Its important to understand the effect your nutritional choices can have on your body, hormones and fat loss.
By avoiding certain types of foods you can help lower cortisol (your stress hormone) after working out or in the evening before bed. This will help you with food cravings, help you to relieve stress and also help with all round better fat loss results.
Make bad food decisions, or eat certain foods at the wrong time , and your cortisol levels will increase. Below I will explain which foods elevate cortisol so you can avoid them to reduce your stress level.
Top of the list is trans fats. Pretty much everybody agrees that trans fats are dangerous. They have been linked to many types of diseases and there is evidence that they have been found to have a negative effect on cortisol levels.
Avoid trans fats by avoiding fast food/junk food. Check labels for "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" oils and stay well clear of anything containing them. Instead opt for whole foods over packaged ready made foods.
Fruit juice sounds like it should be healthy, but unfortunately during the process of turning the fruit into juice, fibre can be lost. Lack of fiber causes a sequence of undesirable actions that involve elevated cortisol.
The high sugar content fruit juice causes a rapid spike in blood sugar levels and as a result insulin is released in high quantities, the effect of which leads to low blood sugar as insulin quickly moves all the energy from the blood into the fat cells. Cortisol is released causing us to feel peckish again, often causing us to overeat. If you want a nutritious drink that wont play havoc with you cortisol levels try juicing your own green vegetables. (see this great recipe)
There are many types of chocolate cake, but unfortunately most will contain chocolate that is poor quality in terms of the amount of coca solids it has within it and has high amounts of refined sugar instead. Foods that have a high amount of refined sugar lead to a greater release of cortisol, adrenaline and epinephrine - which will make you feel top of the world momentarily until your blood sugar drops at a rapid rate (due to the insulin removing the sugar from your blood) which may leave you with the feeling that another slice would be a splendid idea. We have all been there!
Who would believe eating beef that hasn't been fed in the correct way can raise cortisol? The majority of meat that you will find from supermarkets and even some butchers will be raised eating genetically modified corn, chicken manure, antibiotics, hormones and other ground up parts of other animals - Yuck.
Factory farm beef will contain an undesirable mix of omega fats, It contains less omega-3 fats and more omega-6 fats, which are pro-inflammatory when not balanced correctly with omega-3 fats. To put simply most people want more omega 3 and less omega 6.
