Fun fact: Did you know that your brain controls hunger and energy use. Today I am going to share with you three principles to take care of your brain for a healthy nutritious Ramadan and keep reading until the end because I have two yummy bonuses to share with you from a vegan cook.
Create a sustainable nutrition system.
My foundation is the bulletproof diet. I invite you to choose as a foundation a diet that has you know a varied and a very complete set of nutrition rules and advices. For me, the bulletproof diet does it. It is basically a low carb high fat diet, you personalize it, it’s not black and white. There is a sort of scale, from bulletproof to less bulletproof. Read more about the diet in this article.
Everyone needs to personalize their diet as I do not believe there is a “one size fits all” type of nutrition. The diet is a lot of vegetables, a lot of high-quality fat.
We are all guilty to not have in our plate enough green vegetables and for the veggies well basically they need to be at least half of your plate so one thing to keep in mind is that with a good portion of veggies you cannot go wrong. Add healthy fats like grass-fed butter, avocado oil, avocados, olive oil, and coconut oil. All the fishes and grass-fed meat if you can find grass-fed meats that is the best quality, so this is for the nutrition system.
I go for simple not complex, sustainable, and practical for me. Implement this in your daily life and the goal is to be at a place where you do not think about food that much during the day. so how do I do it?
I have a simple system I just took a piece of paper I did it like last year and I have three comments so in the first column is the healthy food that I got from the bulletproof diet guide and then in the middle I have the food that I like, and third column is basically the unhealthy super and healthy food but that I still eat.
The goal here is to have all these foods on papers, take a look at it and of course the most of your daily nutrition food should come from the first column. The second column is something that is good for your emotional state, keep some of column 3 (if you want).
This is my system create yours.
Mindful Eating
Something that helped is the principle of mindful eating, it completely changed my life when I learned about it last year through my coach training (Through the “Be Unlimited” course from Dr. mark Atkinson).
I had a food addiction for sure and I was binge eating a lot, it came from my emotions; every time that I felt stressed, I was overeating sweets. I’m not doing it anymore and I’m so happy for that and it’s because of mindful eating.
Mindful eating is about understanding your body signals, so basically you just slow down enjoy the plate, how it looks the colour is joy the smell take the time to smell your food and then also when you taste it take time to enjoy all the flavours.
Slowing down and mindful eating are some of the best methods I think for healthier eating.
Nurture your brain
by improving all the factor that influence your hunger your energy levels and your overall health.
Here are 3 of those:
- Your physical activity
Be careful limit the intensity compared to your everyday workout, we are in Ramadan, you are fasting, your body is healing so you want to support it doing that not spending extra energy repairing your muscles.
You want to go away from dehydration. I focus on mobility and do a lot of stretching and also yoga.
- Sleep
I know that it’s so hard to have a good night’s sleep during Ramadan because first of all you know people want to stay awake to pray for example or they stay for socializing, and they wake up also for salat really early.
What you can do is taking naps during the day to really fulfil those missing hours and it’s going to give you a boost of energy like never
- Reduce stress
We are in locked down (when writing this article) , we can have a stressful episode, some panic attack or even emotional stress. Listen to your body and reduce them as much as possible and Ramadan is really perfect for that.
Focus on your faith and slow down.
Success in Ramadan is all about preparation, check out this article about making a plan to prepare in the best of conditions.
