What to Eat for Stress Management
What we eat influences our ability to properly mange stress- here’s what you should be eating to modulate cortisol levels.
The basics of eating to help support adrenal health are mostly what one would expect from any healthy diet. Stick to whole foods, reduce or eliminate processed foods, and try to steer clear of sugar and oxidized oils. These are universals that will help anyone out, regardless of whether they have adrenal dysfunction or mismanaged stress hormones. Let’s dial it in a bit more in regards to some fine tuning for adrenal health!
Avoid Low Carb and Intermittent Fasting
Avoid both low carbohydrate and Intermittent Fasting. Both of these dietary strategies increase cortisol. Read more about how this can affect your heath here or watch the video version here.
Reduce or eliminate processed foods. This is much easier said than done. When removing processed foods from the diet, a really good strategy to adhere to is the 80/20 rule. 80% of your diet should come from foods that are as close to the way they exist in nature as possible. We can’t take the word processed too literally here, or we’ll be eliminating pretty much everything. For example, chicken. We can purchase a raw, pasture fed chicken with no additives from the grocery store and cook it at home. This is absolutely considered a whole food- even though it has technically been processed because you’re not brining home a live chicken and culling and plucking it yourself. Kentucky Fried Chicken on the other hand falls under the category of processed, even their grilled chicken options, because the grilled options are still cooked with oxidized oils and injected with preservatives. Another example would be the difference in scale between a package of flavored instant oatmeal (processed) and a bowl of steel cut oats. Steel cut oats, while still technically processed, are much closer to the way oats are grown and without any additives, flavorings, added sugars, or preservatives.
Batch cook or meal prep your food. You can download my my meal prep guide on how to do this without spending loads of time on it. Download the Guide!
Use a healthy meal prep service. There are often local restaurants or meal prep services that are great for this and usually fairly affordable. Remember you don't need to get ALL your meals here- usually just getting the ones you have the hardest time with will help.
Buy pre-prepped food at the grocery store. A bagged salad and rotisserie chicken will make it just as easy to eat a healthy dinner as it would be to head to the drive thru. Just make sure to check your labels for weird ingredients!
Balance blood sugar at every snack and meal. Blood sugar regulation and adrenal health are closely tied to one another. In order to keep blood sugar balanced, we need to include all three macronutrients at each meal- protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Protein is essential for making sure we feel satiated, but also for hormone production. Healthy fats like olive oil, avocado and avocado oil, and grass fed butter are also essential for hormonal health. Eggs are a great way to get both protein and healthy fat, plus a lot of essential nutrients. Many practitioners recommend keeping carbs low to avoid spiking blood sugar, but as long as meals are balanced, blood sugar spikes shouldn’t be an issue. If we are following the 80/20 rule for whole vs processed foods, refined carbs shouldn’t be an issue, but to reiterate, we don’t want pop-tarts and cereal for breakfast. Including fruit, potatoes, and unrefined grains is fine. Nutrient dense sources of carbohydrates are preferred, but rice and pasta aren’t out of the question. Make sure to include carbohydrates after a workout- consuming them within about 30 minutes post workout will help lower the cortisol spike that occurs after exercise. A general rule of thumb, or good place to start from a macronutrient perspective, is to split each meal into 30% protein, 30% fat, and 40% carbohydrate, by caloric value.
Consume adequate sodium and potassium. If you have adrenal issues, you may have been told to reduce your potassium intake. And if you live in the US, you might still be operating under the belief that sodium is bad for our health. The truth is, we desperately need both. The reason for the recommendation of avoiding potassium is that potassium and sodium are required to be in balance for proper adrenal function. When the adrenal glands are damaged enough that they begin producing too little aldosterone, sodium is lost from the body, which could potentially leave us with a high potassium to sodium ratio. The reality is that most people are already quite deficient in potassium, so rather than avoiding potassium and ingesting sodium, we really need to be ingesting both. When a Standard American Diet is traded in for a less processed, whole food based diet, salt is often left out of the equation, but sodium is extremely important for adrenal health. Regular old table salt isn’t the most ideal form of sodium- I recommend Redmond Real Salt above Himalayan salt or Celtic Sea salt. It’s less likely to be contaminated with lead like Himalayan salt or to have microplastics like Celtic salt, but it still contains the full spectrum of minerals. Another great way to get adequate amounts of sodium and potassium is to use an electrolyte supplement like Redmond ReLyte.
Reduce or eliminate caffeine. When we start to feel constantly fatigued it can be easy to rely on caffeinated beverages to help bring our energy back up. In the long run, high levels of caffeine intake are only going to be detrimental to our adrenal health. This is because caffeine consumption causes cortisol secretion. While some people will need to completely eliminate caffeine in order to heal, most can can take it down to a reasonable level and be just fine. Keeping total caffeine consumption under 300mg a day, or 150mg per serving, is ideal. This typically means 1 or 2 cups of coffee- that’s an 8 to12 oz coffee, not a quad shot latte! It’s worth mentioning that energy drinks should be ditched altogether. In addition to containing upwards of 300mg per serving, they are also full of food coloring, preservatives, and additives, falling under the “processed foods” category. If even 1 cup of coffee or tea makes you feel antsy, irritable, anxious, or jittery, you may be one of the individuals who will need to eliminate it completely. Making sure your caffeine is ingested at least 8 hours before bedtime in order to avoid a negative impact on our sleep is important. In addition to causing cortisol production, caffeine binds to our adenosine receptors- adenosine lets the body know when it is time for bed based on time spent awake and expending energy.
Avoid Low Carb and IF
Reduce or Eliminate Processed Foods
Balance Blood Sugar at Every Snack or Meal
Consume Adequate Sodium and Potassium
Reduce or eliminate caffeine
Other Nutrients for Adrenal Health
Switching from a processed food diet to one based in whole, real foods will automatically improve your nutrient intake. Focusing on several nutrients and even supplementing with them can help as well. The ones recommended most commonly in regards to adrenal health are magnesium, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin C, in addition to the sodium and potassium mentioned earlier.
Magnesium, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin C are all utilized by the body when we have a stress response. They help to modulate the response, or help the body turn it off so to speak. This means that when we are chronically stressed, we are constantly reducing our levels of these nutrients. If this goes on too long without the nutrients being replaced, we become deficient, our stress response becomes unmodulated, and the situation becomes cyclical. One of the best ways to help break the cycle is to help replenish our nutrient levels. Focusing on adding foods rich in magnesium, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin C can help. If we are in a state of severe adrenal dysfunction, supplementing is a very good option.
Magnesium comes in many forms, and in general magnesium glycinate or magnesium l-threonate is going to be the most helpful for adrenal issues. You can take a deep dive into magnesium here. The easiest way to supplement with Vitamin C is to use a liposomal form, in order to take higher doses at once. Using a Vitamin C that is ascorbic acid based can cause gastrointestinal issues above doses of about 1,000mg but with liposomal, most people can easily take up to 4 or 5g without any issues. Vitamin B6 should always be supplemented with in its bioavailable form, known as P5P. A good therapeutic starting dose for B6 is 50mg a day, though some may need 75 or 100mg daily to recover.
In addition to focusing on these specific nutrients, trying to ensure that your diet is as anti-inflammatory as possible is also a helpful tactic to take. The switch from processed foods to whole food will help immensely with this by eliminating oxidized oils, refined sugars and flours, and other preservatives and additives that can cause inflammation in the body. Eating brightly colored fruits and vegetables every day, and foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids like salmon can also lend to lowering inflammation.
To help you get started, I’ve got a free Stress Management Meal Plan for you to download, as well as a Stress Management Supplement Protocol. If you haven’t checked out my Stress Less Program yet, it’s a great way to get started on all fronts related to stress management. Feel like you need more accountability or in-depth lab tests to discern your adrenal health? I’m here for that too!