Health At Work

During a long day of work it can be hard to incorporate habits that help support your health. Below are a few tips to help you feel your best during a long work day.

1. Start your day with a nutritious breakfast rich in the right proteins, vegetables and complex carbohydrates – see the options in your Metabolic Balance plan!

2. Avoid short-term “energy boosters” such as coffee, energy drinks and chocolate bars.

3. Drink 8 oz of water every couple of hours can help you maintain your concentration.

4. During your lunch break, choose a lunch that will supply sustaining rich nutrients and fiber. (Your Metabolic Balance plan can help you here!).

5. Eat your lunch mindfully and not working at your desk. It’s ok to take time to nourish yourself and then get back to work. In this way you’re far more likely to be productive and ultimately get so much more done!

6. In our world, it is inevitable that we have some form of stress on a daily basis. So even if stress cannot always be avoided, be gentle with yourself and listen to your body. Frequent low energy, irritability, sleep disorders, nervousness and physical complaints such as dizziness, high blood pressure, stomach and bowel complaints and back pain are warning signs that your stress may be getting too much.

Possible ways to achieve more tranquility and balance can be regular walks, reading and taking part in physical activity or sports.

Are you taking care of yourself during a work day?

Credit: Metabolic Balance Canada

Managing Stress

With many people returning to in person work and kids going back to school, stress levels for many of us are increasing. Although it can be hard to reduce the amount of stress in our lives we can try to improve how we deal with it. Below are some of our favorite ways to help manage and reduce stress.

1. Eat a whole food based diet – low in sugar, low in processed foods
2. Exercise – this helps the body use the extra sugar in the blood, and decreases stress hormones
3. Rest and digest. Eating at your desk, or ‘on-the-go’ means your digestive system is trying to do two things at once. Eat slowly, take a break for lunch by going outside and removing screens!
4. Deep breathing – try a meditation app or just take 5 deep breaths several times a day. This helps calm our nervous system, reminding our bodies that we aren’t in immediate danger
5. Do something enjoyable! Spending time pursuing a hobby is a wonderful way for the mind and body to relax.

Which ones might you try today?

Adapted: Metabolic Balance Australia and New Zealand

Stress

With a global pandemic, many of us have been experiencing increased amounts of stress for a long time. Although there are many ways to manage stress, one way is through food! Specific foods can support your body and provide valuable stress relief. Foods associated with relieving stress include:

•Green tea: contains L-theanine which promotes feelings of calm.
•Leafy greens such as spinach and kale contain magnesium which helps regulate the stress hormone cortisol.
•Oily fish: the omega 3 fatty acids are thought to reduce excess cortisol, and help you feel less anxious.
•Eggs: the choline found in eggs is needed for a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that helps with good mood and reduced anxiety.
•Pumpkin seeds are packed with magnesium, zinc and potassium which are all excellent at managing stress symptoms.
•Turmeric: the curcumin found in turmeric may boost your happiness and pleasure hormones of serotonin and dopamine.

Adapted from Metabolic Balance Australia and New Zealand

Overall Wellness

A healthy and varied diet can help you feel physically fitter, increase your energy, and improve your quality of sleep. It also means your body can recover faster and better from stress! A personalized Metabolic Balance will help you achieve your health goals and help you live a fuller and happier life!

Morning Stretches

With the current pandemic, many of us have been spending more time indoors and most likely experiencing more stress and tension than usual. Starting off your morning with a few easy and simple stretches can be one way to ease into the day, relieve a little bit of that stress, and do something good for your body.

Below are a few great resources that share simple morning stretches that require no equipment. Some can even be done in your bed!

Be Mindful and Meditate

Meditation is a seen in prehistoric wall arts originated in India and Buddhism. Today, we have neurosciences research on the topic and state “… that 50-year-olds can have the brain of 25-year-olds if they sit quietly and do nothing for 15 minutes a day.” This is reported by Business Insider. Give it a try if just to improve focus and lessen stress!

stream-1106336_1920 (Image by John Hain from Pixabay)

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

The Metabolic Balance® Secret of Success – Improved Quality of Life through Food!

Are you one of our many satisfied customers, who already feel great after a few weeks on the plan? What is the secret of success?

You know the answer: Tooltip zum Bild metabolic balance® uses natural foods and pays attention to a balanced ratio of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Therefore, the body is optimally supplied with all the important nutrients. Your intestines also benefit from the fact that we do not use sugars and preservatives. By combining the right foods for each individual and take breaks between meals, insulin levels are kept low. Thus, neither food cravings, nor the associated nervousness accrue. In addition, the natural urge to move is promoted, which helps to reduce stress symptoms quickly.

The result: A more balanced, happier attitude to life and an improved well-being can be achieved quickly by changing the diet. Stress and hectic are thus actively counteracted and the quality of life increases significantly.

Source: Wissenswertes von Metabolic Balance® Gesundheitsbrief Mai 2018

Meditate through the Holiday Stress – metabolic balance Advent Day 2

To help relieve the stress that comes with the holidays, we are sharing with you a few guided meditations that you can listen to each day until the 25th to help you develop a meditation practice.

There are four styles of meditations: Silent, mantra, guided meditation and music meditation. The list below offers you choices from guided and music meditations.

Guided Meditations:

Loving Kindness Meditation. (9 minutes guided meditation)

Mindful Awareness (5 minute guided meditation)

Simply Being podcast #5 ( 8 minute guided meditation)

Mindful Breathing (10 minutes guided meditation)

Music Sound Meditations:

Bells (10 minutes bell music for meditation)

Relaxing Music (60 minutes)

Positive Affirmation Audio (30 Minutes)

Meditation helps with Mindfulness. We talked about Mindfulness on the blog in the following posts.

Feeling Stressed? Food Could Be Aggravating The Situation

Feeling a bit stressed? Maybe what you ate today is aggravating the situation. Avoid the following when you know your day is going to be difficult or life starts feeling stressful:

Tea, coffee, cocoa, energy drinks
Fast foods
Milk
Meat, Fish and Poultry
Sugar
Alcohol
Soda, soft drinks and chocolate drinks

When you are following the metabolic balance plan, you will not be drinking soda or eating fast foods but coffee, nuts, butter and cheese may be on your plans. Why avoid these foods?

Coffee – the caffeine in coffee increases your stress hormones (catecholamines). The stress response releases corisol which increases insulin. Insulin increases inflammation in the body. Here is an interesting research study that shows that daily doses of caffeine builds up a persons tolerance but does not eliminate the stress response.

Fast Foods – Fast foods are highly processed, high in fat, sugar, or salt. Stress may mess up our brain’s reward system or cortisol may cause us to crave more fat and sugar. By putting fast food on your no eat list, you will help make sure Fast Food is not messing up your built in reward system. You will also avoid gaining extra weight which is a stressor for many adults.

Milk – It seems that the issue with milk may be a specific sugar, D-galactose. Even a low dose of D-galactose has shortened the life span of test animals through oxidative stress damage, chronic inflammation, neurodegeneration, decreased immune response, and gene transcriptional changes.

Meat Fish and Poultry – The study found that omnivores mood was changed much more by their food intake than vegetarians. The study suggests a dietary ration of long chain fatty acids may have an effect on mood. If you are feeling stressed or want to feel a bit more emotionally balanced reduce the amount of meat in your diet.

Sugar – Although current research has explained why we crave sugar when stressed wait fifteen minutes before grabbing something to eat. According to this article, Keep your environment as positive as possible so you will not be tempted to eat sugar. Cravings will peak in 15 to 20 minutes so if you can distract yourself you may be able to avoid consuming sugar and allow your body to react naturally to stress.

Alcohol –

When you feel stressed, eat nuts with one of your meals. Here are two studies which talk about how two specific types of nuts help your health:

Pistachios may lower vascular response to stress in type 2 diabetes.

Walnut rich diet may reduce stress and bad cholesterol (If you buy them whole, you can also have the fun of cracking open the nuts with a German nutcracker like this:

Want to know more about stress and nutrition? Penn State is currently researching stress and nutrition if you want to participate as a volunteer. They are currently Current examining the effects of walnuts, canola oil, fatty acids, and culinary spices on cardiovascular responses to stress and vascular endothelial function.

Photo: Walnut by Erich Ferdinand