The Stress Less Protocol: Diet
We’ve covered the “how” and “why” of cortisol imbalance and now it’s time for the fun part: learning about what you can actually do to start to feel better and balance your cortisol levels naturally! Woot woot!
This protocol is divided into three sections: diet, lifestyle, and supplement recommendations. Below you’ll find many holistic nutrition recommendations you can start to incorporate today to begin to bring your hormones back into harmony- it’s up to you to decide which ones you’re willing to commit to.
I recommend committing to changing one to three things in each of the categories to start. From there, you can begin to make more and more changes (and seeing better and better results). Isn’t taking your health into your own hands fun?!
Let’s begin!
Stress and Your First Brain
First brain, say what?! We have more than one brain? That’s right! You already know your first brain—that cute pink thing floating around in your skull—but did you know just how much it’s affected by stress?
High stress levels lead to lowered blood flow to the brain, increased inflammation, and imbalanced neurohormones, which can lead to increased anxiety, poor mood lability, increased anger and irritability, “mind storms” (when you just can’t think straight), brain fog, fatigue, and the list goes on.
One of the best ways to support the brain is through nutrition. The two biggest dietary culprits are refined oils and sugar—the main ingredients in most highly processed, packaged foods. So just by removing these from your diet, you’ll notice a major improvement in your mental and hormonal health.
Another amazing way to support your brain nutritionally is by eating more healthy fats!
Your brain is 60% fat—so it makes sense that a brain-healthy diet contains a variety of healthy fats like avocado, fatty fish, olives and olive oil, nuts and seeds, eggs, coconut and coconut oil, and ghee. These anti-inflammatory foods are are also amazing sources of important hormone-balancing fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A, D, E, and K.
Increasing good-quality protein is another way to support both the health of your brain and hormonal system, as hormones and neurotransmitters are proteins.
Good quality sources of animal protein include grass-fed/grass-finished beef and bison, wild salmon, sardines, and tuna, pasture-raised poultry and eggs, and wild game. My favourite plant-based protein sources include beans, lentils, chickpeas, and other legumes, quinoa, pumpkin seeds, nutritional yeast, tempeh, peas, and edamame. You can also find great animal- and plant-based protein powders, just look for the ones with only real-food ingredients.
Stress and Your Second Brain
Did you know that 90% of your serotonin (your happy neurotransmitter) is made in your gut?! It’s crazy but true. That’s why we call the gut the second brain—it’s part of a very important communication system called the gut-brain axis.
The gut-brain axis is a two-way communication system between the central nervous system which is comprised of the brain and spinal cord, and the enteric nervous system, a web of neurons that determines the function of the GI tract!
In general, the health of the entire digestive and intestinal system, where food is digested, absorbed, and waste is eliminated, is extremely important for proper hormone (and mental) health and stress-coping ability.
Whereas the first brain really needs good fats to be healthy, a variety of fresh fibre-rich and fermented are what supports the second brain.
Fibre is extremely important for a healthy gut microbiome. Ideally, you should aim for 25-35 g of fibre per day at a minimum. You’ll also want to have both insoluble and soluble fibre in your diet. Sources of insoluble fibre include celery, avocadoes, almonds, and beans, and sources of soluble fibre include chia seeds, flaxseed, apples, berries, and oats. Eating a variety of fresh, whole foods is another way to keep the gut healthy—the more variation in the foods you eat, the more diverse the bacteria in your gut!
I also recommend eating fermented foods every day. My favorites include kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, kefir, and miso, but the list goes on and basically every traditional cultural diet has some type of fermented food they eat.
A word of caution when it comes to fermented foods: if you’re not used to eating them, you should start small. Since these foods contain live bacteria, they can lead to some bloating and gas if you eat too many when you haven’t built up a tolerance.
There are a couple other important things to consider when it comes to balancing cortisol levels. The first is hydration. Studies have shown that being dehydrated increases cortisol levels—yikes. Luckily, this is an easy fix. A good rule of thumb is 2L per day, but your hydration needs may increase depending on your height, weight, activity level, and the climate you’re living in.
Finally, how you eat can be just as important as what you’re eating, and it’s for this reason that I recommend mindful eating. Eating mindfully doesn’t need to be complicated—it just means that you aren’t eating in the car on the go, or shoveling food in your face as your walk to work. Taking just 3 to 5 deep breaths before a meal can make a huge difference in the quality of your digestion and the quantity of nutrients you’re actually able to absorb.
Since the digestive system is one of the first things to “go offline” when the fight or flight response is activated (see the graphic on page 10), it can be the beginning of a vicious cycle of hormone imbalance: stress leads to impaired digestive function, which leads to poor absorption of nutrients, contributing to overall decreased nutrient reserves in glands, imbalanced cortisol levels, and decreasing stress-coping abilities. Back to square one.
The moral of the story? Eat mindfully and follow the other 7 simple steps of the stress-less protocol diet to help support your body with the nutrients you need to keep the brain and gut healthy, and rebalance cortisol levels for good.
Click here to download the fillable self-reflection and key takeaways PDF before moving on!
