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Nutrition and Diet’s Affect on Mental Health

Nancy MacGregor MA, ATR-BC, LPC, ACS, Clinical Director

Nutrition and diet play a critical role in maintaining and improving mental health. What we eat not only fuels our body but invigorates our minds. Thus, it’s vital to pay attention to not just how our diet affects our physical self but our mental health as well. There’s no secret that food choices affect your overall health. However, many people fail to recognize overall health entails mental health as well.

Healthy diets loaded with foods that lower inflammation has shown to help reduce the risk of depressions. Often, what you eat will affect your mood. Many people turn to food as a comfort when stressed or a reward. Others sometimes associate certain foods with both positive and negative memories or experiences. Further still, how much and how often someone eats can be an expression of control taken to the extreme. Nutrition and diet are major factors affecting mental health and are just now getting the attention they deserve therapeutically. At Harmony Bay Wellness, we understand the importance of each, which is why we offer nutritional therapy.

NUTRITION AND DIET

A poor diet can lead to obesity. But more importantly, a poor diet can cause you to lack motivation or feel weak or tired. This can lead to developing a negative self-image.

Thus it’s only a short step to feeling persistently worthless about yourself (depression). Breaking bad habits can be difficult. Often, individuals get themselves into a vicious cycle where what they eat leads them to hate their body or not feel good about themselves or their actions. Still, it is the easiest, most familiar way for them to deal with their emotions.

Stress eating and other eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are severe medical issues as well as serious mental health concerns.

PAYING ATTENTION TO NOT JUST YOUR BODY BUT YOUR MIND

Exploring how you and others relate to the foods you eat is vital in understanding nutrition and diet’s impact on mental health. By paying attention to not just the nutritional value of what you eat but how the foods in your diet make you feel you can learn to cut out the negative and increase the positive.

Of course, everyone wants to eat healthily. However, doing so doesn’t just mean for your physical body. You need to pay attention to how what you eat influences your mood. How you use food to escape, celebrate, or assert control. To do this, you need professional assistance. This is where the compassionate and experienced counselors and therapist at Harmony Bay Wellness can help.

When you’re feeling more physically healthy, your mood tends to improve, and that’s the goal of a nutrition counseling program as it relates to mental health. Staying hydrated and eating healthy foods can actually help to resolve common issues with anxiety and depression. To get started, you’ll want to seek an initial assessment with a licensed therapist.

NUTRITION COUNSELING IN SOUTH JERSEY

Caring for your body is vital in leading a healthy life. But caring for your mental health is also necessary. The two areas come together where nutrition and diet meet. Harmony Bay Wellness understands that caring for your body and mind is how you care for the whole person. One of the ways we help patients is by providing a variety of assessment tools. For example, we offer the following services:

These tools, combined with our numerous mental health therapy programs, give patients the resources they need to heal and grow through recovery. So if you’re looking for counseling or psychiatric services near Cherry Hill, NJ, contact us today at [Direct] to discover how we can help you or a loved one.

 

Treatment with Harmony Bay

Harmony Bay is an outpatient behavioral health service that offers primary mental health treatment for a variety of mental health disorders. Our mission is to make mental health care convenient and affordable while providing an unmatched experience to our clients. contact us today by calling 855.765.6399.