Carbohydrates, Protein & Mental Health
Why cutting out carbs isn’t the answer to weight loss, and is so detrimental to your mental health.
Everyone has heard of Serotonin - we know it’s the chemical in our brains that makes us feel happy. Indeed, most antidepressants work by boosting serotonin levels to make you feel more relaxed, optimistic and creative. But what people don’t know is that serotonin also has a lot of influence on our diet and eating patterns. Low levels of serotonin cause you to feel depressed, crave sugars/carbs/alcohol, act impulsively, suicidal, reactive, ‘fuzzy brained’ and short tempered.
People often tell me things like: they don’t care about being ‘healthy’ they just want to loose weight. But remember, even if weight loss is your ultimate goal, it’s all linked. Serotonin actually helps you manage your impulse control, your ability to relax and plan ahead (think… this even includes your ability to stick to your diet), whilst low serotonin will make you depressed and crave/eat all the things that will make you put on weight.
So where do carbs come into this? Tryptophan is an amino acid which comes from protein and it is what our body uses to make serotonin. Once we eat protein our gut breaks it down into separate amino acids and then absorbs the tryptophan into our blood stream. From here tryptophan requires simple carbohydrates to get it from our blood past the ‘blood brain barrier’ into the brain. Only then can our brain use it to make serotonin. Remember though, we want brown/whole wheat carbs to do this, which are high in fibre & highly nutritious, not white carbs that will spike our blood sugar levels.
Most proteins contain tryptophan: chicken, pork, beef, turkey, eggs, cheese, milk/soy milk, fish, peanuts, pumpkin/sesame seeds, almonds, tofu, tempeh, soy, kidney beans, quinoa, lentils
So, what’s the answer to keeping your serotonin levels up? Eat protein with every meal (especially with breakfast) + WHOLE WHEAT CARBS! I’ve already done my ode to brown rice to explain why it actually promotes weight loss amongst its many, many other benefits - so here is just another reason NOT to ditch carbs, just to swap white for brown!