutrients they provide or the steady, reliable source of energy they give you, they'll get you through the day feeling focused, even, and balanced—so you'll have the ability to conquer anything.

Adapted from the Slim Calm Sexy Diet