Supportive Foods During Stress & Burnout

A look at the best foods to nourish and replenish you in times of high stress and/or burnout.

When you have been under a lot of stress and/or are recovering from burnout, your nutritional needs are going to be impacted because stress uses up a lot of resources in your body. Let’s take a look at what you can eat to help support your body through challenging times.

Magnesium and Stress
When we are under stress, our bodies burn through minerals at a faster rate than usual. That, in turn, can lead to more stress. How so? Well, consider the role of magnesium in the nervous system. It sits on certain receptors in the synapses (the gaps between neurons) in the nerves and decides which messages to pass on and which can be ignored. But if your magnesium is low, it will just pass along everything. That’s the moment when every little thing imaginable just seems to set you on edge and make you twitchy. I think we’ve all been there! Magnesium can help.

Our modern diets are deficient in magnesium to begin with, because modern agricultural practices don’t replenish the soil with magnesium. This leads to more and more depletion over time. So supplementing magnesium is generally a good idea for everyone, although you can only absorb a little bit at a time. Adding some Mega-Mag drops to your water or mixing in some Natural Vitality Calm throughout the day is one way to boost these levels.

But adding more mineral rich foods to your diet is a great idea as well—bone broth and seaweeds are great places to start, as well as  working with mineral rich herbs like nettles (also a great spinach alternative!) and horsetail. Wild greens like dandelion leaves and anything else you can scrounge up in a yard untreated with pesticides will be full of minerals. And if you can stomach it, organ meats are powerhouses of both minerals and vitamins that are hard to get elsewhere (and are much more affordable than supplements). And finally, if you are fortunate enough to be able to grow some of your own food, adding rocks around your garden area will allow your plants to absorb more minerals.

Cortisol and Inflammation
When excess inflammation is in the body, more cortisol is going to be produced, and if you are already stressed out or in burnout, more cortisol is not what you need. So rather than just thinking about how much fat and how much protein you should be getting and that sort of thing, it’s better to think about what kind of fat and what kind of protein are going to lower inflammation so that cortisol can be lowered as well. The same goes for sweet things—refined sugar is for sure inflammatory, but honey is anti-inflammatory. So you don’t have to cut all sweet things out of your life, but switching to things like honey or maple syrup when possible will go a long way.

Healthy Fats and Proteins
When it comes to fats, we are looking for ones that are higher in omega 3s and lower in omega 6s to lower excess inflammation. For oils, coconut, olive and avocado oils and ghee are excellent choices. Industrial seed oils (and basically anything you are likely to find when you eat out) are going to be inflammatory.

Now here’s the interesting thing about meat—whether the meat is inflammatory or anti-inflammatory depends on how the animal lived. You may have heard that tuna and salmon are great sources of omega 3s, but that is only true of wild salmon and tuna. If it is factory farmed fish, the diet and the life of that fish is going to be very different (and pretty depressing), and now the fish is producing omega 6s instead of omega 3s.

The same goes for chicken, beef, etc. If the animal was able to live in a pretty natural environment without unnatural stressors and eat food that is ideal for them (think pasture raised, grass fed cows), they are going to be healthy sources of protein and fat. A lot of those studies that seem to show that meat is inflammatory are flawed in the sense that they don’t distinguish between Oscar Meyer bologna and your neighbors beef that you got at the farmer’s market. They are not the same!

Protein plays another key role here in terms of giving you what you need to stay sharp and focused during the day (harder in times of stress) and in keeping you full longer. Grazing between meals leads to extra inflammation (especially if you’re grazing on processed foods and/or refined carbs), but getting 20 grams protein at each meal will keep you full so you are less likely to snack between meals.

Getting plenty of good fats is also really important to help nourish your nerves from the effects of stress. You hear people say things like “my nerves are frazzled,” or “I’m so burned out,” and there is some truth to that! Just as oils can help nourish and hydrate sunburned and dried out skin, so can good fats nourish and replenish your nervous system when it gets impacted by ongoing stressors.

Stress and Appetite
Now let’s talk about how stress affects our appetite. If you are someone who finds it hard to eat when you get stressed out, either because you lose your appetite, get nauseous or feel like your stomach is tied into knots, there are some things that will help you out.

Eating something bitter 10-20 minutes before a meal will help stimulate the appetite (and is also great for your liver!). Ginger will help with nausea, and and carminative herbs like fennel and chamomile (especially if steeped strongly for 30 minutes or more), will help relieve stomach cramps.

Try to make it easy on yourself by having ‘easy’ foods around that you just can just grab when it feels really hard to get something down. Bone broth with some added oil is one example. A handful of almonds, an apple (with almond butter!) or some hemp seeds you sprinkle on top of whatever for some extra protein are other good options (both almonds and hemp seeds have 10 grams of protein per serving). You may find it helpful to set alarms for yourself to remind you to eat.

If, on the other hand, stress leads you to craving all the “bad stuff,” don’t despair! Deprivation is not the answer. Consider that for one thing, cravings may be your body’s way of communicating with you what it needs. When you crave salt, for example, your body is probably low on minerals. So load up on something full of minerals first, and then if you still want some chips, so be it.

If you are craving sugar, on the other hand, your body is seeking nourishment. Consider that in the wild, poisonous foods are never sweet. Sweet foods are always safe and nourishing. In the modern world though, it’s the other way around. But our bodies are still so deeply hardwired for the natural world that this gets mixed up. It does not mean that you are bad for craving something sweet—it’s hardwired into our biology! So the next time you find yourself reaching for something sugary, start with something deeply nourishing like bone broth with added oils (and maybe a bit of honey), and then you are likely to have less refined sugar afterwards. And if you are reaching for chocolate, perhaps you need both nourishment and minerals (chocolate is super high in magnesium).

You can also focus on harm reduction. While sugar is inflammatory, honey, molasses and maple syrup are anti-inflammatory and have other nourishing properties (like minerals!) that sugar does not.  At the end of this post, I’ve included my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses a small amount of maple syrup, almond flour, and no eggs. The cookies do not taste like maple syrup at all, and the texture is just amazing—the perfect combination of chewy and a little crispy on the outside. I keep these in the freezer and can pull one out whenever the urge fro something decadent strikes. But whatever you are craving, be sure to keep healthier alternatives stocked in your home so that you can make better choices when the cravings kick in.

So to wrap things up, consider giving your body extra dietary support during challenging times, just like you might turn to chicken soup and citrus fruits when you have a cold. Stress depletes you in some key ways, and what you eat plays an important role in helping you recover.


CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
(sugar free, gluten free and egg free)

2 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup melted coconut oil and ghee (the ghee really enhances the flavor—even 1 TBS will be noticeable)
¼ cup maple syrup (at room temperature)
1 TBS vanilla extract
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
½ cup mini chocolate chips

INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350ºF and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, stir together the almond flour, baking soda, and salt.

Add in the melted coconut oil/ghee, maple syrup, vanilla, and vinegar, and mix again, until the dough looks uniform, with no clumps.
Fold in the chocolate chips, then use a tablespoon or 1-ounce cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto the prepared pan. You will get roughly 16 small cookies from this batch.
Use your hands to flatten the cookies then bake at 350ºF for app. 11 minutes, or until the edges look lightly golden.

Almond flour cookies get softer if you store them at room temperature overnight, so I recommend serving these the day you make them, or keep them in an airtight container in the fridge or freezer for the firmest texture. They are extra-crispy if you serve them straight from the freezer.

REFERENCES: Much of the data referenced in this post was sourced from the Fundamentals of Holistic Nutrition and Neurological & Emotional Health courses from CommonWealth Holistic Herbalism.