CHAPTER 8

Eating to beat anxiety

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One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

If you’re thinking, ‘Wait, I already have enough worries about food without having to add in a crazy-strict, anti-anxiety food plan,’ don’t worry – this chapter is on your side! It’s not about banning food groups or imposing rules. One of the most damaging ways we relate to food is our tendency to set up eating as being either virtuous or sinful. Since when was dinner a moral question, or a task we could either win or lose at? But what you put into your body does have an impact on your brain and moods. The chemical make-up of each thing you eat has the potential to impact your brain chemistry, hormones and mental state. So it’s worth paying attention to what you eat and how it makes you feel and then making tweaks where you can to optimize the good feelings and minimize the bad ones.

A lot of the time we focus (read, obsess) on what we shouldn’t be eating but we also get seduced by the idea that if we only add in a couple of ‘superfoods’, all our health worries and anxieties will be cured. It’s lovely to think that you can pop a food supplement or cut out one particular food item and … poof! … all your anxiety woes will be over. Of course, supplementation can make a difference, but it has to be a part of a bigger plan. The solution for anxiety is to do a few small things that add up to a big, positive change.

Rather than launch straight into telling you what to cut out and what to eat more of, I want to start from first principles about making food a positive, pleasurable, anxiety-relieving part of your life. As with exercise, try to see your diet as an aspect of self-love and self-care. Keep it in proportion. What you eat is important, sure, but it’s really no big deal if you have a massive bowl of pasta or ice cream (or even both in one meal) once in a while. There’s no need to beat yourself up. Don’t let your diet be another source of anxiety, just do your best with it. And remember to enjoy your food!

As Amelia Freer, nutritional therapist and author of Eat. Nourish. Glow, told me, ‘Set aside some time to invest in cooking and caring for yourself. You deserve it. It is the best form of self-care I know. And you will be blown away by the difference it makes.’

Eat like you love yourself

Can eating be a way of boosting self-esteem? Whenever you ‘eat like you love yourself’ you’re sending a message to yourself about how much you value you. Think about it: how does eating a bag of chips on the hoof compare with sitting down to a carefully prepared healthy, fresh meal? And if you’re doing the former, what does that say about how much you value yourself and your experience of eating? Shovelling down donuts as we zone out in front of the telly might seem like relaxing after a stressful day while we’re doing it, but afterwards it can feel like we’ve abused our poor bodies rather than nurtured them. Eating well sends your subconscious a powerful message that ‘I am worthy’ and this sense of worthiness and enough-ness is essential when you’re tackling anxiety.

Even if you’re not yet at the point of loving yourself (it’s a journey!), act as if you already do. Ask yourself, ‘How would I eat if I really loved myself?’ For me, eating like I love myself usually means making time for myself, setting the table and preparing something from fresh ingredients that are alive and bursting with colour, then giving myself the time to really taste and enjoy the food. It also means having the odd treat – I make no secret of my love for dark chocolate – but if I’m eating like I love myself, I take the time to really savour each bite and I don’t beat myself up about it afterwards!

Mindful eating

Ah, mealtimes. An opportunity for quiet reflection, savouring your food and a break from work and worry … What?! Let’s face it, often we eat with one eye on the phone and the other on the computer, a child or the TV, and we’re more likely to inhale our food than relish it.

If you’re feeling anxious, trying to multitask when you eat will only make matters worse. It’s time to reclaim mealtimes! The simple act of stepping away from your laptop at lunch and putting down your phone during breakfast could have a huge effect on your state of mind, as well as helping you digest your food more easily.

In his book Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, Buddhist monk and mindfulness master Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that ‘anxiety comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.’ What if savouring our food could help us to be less anxious? What if mealtimes were a chance to get present, reconnect with our bodies and have a well-earned mental break? I know for a fact that if I’m multitasking and eating, I feel more tense. Surfing news sites or catching up on Game of Thrones is enough to make anyone into a ball of anxiety. Mealtimes are an opportunity to slow down, get present and allow your digestive system to do its job. I promise you’ll feel calmer and enjoy your food more if you do this. You can’t lose.

So this is my invitation to you: have a distraction-free meal. Focus all your attention on enjoying your food. Set the table properly. Notice the appearance of your food on the plate – the colours and textures. Give it a good sniff to take in the aromas. Slowly take a bite and savour each taste and texture. Put down your knife and fork every so often and just … chew. Chew some more. Then chew a few more times. Reconnect with how full you feel. Feels better, right? Ommm.

Healthy gut, healthy mind

Your gut is an interesting place, to say the least. We’ve all experienced ‘gut feelings’, but did you know the gut is often called the second brain? With good reason. It houses 100 million brain cells, all within a surface area the size of a tennis court. (You read that right – there’s brain tissue in your gut. It’s no wonder things can go wrong in there.) What goes on in your belly can have a serious impact on how you think and feel. The majority of your serotonin – the happy and calm hormone – is made in the gut, and a 2013 study found that gut bacteria also has an effect on the production of GABA, the neurotransmitter that calms the brain.1 A healthy gut is a healthy mind!

A lot of gut health comes down to the balance of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria. The gut is home to more than 100 trillion bacteria2 (which is more than there are cells in your body, by the way!), and though some of those bugs can cause infection, many more of them are essential for digestion. Studies suggest that having plenty of the good bacteria can have an impact on your mental health. Researchers found that giving rats a supplement of a bifidobacteria probiotic meant they produced fewer stress hormones,3 while a 2015 study done on humans found that another strain of bifidobacteria reduced levels of anxiety and even improved memory.4 Research has also found that stress in early life can alter our gut bacteria and might be a contributing factor in anxiety later down the road.5

Sounds alarming, but there is good news. There are things we can do to influence the mix of our gut bacteria. So how do we boost good bacteria and give ourselves the best chance of good mental health? I suggest including both prebiotic and probiotic foods, as well as considering a probiotic supplement. And to reduce the bad stuff, try to limit your sugar intake – sugar feeds the ‘bad’ bacteria.

Prebiotics

Consuming prebiotic foods has been shown to lower levels of cortisol, a key stress hormone.6 They also feed the good bugs in our bellies. Great sources are garlic, onion, leeks and chives (ideally raw, eek!), as well as peas, avocado, asparagus and Jerusalem artichokes.

Probiotics

Eating probiotic foods is a great way to introduce more good bacteria into your digestive system. Food sources that contain live bacteria include natural yoghurt, kefir (a fermented milk drink), sauerkraut (fermented cabbage, which is an acquired taste but great once you get used to it!) and kimchi (a Korean fermented-vegetable mix). Probiotic supplements such as those containing lactobacillus and bifidobacterium also offer a good mix of strains.

Eat to reduce inflammation

Inflammation of all kinds of body tissue is bad news for numerous aspects of our health. It’s been linked to an increased risk of cancer7 and heart disease.8 And there is more and more evidence to suggest that chronic inflammation in the nervous system can increase our risk of anxiety.9

Dr Kelly Brogan shows in her book A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives that inflammation can be caused by stress, eating sugar, fried foods and hydrogenated fats, chemicals in our diets and environment, or an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the gut. Our immune systems’ response creates the inflammation that in the long term can end up damaging our nervous systems and stopping them from functioning optimally. If a joint such as your elbow is inflamed, it can’t work properly. It’s like that for your brain, too. If the neurones in your brain are chronically inflamed, they just don’t work as well.

Your anti-inflammatory diet

The following foods help to reduce inflammation in your entire body, which is not only great for general health but could help you reduce inflammation in your brain and nervous system and therefore potentially help with anxiety symptoms. As well as tweaking your diet, you might want to consider taking an omega-3 supplement. A 2011 study on medical students found that there was a 20 per cent decrease in anxiety levels after taking a fish-oil supplement, compared with a placebo.10

Include lots of these foods

Try to limit these foods

Anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome

Before I go on to talk about particular foods and their possible links to anxiety, I have to make a pause to talk about this widespread condition that straddles the gut/mind connection. Irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, is characterized by recurring diarrhoea, constipation, bloating or stomach cramps. Despite the fact that it affects 23 per cent of UK women,11 it’s often not talked about and the embarrassment can add to the distress of the problem. Like anxiety, it’s twice as likely to affect women as it is men.

Stress and anxiety seem to be linked to IBS (remember all those neurons in the gut?). They’re not only a cause of IBS; the IBS can, in turn, create a lot of anxiety, so it’s a vicious circle. If you’re fearful about getting caught short on a shopping trip or you have to run out of a meeting to go to the loo urgently, or you’re so bloated your stomach looks like a balloon, it’s going to make you feel pretty miserable. IBS is inconvenient at best and devastating at worst and can have a huge impact on day-to-day life.

Managing anxiety by applying the techniques in this book could well have a positive impact on your IBS, but there are a few diet things that will probably help, too. Everyone’s digestive system works a little differently so it’s important to keep a food and symptom diary (you can download one in the online bonuses section) to track how any changes you make might affect your symptoms. And as a note, if you suspect you have IBS, always speak to your doctor to rule out any other potential health issues. Here are a few pointers to get you thinking about possible links between your diet and your symptoms.

Caffeine

While it’s unlikely that caffeine is the root cause of your anxiety, it could well be making things worse. Anyone who’s ever hit the espressos too hard or had one Red Bull too many on a night out will have experienced its jittery-making effects. The thing with caffeine is that, if you overdo it, the symptoms feel a lot like anxiety. Too many coffees can make you feel nauseous, nervous, give you a racing heartbeat and make it hard to focus, all of which can create a vicious cycle for more anxiety.

One of the reasons for this is that caffeine ramps up the production of adrenaline and cortisol. In one study, it doubled the levels of stress in the participants’ hormones.13 It also reduces the effects of your friend GABA, which you may remember from the previous chapter as the calming neurotransmitter.14 One study found that high doses of caffeine produce a panic attack in 60 per cent of participants who already suffered from a panic disorder, and in 16 per cent of those with social anxiety – compared with none of the control group. Bad news for stressy coffee lovers!15 And if you have trouble sleeping, caffeine could be at least in part to blame. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, caffeine stays active in your body for between eight and fourteen hours. So, is it time to find a different mid-morning and/or mid-afternoon pick-me-up?

The reason too much caffeine is not good for you on both a mental and physical level is that it stresses your adrenal glands. These are two tiny, triangle-shaped glands that sit atop your kidneys and their job is to regulate your stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. Too much caffeine creates a low-level stress response in the body, meaning the adrenals have to work harder.

While caffeine definitely can be a problem for the anxious among us, there are too many variables to say for sure that it affects everyone in the same way or to the same extent. The only way to find out how it affects you is to test it for yourself. Try cutting down or cutting out coffee, tea and any other source of caffeine such as energy drinks or colas, and make a note of how you feel. It might be that there’s a sweet spot – say, having just one coffee a day – so that you can still enjoy a daily cuppa without upsetting your adrenal glands.

A word of warning: caffeine withdrawal can result in pretty terrible headaches (in my experience, anyway). It’s testament to what a powerful drug it is. Make sure you have painkillers to hand and plenty of decaf – or plain water, which is even better – to help you stay hydrated. Withdrawal usually only lasts a few days, so hang in there. And long term, some stimulant-free alternatives that I like are rooibos tea, hot water with a slice of lemon, barley or chicory coffee alternatives, or for a serious anti-inflammatory boost, a turmeric latte (find a recipe at calmer-you.com/turmeric-latte).

Alcohol

If you’d told the eighteen-year-old me that one day I would spend a year as a non-drinker I would have laughed so hard I probably would have spat my vodka and Coke in your face. Back then, alcohol was my great enabler, taking me from being shy around new people to the life and soul of the party in a few short sips. I bonded with new friends, had the courage to meet boys and survived working late nights in a bar, all with alcohol as my constant companion. Alcohol helped me lose my inhibitions so that I finally felt free to be ‘me’ (albeit a drunken me) in all sorts of new situations. Fears faded into the background and I could temporarily forget about my worries and relax. It was a revelation … for a while.

Alcohol felt like part of my identity as a teenager and early-twenty-something. I would pride myself on the number of snakebite and blacks I could consume on a night out, and I lived for Fridays. (For the uninitiated, snakebite and black is a horrible drink made of half cider, half beer, topped up with blackcurrant cordial.) But while drinking seemed to help at the time, the following day was a disaster. At uni my friends and I called it ‘alcohol anxiety’ – that horrible feeling the day after the night before when you’re riddled with angst, guilt and worry. Wondering what embarrassing things you said or did, feeling guilty about the money you pissed away, fixating on that pain behind your eyes that you’re sure isn’t simply a headache.

For many of us, our lives are tied up with drinking. It’s the nation’s favourite pastime. It’s been normalized to the point that if you don’t drink, you’re in the slim minority and often mocked. If you suffer from anxiety, alcohol can feel like the (temporary) answer to all your problems. It provides relief from having to think about the situation that’s making you anxious and creates a shield of liquid confidence to hide behind. We use it to numb our pain and fears, but as with all numbing activities, the problem still bubbles away below the surface.

In 2014, during a health and wellbeing kick, I embarked on a year-and-a-half-long stint of booze-free living. I realized that, without alcohol to hide behind, I would have to learn how to bring my confidence up a level and create an authentic feeling of being comfortable in my own skin, especially when out in the evenings. No more supping a glass of ‘Cab Sav’ to ease a worried mind or a G&T to lubricate a networking event. Those eighteen months taught me so much. I felt physically better in every way, more energized, more inspired, and I learnt I could be confident in situations without alcohol.

There were certainly times – a friend’s wedding, for example – when I would have loved to celebrate with a glass of champagne. But I was almost always able to still enjoy myself, and I had a great time at my best friend’s hen do, dancing to eighties music until 3 a.m., stone cold sober! There was no more day-after guilt, and gone were any anxiety-triggering, hangover-induced body sensations to misinterpret as something more sinister.

Although I may have ‘missed out’ on some fun, if I had been drinking I would have missed out on even more: all the good feelings, calmness and opportunities that came because I was more myself and, well, healthier. If you close one door, another opens, as they say, and I found life had a way of bringing good things to me to fill the space that used to be taken up with drinking. These days, I drink every now and again, but I feel I’ve ‘reset’ my drinking so I don’t have to have a drink to be comfortable in tricky social situations or to have fun.

I’m not suggesting you necessarily need to go all out and become a teetotaller, but explore for yourself whether cutting alcohol out or cutting down could be right for you. When you stop numbing yourself you open up to allowing more growth and progress. It might be uncomfortable at first, but you absolutely can handle it and the results will be so worth it.

Exercise: the ‘drink less’ experiment

Draw two columns on a piece of paper. Consider the pros and cons of drinking and weigh them up. What benefits do you get from alcohol? Does it help you feel calmer at parties? Or switch off your overthinking brain for a while? How does it harm you or hold you back? Perhaps you feel panicky and nervous the day after, or Mondays are an anxious nightmare after a weekend on the booze? Looking at the good and bad points of drinking can help you make a decision about whether cutting down is right for you.

Try cutting out alcohol for two weeks and see what effect it has on you. The results may motivate you to do it longer term.

If other people object to you not drinking – maybe they think you’re a party pooper, or that you look down on them for drinking – be strong in your decision and explain why you’re doing it. Or, if that’s too difficult, just make something up. Pretend you’re on medication or that you drove into town. Remember, any issues they have with you not drinking are their stuff and not about you.

Have an alcohol action plan to help you stay on track. You could try alternating soft drinks with alcoholic ones, or just have two drinks before heading home. And it might sound overly simple, but ordering something that is not particularly delicious can mean you drink less. It’s far easier to moderate how much you drink when it’s plain old vodka sodas rather than yummy Martinis.

Sugar

When I talk to people about which foods negatively impact their anxiety, the one that comes up again and again is sugar. The problem with the sweet stuff (and with processed carbs such as white bread, white rice, pasta and potatoes, all of which break down fast in the body into their constituent sugars) is that it rapidly raises our blood sugar levels, which can in turn give us a rush of energy. This is all well and good, until the inevitable crash that leaves us light-headed, weak, shaky and unable to concentrate – all of which feels similar to anxiety. For some people, a sugar crash is virtually indistinguishable from the beginnings of a panic attack. Not nice. Those unpleasant feelings can have us reaching for more sugary stuff, and so the cycle continues. It’s these ups and downs that are the problem; it’s always better to be on an even keel when it comes to our minds and bodies, right?

Sugar and refined carbs might also contribute to inflammation, which, as we’ve already seen, is bad news for the brain and exacerbates anxiety.

The answer to all of this? Try to keep your blood-sugar levels steady. If you’re having a sugar crash, reach for a banana and some nuts instead of toast or biscuits. You don’t need to cut all the carbs from your diet and there’s no need to see sugar as the enemy. After all, most of us like a sweet treat every now and again. But reducing the overall amount of sugar in your diet could help to keep you feeling more balanced in terms of energy and mood.

Tips for balancing blood-sugar levels

Supplements

There’s no such thing as a cure for anxiety in the form of a pill, and taking supplements should never be an alternative to eating a healthy diet. Not everyone needs to take supplements, but it’s definitely worth considering some of these, depending on your symptoms and diet. It’s also a good idea to speak to your doctor before you start on supplements since, sometimes, they can interact with any medication you might be taking.

Magnesium

This is sometimes called the relaxation mineral because it helps your muscles relax (which is why it’s found in many bath salts). Since the soil our food is grown in is often lacking in minerals, including magnesium, many of us are now deficient. And if you’re anxious, you might be particularly short of it.

Studies have found that being stressed or anxious depletes our bodies of magnesium, while supplementation appears to protect us against the effects of stress.17

What’s more, a 2010 study found that magnesium, when taken with vitamin B6 in a supplement, reduced the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, including anxiety and mood changes.18 So it’s worth a shot, right? Magnesium is also anti-inflammatory and stimulates the calming neurotransmitter GABA’s receptors. It’s an amazing multitasker!

Great sources of magnesium include wholegrain wheat and brown rice, beans, nuts and good old dark green leafy veggies. Don’t fancy popping a magnesium pill or chowing down on a ton of kale? Why not have a soak in the bath instead. Put 100–200g of Epsom salts or, even better, magnesium flakes (try the ones by Better You) into a warm bath and soak for twenty minutes. The magnesium-rich salts are absorbed through your skin, helping your muscles to relax. If you don’t have time for a full-body soak, you could do a quick foot bath (my personal fave) while you sit on the couch and chill.

Vitamin D

According to the NHS, between October and early March us folks in the UK won’t be receiving any vitamin D from sunlight because it simply isn’t strong enough (need we be reminded!). We get some vitamin D from our food – oily fish, eggs and red meat – but we’re only ever able to extract a small proportion of our needs that way. Basically, we need exposure to the sun. When the UV rays hit our skin they cause our bodies to produce the vitamin (which is actually a hormone, but I won’t go into that as it’s way too technical!). A shortage of vitamin D is one of the most common deficiencies in the UK and most of us would do well to take a supplement.

Numerous studies have found a link between vitamin D levels and mental health. In one, people with anxiety were found to have lower levels of vitamin D in their bodies than the control participants.19 Another study found that patients who took a vitamin D supplement had an increase in their levels of wellbeing and fewer depressive symptoms.20 A large study in 2013 found a link between low vitamin D levels and panic disorders, too.21

It used to be thought that having fifteen to thirty minutes of exposure to the sun, three to four times a week during the summer months would give you enough vitamin D to last almost through the winter. These days, the NHS recommends that everyone takes a vitamin D supplement of 10mcg a day, although it may not be necessary in the summer months if you are getting enough sunlight. And if you have dark skin, which doesn’t absorb as much UV, or you’re not much of a sun seeker, it’s particularly important to take your supplement.

Omega-3

Read the ingredients on any processed-food package and you’ll likely see fats such as sunflower oil, corn oil, peanut oil or soybean oil. All of these are plant oils and you’d think a plant-based oil would be healthy, right? Wrong. While these fats aren’t harmful in small amounts they are added to so many processed foods that we end up consuming too much of them. They’re cheap, tasteless and the food industry loves to stick ’em in everything from biscuits to takeaways. These oils are high in omega-6 fats so most of us are getting too much 6 and not enough omega-3.

Our brains are made up of around 60 per cent fat. Ideally, omega-3 fats would be used to make up the walls of brain cells but eating a diet high in processed foods means that we end up with omega-6 rather than 3 in our brains. Omega-6 causes inflammation, making brain cells less flexible and impairing the signalling between them.

First things first: in order to reduce the amount of omega-6 fat in your body, try to limit the amount of processed food you eat. Then you need to boost your consumption of omega-3 fats. The NHS recommends we eat at least one portion of oily fish a week. This could be salmon, fresh tuna (tinned doesn’t count, sadly, as the omega oils are under the skin), mackerel or sardines. You might also want to consider taking a supplement of fish or krill, which is a type of teeny, tiny shrimp that larger fish live off. For vegetarians, an omega-3 supplement made of flax seeds or algae oil is worth considering.

Summary

★ Your diet doesn’t need to be yet another source of stress. Food is not the enemy and small changes, which can have a big positive impact on your anxiety levels, are better and more sustainable than extreme measures.

★ Eating quickly or in a stressed state makes it more difficult for your digestive system to function. Slow down, and stop multitasking when you eat!

★ A great anti-anxiety diet limits sugar, caffeine and alcohol.

★ Eat plenty of anti-inflammatory foods such as green leafy veg, broccoli, oily fish and dark berries. Avoid pro-inflammatory fried foods, processed meats and sugar.

★ Eat mindfully by savouring every bite, and try to see your food as an aspect of self-care: eat like you love yourself.

★ Most importantly, enjoy your food!