Change Your Brain Every Day - Our Nutrition Principles: What to Choose & Lose

Episode Date: December 20, 2017

It’s no secret that what we put on the end of our fork matters when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Most of us are living to eat when we really should be eating to live. In part 7 of the Success Starts Here series, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you a set of food rules you can incorporate in your life to radically change how you feel and function without feeling deprived of taste.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back to Success Starts Here. We're talking about food today. We're talking about fueling your brain. So foods to choose for optimal brain performance, foods to lose to avoid failure. And this is so important and people never make this connection until they actually hear the studies and the data and why it's so important to eat healthy. I'm always amazed that people

don't make this connection. So food is medicine. Or it's poison. Or it's poison. Absolutely. And you can choose. I mean, one of your best gifts is you can take super healthy food. I mean, medicine quality food and make it taste awesome. But everything you put on the end of your fork matters. And that's never truer than when we're talking about success and failure. Okay. Because food, what you eat is affecting your neurotransmitters. It's affecting your hormones. So it affects your decision-making day by day. It affects your moods over time. It's going to build

and it's going to really affect your moods, your relationships, how you interact with other people, how you see the world. Food matters. So it's really important. So let's talk about the rules. But society is really. Against you. Against you. Yes. Right. Because if you think of success, focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control, empathy, relationships.

They know the science. And you are overweight. And we've already talked about as your weight goes up the size and function of your brain goes down if belly fat is producing inflammatory cytokines and cytokines and inflammation shrink your brain and are cause of dementia and depression they take healthy testosterone and turn it into unhealthy cancer promoting forms of estrogen. Um, you, you have to get your food right. If you want to be as successful as you can be. Well, and the crazy part is, um, before we jump into the food rules is that, you know, you would think that it's like, okay, well, we've got all this information. We keep saying this information over and over again. People should, or, you know, could do

what they're told when they, when it comes to health, you should just make the right decision. But it's not, it's not just that simple either. You really are being sabotaged because here's the reality. The entire like food industry knows brain science. They know neuroscience and they use it. Okay. So you're being sabotaged. If you don't think that's why we talk about thinking like a warrior so much and using the brain, you know, the big brain God gave you, because if you are not paying attention, they know what music and jingles get into your head. They bet you can't eat just one and you still remember it. Right.

They know that using sex works. So sexy women, you know, they know it works. Carl's junior commercial. we see you just can't even forget that. Not even still. Right.

They know, but they know that flashing certain images in certain colors doing that. See, I see both the girl and the burger as weapons of mass destruction right and that's how you have to think of it and all of that happened before you ever put the thing in your mouth because then that's a whole nother set of like food science laws that have you know they've discovered and they've learned how to, right. Meltiness, the right texture. It's crazy, right?

The flavors, they know exactly how much sugar, salt, and fat to put in stuff to make you completely addicted. It's just nuts. The bliss point. Right. So it's not just. It wears out your pleasure center. People who are obese, their nucleus accumbens is actually less responsive. So they're more likely to be

depressed. So they're more likely to be depressed and more likely to overeat to try to just feel normal. Right. So it becomes more about living to eat instead of eating to live. So it's really important to understand that it's not just as simple as like, well, I have the information, I need to do it. You actually need to be aware that there's an enemy out there. That's where you have to start. And then you have to have aware, right? Arm prepared and aware. And you have to avoid. All right. So help them in the 10 minutes we have help them pick the right things, help them to develop a system for food to empower their success. Yep. So the first thing I do is I think like either an athlete or a warrior, right? I think like an athlete or a warrior. Like when I was

training for my black belt test, I knew that everything I ate was going to matter. If you're an athlete, everything you eat matters, right? So you got to make yourself, put yourself in that place of being a warrior or an athlete. So the first rule is high quality calories and not too many of them. So calories do matter, but you've got to eat high quality calories. I don't care if you're only eating 800 of them. They've got to be high quality calories or they're still going to trigger inflammation. You can't go on a Twinkie diet. I'm sorry.

That's just the reality. You've got to be eating high quality calories if you want to be successful. So in Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers And they show these great desserts Because they're low calorie That you may lose weight But you're going to get sick You're going to get sick

Now we've got great desserts I've got recipes for amazing desserts But they're actually made with ingredients That are going to feed your brain Fuel your brain As opposed to making you sick And increasing inflammation So that's the

first one. The second rule is meal timing matters. Okay. So when you eat matters. So studies on intermittent fasting, you know, you should have sort of a daily 12 hour fast, maybe even a 15 hour fast, but it's not hard. If you eat at six o'clock at night, don't eat again until six to nine o'clock in the morning because it gives, turns on this process called autophagy where it helps your brain clean up the trash that's been built up. So when you're talking about success, really important because you're not going to have brain fog. And better to have more calories at lunch than dinner. So people who eat the same number of calories during the day, but they eat them when the sun's up versus when the sun's down, lose more weight.

Interesting. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, really interesting. Right. And we want you to eat enough so that it maintains your blood sugar. So how do you do that? So if you,

you want to have a little bit of protein with each meal. So what does that mean? Make that practical. So I like to say, shake hands with protein, right? About the size of the palm of your hand that way, based on your size, right? It's, it's sort of independent of like just a regular measurement. So for a woman, about three ounces for a very large man, it could be five ounces of protein, but high quality protein with each meal. So think of, you know, free range chicken, grass fed meats, wild fish. That's really clean. If you're a vegan, you want to be thinking of organic tofu, fermented tofu. That's probably one of your best options besides, um, some of the, like we make a plant-based protein powder. That's a really good, but you still got to get your protein.

Just because you're vegan doesn't mean you don't have to follow certain basic rules. So protein's like medicine. It's like medicine. But you don't want to overdo protein because it can trigger inflammation. Well, and if you think of it like medicine, you'd never go take, if the doctor ordered for you to take six pills of something during the day, intermittently throughout the day at certain intervals, you're not going to go take all six of them at once. It's going to make you sick. You need it in small doses throughout the day and then include some high quality fat.

So things like fish oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, these are the types of fats, coconut, that are going to help satisfy you. They, they actually improve the satiation. So the protein increases focus and the fat makes you feel full longer. So it's really important. It also is really good for hormones and things like that for helping you to, um, keep your hormones healthy. And then you need the right carbohydrates. So it's really important to have the right carbs. So smart carbs as opposed to dumb carbs. And I'm not being facetious when I say dumb carbs. So sugar has actually been shown to increase learning disabilities in children and in animals.

And increases rapid brain cell firing, right? Foods that turn erratic brain cell firing, it's addictive. Right. And it's been associated with increased aggression so you it goes up and down so you're like constantly it's you're never feeling quite stable so dumb carbs are sugar bread pasta potatoes and almost all processed food because they're just the wrong kind of carbs which are loaded with grains like corn and soy that increase your bad fats. And trans fats and it's just really awful. Bad fats. We also skipped over don't drink your calories. You want to get plenty of water. It's one of the fastest ways to perk up your brain is to be hydrated. Being dehydrated by only 2% can radically affect your cognition. So make sure you are hydrated throughout the day. It's really important. And then spices are like medicine. Yes. So we think of them, like I always say,

probably better to keep them in your medicine cabinet than in your kitchen cabinet. They're just so powerful. So we are constantly loading our food with herbs and spices. And it's just a really, it's a really powerful way to increase antioxidants, especially for kids, kids who are picky and won't eat a lot of green stuff, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, all of those things have really powerful benefits. So eat from the rainbow, eat foods with many different colors, as you like to say, not Skittles. Right. Um, and then if you're struggling with add anxiety depression irritability brain fog go on an elimination diet at least for a month get rid of sugar corn soy dairy gluten gluten and people go oh well there's nothing less to eat well that's true. 400 recipes. If you're just eating, you know, at McDonald's.

But there's so many things to eat. I mean, there are literally thousands of things. God gave you a big brain. And I've come up with hundreds of recipes that are very simple just because people say that. So what do we eat during the day? So we start the day. I make you a cappuccino. Yeah, Chloe and I will usually start with warm lemon water with a little ginger um because that hydrates your brain and then we then we have our almond

milk cappuccino which is like by the time we're done with it quarter calf that has very little caffeine in it you can do it with decaf and it's 40 calories. 40 calories. So it's calorie smart. Right. It tastes amazing. And then, you know, I'll often make you eggs. Eggs. And I'll have a cup of frozen blueberries. I often have smoothies. So I have my kitchen set up so they're quick to make with plant-based protein powder. I throw in a whole bunch of greens, about less than a cup of berries of some kind, and some stevia.

And it's really pretty simple. And I usually put a little fat in it. I may or may not have a snack in the morning, maybe some couple of nuts and an apple. And then for lunch, I usually have a salad. I like this one Greek salad. It's got lots of veggies. I never let anybody put dressing on my salad. I like oil and vinegar so i put the vinegar uh on first and then a little bit of oil because it saves calories right that way we make

brain and love which is a chocolate bar that's sugar-free dairy-free i'll usually have that after lunch and one of the things i do is um to make life easy whenever we're cooking we make extra of whatever we're cooking. And then I just automatically pack it in sort of lunch size containers. And that's my lunch the next day. So it might be, it might have been the, you know, the herb, the Rosemary thyme chicken that we made the night before, or maybe it is chicken wings or, and you know, people go, Oh, well, this is hard. This is totally not hard. It's we're in a routine and that's what we want you. You're already in a routine that maybe is not working for you. So you want to get in a routine

of things that serve your health. And by the way, you do get to have some desserts as long as the desserts are healthy. Things like nutty butter cups or... I have one probably every day right and there's two ingredients sugar-free dairy-free chocolate and some almond butter and there it's a super easy thing to make um or some blueberry muffins but they're but they're the kind of blueberry muffin that is not like a commercially made muffin they're going to fuel success for you and i'm like a regular muffin before i'd like one two or three of them. And here one, and I'm just happy. Right. You should feel satisfied. You should not be triggered to eat more. So success really does start with your food. If you just get anything out of that and you can

get your food, right. Tana's got a great cookbook, The Brain Warrior's Way cookbook. She's also got other ones, Live Longer with the Brain Doctor's Wife, Healing ADD Through Food. Brain Warrior's Way is where I made it really easy. So it's my favorite. The Brain Warrior's Way is super easy. Success starts here at the end of your fork. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to The Brain Warrior's Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review Stay with us. every month.