Balance Habits... Balance Moods

Service Description

Our moods are effected by changes such as environmental factors, hormones, work, family, life and food. Food plays a major part in how we are feeling it can have a positive or negative impact upon our moods. Deakin University is a world leading multi disciplinary centre that focuses on the complex relationship between food and mental health. Using tools developed whilst studying this course, I have put together this course to help people. This workshop incorporates hands on cooking sessions whilst learning how food can help to calm the mind and body from the constant stresses that you face on a daily basis, whilst learning to change your habits. At Clippy’s we focus on habit forming and maintaining that habit such as how food affects your mental health, this training plan could help you alongside other holistic therapies - such as mindfulness, yoga, going for a walk, exercise (10,000) steps a day, NHS EatWell campaign - all these combined together can help to boost your serotonin levels and reduce stress. Example of recipe from the course - Burritos and sweet potato wedges: Each week our Cookery Session leader Clippy will take you through a food and mood journey, this week it's Burritos. Evidence suggests that a healthy balanced diet, daily exercise and a good night's sleep can help to improve your mood as well as boost your energy levels, which in turn helps you feel better and stronger. Here comes the science bit: Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that helps our bodies make protein, our bodies can't make this, so we must get it from food. This is where Serotonin acts as the mood messenger to the brain and gut. So, by increasing foods rich in Tryptophan, we could therefore balance our moods through food. For these to both work you have to combine with wholegrains. What are Tryptophan/Serotonin rich foods - salmon, leafy green vegetables, watercress, turkey, tofu, mushrooms, broccoli, peas, cheese, eggs, tomatoes, seeds and pineapples to gain the greatest benefits we also need to bring in the big guns such as whole grain cereals, rice and wholewheat bread. Eat these together to have the ultimate mood boosting meal. The burritos are packed with broccoli which are a powerhouse of nutrients, in fact 78g of broccoli has more vitamin C than 1/2 an orange. Course - Balance habits...Balance moods