Hi everyone, It's Carli Taylor here for this week's Mojo Monday. So today we are going to talk about food as a foundational pillar of mental fitness. So this is part three of the Becoming Mentally Fit series. And look, we're talking about these pillars of mental fitness, but we know that they're not separate. They're all intertwined. So what we eat and drink is very much influenced by our mindset.
Can be our overall mindset, So our overall attitude towards food or our mindset in the moment and the choices that we make of what to eat or drink, our mindset has a huge impact on that. So becoming aware of your mind and the chatter in that moment is really crucial. We'll always justify a glass of wine after
a stressful day. So if I'm not aware that that's where my mind will go, and it's Tuesday, which is an alcohol free day for me, then I can easily fall into this sort of reactive mode just doing what my mind says based on how I feel in that moment, which might not serve me well the next day. So awareness of your inner chatter around food is really crucial because that's how you take control over whether you reach for that wine or the chocolate or the chips or not.
And that can take a lot of discomfort tolerance too, because giving, in let's face, it is a lot easier. So I've been watching the SBS series alone and it's really it really sparked me thinking about why we eat. And if you haven't seen it, it's a fantastic series. It's a reality series and it's very raw, very real, and it's quite rutal because contestants are dropped into these remote wilderness areas and they're dropped there alone and they've
got to survive. And the one I was watching is called a Loone Frozen and it's based in Canada, Canada, which has brutal like the weather, conditions are insane, and one of the contestants, Amos, said something that does really stuck with me. So when you're out there, you're not eating for enjoyment or pleasure or from boredom. You're eating
to survive. And he referred to it as the survival diet, which I'm sure is the language for survivalists, but it was it was new to me, and so every decision around food when it's about survival, is about calories, so it's about fuel and preferably protein and fat, but it's whatever that you can find. There's no there's no abundance of food, especially when the winter sets in and you burn more calories looking for food than you actually eat, and if you lose too much weight, they pull you out.
And there's a whole different relationship to food that they have food on a loan. When they find it, it's like it's sacred because it's about survival. And when they do get protein from a hunt, the gratitude and the emotion as they eat it is quite incredible. They're so present with every bite and so connected and grateful to the animal that they've just hunted. You know, their mindset
towards food is incredibly primal. So let's propel ourselves into our modern world, which you and I live in right now. So we're on the opposite of the survival diet, and a lot of the time we are actually on a pleasure diet. So we base our decisions on what to eat around how we feel. We ask our partners, our kids, what do you feel like for dinner? If we're hungry, it's like, what do I feel like eating. We don't
ask ourselves what does my body need right now? I'll base dinner around that, or I'll base my snack around that. And we have this abundance of calories that we could consume all day long if we wanted to. And we can eat for dopamine, we eat for distraction, we eat for comfort, we can eat based on our mood, we
can eat for entertainment. And unless you are eating with some sort of intention for training or building muscle, or aging or weight loss, the issue is that there are so many choices to make, and those choices include food that is highly convenient. Because we're busy, we have less time to be preparing food, food that's made in a factory, made by man and not nature, and made to be addictive. So I'm talking about ultraprocessed foods here, food that you
cannot recognize as once being alive. It's full of non food substances, full of chemicals, and research is now showing that ultra process foods, which is a dominant part of the modern diet, are directly linked to poorum mental health outcomes, including high rates of depression. That anyone that tells you that food doesn't make a difference to your mental health, is not up with the research and is living in
the dark ages. And I get really frustrated when I hear trusted medical practitioners tell their patients that food doesn't make a difference. And don't get me started on the
hospital food, which I'm completely digressing. But there was a twenty twenty three systematic review, a meta analysis that included over two hundred and sixty thousand adults, and it found that higher ultra process food consumption was linked to a twenty eight percent increased risk of depression, and every ten percent increase in ultra processed food intake led to an eleven percent rise in depression risk. So I will put the research into the show notes if you're interested in
diving deeper into that. But think about that. We're not just talking about junk food here. We're talking about food that is engineered in labs to be hyper palatable, shelf stable. And I remember when it first came out, I think in the seventies, like my mum getting so excited about these foods that were going to last for weeks and weeks and weeks. So there's shelf stable. They're addictive and that includes the majority of breakfast cereals, and it includes
super market breads amongst all the obvious stuff. So ultra processed foods and nutrient poor, they're full of additives that may negatively impact your gut microbiome, which we now know plays a crucial role in brain health. So every time you eat, there's a chemical message to your brain. So real food nourishes your body and your brain. Ultra processed food starves it. So when you eat, think of it
as feeding every cell in your body. Every cell has this energy center called the mitochondria, And think of the mitochondria as a mouse spinning on a wheel. If it's fed, it's going to spin all day long. It's going to have loads of loads of energy. But if you starve it, it's going to slow down. It's going to become sluggish and struggle. And that's what happens when we eat a lot of crappy food. We slow down, we get tired, we feel sluggish, and it affects our mental fitness. That's
because we're not feeding the cells in our body. We think. So what we need to do is really think beyond our stomach and beyond pleasure, and we need to think of every cell, every cell that's in our body because they're relying on us to feed them. So I'll take you through a guide that we have in our house, and it's called the eighty twenty rule. So eighty percent of the time we eat real whole food, So think vegetable fruits, quality proteins, raw nuts, olive oil. Twenty percent
is the treat food. So whatever you consider the best treat for you, like, you want to get full enjoyment out it. You want it to be the best quality. You want to have no guilt around it because you're giving yourself permission to eat that. And what that means is that there's a trade off. So my kids have been brought up and we did Poul and I do this as well, with this skill of trading off. So if you do you know your treat for that day, then you may need to have a trade off with
another treat when another treat opportunity comes along. So you know your treat is chocolate after dinner, which is my treat, So I'll turn down the biscuit or the chips during the day because I know I want to have my chocolate later on. So pole's trade off when we're out for dinner, it's saying notice to the dessert because he's drinking wine. So that's the trade off, So try it
next time you're out for dinner. Make an intentional decision based on the attitude you want towards food, because attitude is a choice. So choose your attitude around food, like sit with that discomfort that that may bring in that moment, knowing that their choice is under your control. And a really great guide for this to help with awareness of what to eat is the Nova Classification classification System. So
it's n OVA. You can just google it. And what it does is it ranks food based on how processed it is. So Group one is your unprocessed, minimally processed, the stuff your great grandmother would recognize, and then it goes up to group four, which is your ultraprocessed, factory made food like substances, which is still designed for that long shelf life and maximum bliss point. So yeah, really
really good guide, very very simple. There's a visual on there, and yeah, a good one to show the kids as well. So here's your mojo mundane nudge for this week around food. When you reach for food, consider the reason you're reaching for it? Is it for mood regulation? Are you bored? Are you hungry? And if so, is this food in your eighty percent? And will it nourish yourselves? Will it feed that metaphoric little mouth us that needs nourishing energy
to spin that energy wheel? And what is your twenty percent treat food? What are you willing to trade off for it? And decide your attitude towards food. You can intentionally choose your attitude. There is going to be a part of your mind that's not aligned with that attitude, and that's okay, that's normal. We all experience that, expect it,
but then choose not to give into it. Because there's another part of your mind that wants a healthy body and brain, that wants energy, that wants to age well, that doesn't want to get preventable diseases. And that's the part of you you want to listen to. That's the part of you that you want as your guide. So allow that part of you to shine through and take control.
So I hope you've got value from that one. Food is another huge topic, but I think if we can simplify with our eighty twenty rule and the nova classification system, it can certainly help us when we are making choices every day around food. So I have a great week everybody, and I will catch you next week. See ya.