By Joe Wilkes

Most of us make most of our eating decisions based on how they’re going to make our bodies look. But it’s worth remembering that our diets affect how our heads operate, too. Brain function depends on an enormously complex system of chemicals and electrical impulses, and the fuel we put into our systems can make a big difference on how we process our information, our moods, and our energy levels. The good news is that what’s good for our heads is also good for our tails.

How our brains work (basically)

This isn’t a medical journal, but we’ll try to broadly discuss what causes some of our major brain functions (or malfunctions). Brain cells communicate with each other through a series of chemical reactions triggered by neurotransmitters. Some of the major neurotransmitters are catecholamines like dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, which speed up brain reaction time, and other neurotransmitters, like serotonin, which cause the brain to relax. Amino acids like tryptophan (found in seafood, soy, meat, eggs, and dairy) can help trigger relaxation, while other amino acids like tyrosine (found in chocolate, beans, nuts, and seeds) can rev things up. So by introducing food and beverages to the mix, you can either excite or inhibit these processes. In essence, if you play your diet cards right, your refrigerator can be as effective as your local pharmacist or bartender.

Fats

Brain cell membranes rely heavily on fatty acids, especially omega-3s. It’s no coincidence that fish is called “brain food”; the highest, healthiest levels of omega-3s are found in oily fish like salmon, sardines, tuna, and herring. Other good sources include canola, walnut, and extra-virgin olive oils; flaxseed; fresh coconut; nuts; seeds; and avocados. Some studies have shown that upping the omega-3 levels in your diet might help stave off dementia and Alzheimer’s in old age. It’s still important to remember that while some are healthy, all fats are highly caloric and should be consumed in moderation. As with any food group, too much isn’t a good thing. Eating too much of anything can cause unhealthy insulin responses, which can end up doing more harm than good.

Carbohydrates

Carbs can have the most immediate, noticeable effect on your brain function. In fact, about 20 percent of your daily carbohydrate supply goes solely toward brain function. But the type of carb greatly affects the response. Ask anyone who gives their toddler a juice drink and watches them spin out of control. Just like a hit of sugar can give your body a jolt of energy, it also gives your brain a jolt. But watch out for when the sugar gives out. It may seem like a good idea to swig a Coke before that big test; but while the sugar may give you an initial rush, the following crash can be devastating.

However, carbs aren’t the enemy. They are a great source of tryptophan, which affects the brain’s serotonin levels—which can then help regulate blood pressure, sleep, and appetite. Carbs are great fuel for the brain, but it’s better to get them from complex carbohydrate sources like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes with high fiber contents. The fiber causes you to absorb the energy more slowly and steadily, avoiding the peaks and valleys of many processed snacks. It’s one of the reasons that dessert is best saved for after meals instead of between meals. When you have low-glycemic food, like meat and vegetables, in your stomach, dessert will have less of a roller-coaster effect on your mood. Eat sweets in the middle of the day, and watch out! High-glycemic foods like cookies, candy, sodas, etc., can give you a sugar high, quickly followed by a sugar coma, when eaten on an empty stomach. Because of their empty calories, we’d recommend avoiding sweets altogether, but if you must indulge, always do it on a full stomach.

Protein

Meals and snacks containing protein are your best bet for maximum alertness throughout the day. That coffee and doughnut might get you out the door in the morning, but there will probably be a dip in energy shortly thereafter. Eating protein raises your tyrosine levels, which provokes chemical messengers to increase brain activity and alertness. Lean meat, poultry, and fish are your best sources as you get the healthy protein without the artery-clogging fat that can restrict blood flow to your brain. Legumes, nuts, and seeds are great vegetable sources that combine good complex carbohydrates and protein without a ton of calories or unhealthy fat. You also don’t need to go nuts with the protein. A serving that is the size of the palm of your hand should produce the neurotransmitters necessary to get you through to the next meal. If you have a big test or meeting that you want maximum brainpower for, three chicken breasts aren’t going to give you three times the neurotransmitters. In fact, overloading on calories, regardless of whether they’re from carbohydrates, proteins, or fats, is going to slow down the brain.

Vitamins and supplements

There are lots of micronutrients, especially in fruits and vegetables, that can increase brain function. B-complex vitamins, and choline in particular, are vital for good brain function. Choline, found in eggs, has been found to enhance memory and reaction time and reduce fatigue. This is why it’s such a prevalent ingredient in “smart” drugs and supplements. Gingko biloba has also been shown to increase memory. And the benefits don’t stop with being book smart. Adding choline and other brain-healthy supplements to runners’ diets has been shown to help reduce their running times and increase their physical activity. After all, it’s your brain that tells your muscles what to do. It’s one of the reasons Beachbody® includes choline and gingko biloba, among many, many other brain-boosting ingredients, in ActiVit® multivitamins.

The best brainpower foods

To get the most brainpower for your buck, you should try eating three small meals with three small interspersed snacks to keep your blood sugar regulated and your brain equipped with a steady, but not overloaded, fuel supply. Any diet should be a balanced supply of protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats, and should be supplemented with a good multivitamin and omega-3/fish oil supplement. The best foods include:

Protein. Lean beef, chicken, turkey, eggs, salmon, tuna, soybeans, peanut butter, nuts.

Carbohydrates. Bananas, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, leafy green veggies like spinach and collard greens, oatmeal, whole-grain bread, brown rice, sweet potatoes.

Fats. Avocados, olive oil, flaxseed oil, walnut oil.

AVOID: Alcohol, processed sugars and flours, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated fats, nicotine.

A good food day for the brain (and your figure)
Breakfast
Two-egg spinach omelet
Whole wheat toast, lightly spread with peanut butter

Mid-morning snack
Small handful of almonds
Orange

Lunch
Salmon filet (4 ounces)
Romaine salad with broccoli, chickpeas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocado with tablespoon of olive or flaxseed oil and lemon juice or vinegar for dressing

Mid-afternoon snack
Apple
Small handful of walnuts

Dinner
Stir-fry chicken breast (4 ounces, chopped) and vegetables (carrots, beans, peppers, onions, garlic, broccoli, etc.) in one tablespoon of olive or canola oil
Brown rice

Snack/Dessert
Banana and yogurt

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By Joe Wilkes

The average American eats approximately 1,500 pounds of food every year. Of that, 160 pounds are primarily sugar. Of course, sugar is delicious, and I know I’m the happier for its existence, but of all the things we consume, it has the least nutritive value. In fact, except for the energy in its calories, there’s not much to recommend about sugar. It’s a prime source of empty calories, and for those of us who are trying to lose weight, sugar’s the first thing we should start trimming from our diets. But here’s the problem—despite our best intentions to remove excess sugar from our diet, the food industry has found more and more devious ways of slipping us the sweet stuff. Whether the food industry calls sugar by another name or adds it to foods we never thought would have needed it, our sweet tooth is constantly being bombarded. Fortunately, with stricter labeling laws, we have a fighting chance at cutting back on sugar.

Why does the food industry want to fill us so full of sugar?

It’s basically the same as any other industry. For the oil industry to make more money, it needs us to use more of its product by driving more miles. The food industry needs us to use more of its product by eating more calories. The problem is that the American food industry is already producing around 3,900 calories per person per day, which is way more than we need. One solution to this surplus is to sell the food cheaply overseas, which the industry does. The other solution is for Americans to eat more calories. And sugar and its corn sweetener brethren are great calorie delivery systems, as they pack a huge caloric punch, without causing much satiety, or feeling of fullness. (Check out Steve Edwards’ “Sugar vs. Fat” article for more about why sugar is the world-champion fattener.) Most people would probably stop eating steak after they reached 1,000 calories, because they’d be stuffed, but after you drank 1,000 calories from your Big Gulp cup, there’s still room for dinner. The other reason the industry pushes sugar so hard is that it’s cheap to produce, and the cheaper the calorie, the larger the profit margin.

Sugar in labels—hiding in plain sight.

One of the best ways to disguise the amount of sugar in a product is something the government already requires—printing the information in grams. Most Americans only have the foggiest idea of how much a gram is, because we’re unaccustomed to the metric system. So when we pick up a can of soda that contains 40 grams of sugar, we pretty much shrug our shoulders and pop the top. And that attitude is all right with the soda industry! But what if the label said that it contained over 10 teaspoons of sugar? If you saw someone ladling 10 teaspoons of sugar into their morning coffee, you’d think they were crazy, but that’s how much people consume in a typical 12-ounce can. In a 64-ounce fountain drink that you’d get at a movie theater or a convenience store, you get over 53 teaspoons of sugar—almost two cups! Naturally, people would probably think twice if the nutritional information on products was given in measurements that were meaningful to them. But until our heavily food industry-subsidized government decides to change its policy, it’s a metric world, we just live in it. But we can take note that four grams equals one teaspoon. So when you check out the label, divide the grams of sugar by four, and that’s how many teaspoons you’re consuming.

Sugar, by any other name, would taste just as sweet.

Another strategy the sugar pushers use to get us to consume more calories is to rename the offending ingredient. We know to stay away from sugar, but how about molasses, honey, sorghum, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, glucose, fructose, lactose, dextrose, sucrose, galactose, maltose, or concentrated juices like grape or apple? Another path to profit that the food industry has discovered is that instead of harvesting relatively more expensive sugar cane and beets, the industry can produce sweeteners in a laboratory more cheaply and with just as many calories as beet and cane sugar. And with some sweeteners, especially the popular high fructose corn syrup, it is believed that your body will be less likely to reach satiety than with sugar, so you can consume more. Mo’ calories, mo’ money. Another advantage to these doses of -oses is that, aside from the fact that many people won’t guess they’re just different forms of sugar, they can be spread out in the ingredient list required by law, so that it won’t be as obvious that what you’re consuming is pretty much all sugar. When you look at a list of ingredients on a product, the manufacturer is required to list them in order of amount, from highest to lowest. So they can bury a quarter cup of fructose, a quarter cup of sucrose, a quarter cup of dextrose, and a quarter cup of corn syrup in the middle of the list, so you won’t be as likely to notice that when you add them all up, the main ingredient in the product is sugar.

Hide and seek. You’re it.

So, if you’re like me, you may have sworn off soda except for special occasions, and turned the candy bowl into an unsalted-almond bowl. No more sugar, no more problems. Except for this problem—the food industry has cleverly snuck its sugars and corn syrups into products where we never would have thought to look for sugar. It’s good for the manufacturer. It jacks up the calorie load, can enhance the product’s appearance (high-fructose corn syrup gives hamburger buns their golden glow), and can keep our sugar jones simmering at a low boil, in case we ever decide to go back to the real thing. Here are some types of products whose labels could bear more scrutiny.

Spaghetti sauce. A half cup of store-bought sauce can contain as many as three teaspoons of corn syrup or sugar. While some of the naturally occurring sugar in tomatoes and other vegetables will show up on the nutrition label, most of the sugar is added. Look for brands that don’t include sugar or its aliases or make your own from fresh or canned tomatoes.

Ketchup. Ketchup can be 20 percent sugar or more. Not to mention that you’ll get 7 percent of your daily sodium allowance in one tablespoon. Look for low-salt, no-sugar brands, or make your own, using pureed carrots to add flavor and texture to the tomatoes.

Reduced-fat cookies. Most brands of cookies now offer a reduced-fat version of their product. Nabisco even offers its own line of low-fat treats, Snackwells. But while you’re patting yourself on the back for choosing the low-fat option, check the label. The sneaky food manufacturers did take out the fat, but they replaced it with, you guessed it, sugar. Many times, the reduced-fat cookie is only slightly less caloric than the one you want to eat. And because there’s no fat to make you feel full, you’ll be tempted to eat more “guilt-free” cookies. And just because there’s less fat, it doesn’t mean you’ll be less fat. Fat doesn’t make you fat. Calories make you fat.

Low-fat salad dressing. Like the cookies, manufacturers have taken the fat out of the dressing, but they’ve added extra salt and sugar to make up for it. Check the label to make sure you’re not replacing heart-healthy olive oil with diabetes-causing sugar—because that’s not really a “healthy choice.” Your best bet? Make your own vinaigrettes using a small amount of olive oil, a tasty gourmet vinegar or fresh lemon juice, and some fresh herbs.

Bread. Most processed breads, especially white hamburger and hot dog buns, can contain a good bit of sugar or corn syrup. That’s what gives them the golden-brown crust. As always, check the ingredient label, and consider getting your bread at a real bakery or a farmers’ market—it’s the best idea since, well, you know.

le="font-style:italic;">Fast food. Needless to say, fast food is generally not good for you. But even if you’re staying away from the sodas and the shakes, everything from the burgers to the fries to the salads is a potential place to hide sugar. Check out the ingredients carefully at your favorite restaurant. You may be getting more than you bargained for.

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By Steve Edwards

Not much is as frustrating during an exercise program as when your results stop progressing. But it happens to everyone; and even if you’re training like a cage fighter, it will happen to you, too. When it does, the solution isn’t as obvious as you may think. While the logical answer is to kick your workouts up a notch, eat cleaner, or eat less, that might be exactly the opposite of what you should to be doing. Here is an explanation of why your results are bound to plateau and what to do about it when it happens.

What is the dreaded plateau?
It’s part of the body’s natural process to hit a plateau because it’s always trying to regulate itself. Its regulated state is called homeostasis. Your body is a creature of habit, but it doesn’t care whether those habits are bad or good. The more you do something to enact change, the more it adapts and tries to limit that change. This can be a good thing because less stress is placed on the body. But it’s a bad thing if you’re unhealthy because that is the state your body is willing to call homeostasis. If your goals are to change your body, you’ll want to keep that adaptive stress high until you’re fit and healthy.

Fitness trainers refer to the above-mentioned process as the adaptive phase of training, and any good fitness program is designed around it. The time it takes your body to adapt to something new varies by activity, your fitness level, and the effort you put into the endeavor. This process can take as little as 2 weeks to more than 12 weeks. In general, the fitter you are, the quicker your body adapts to a new workout routine.

To get the most out of an exercise program, you need to break habits from time to time. This is why most training programs are broken up into phases or blocks that generally look something like this:

Foundation phase: building base fitness—the time this takes varies per individual.

Adaptive phase: learning to master the movements or cadence of a new workout program—takes between 1 and 12 weeks.

Growth or Mastery phase: once mastered, your body has a limited time to make accelerated performance gains—generally 1 to 4 weeks.

Recovery phase: when results level off, your body needs to recover from the stresses of hard training—generally 1 to 4 weeks.

Most athletes train in 4- to 6-week blocks; during this time, they work on one energy system at a time. Each block is broken down into the above-listed phases. As each phase is mastered, the body begins to plateau, which is a signal to begin a recovery phase and move into the next training block.

If you graph the desired results of your exercise program, the line should look like a ski slope (heading up or down depending on your goals) because you’re making rapid changes. Once your body gets good (or efficient) at these exercises, they don’t cause as much trauma, and you begin to get less effect out of the same program. The “ski slope” begins to level off and starts to resemble a plateau. If this program is continued as such, the line will go completely flat, or even start to dip the other way because of overuse.

A good exercise program is designed to keep your graph looking like a ski slope by altering what you do regularly. Let’s use a comparison of Power 90® and P90X® as an example of how two programs might look. Power 90 is an introductory program and P90X is an advanced program. They both follow similar patterns but the timing of each is different.

Phase I: Foundation phase. Power 90 begins with the I/II workouts. P90X begins with a fit test, meaning that your foundation should be complete prior to beginning the program.

Phase II: Adaptive phase. This is where the biggest changes in the programs occur. Power 90 doesn’t change much because it may take an untrained individual up to 12 weeks to adapt. At the P90X level, adaptations are very quick and will happen in 1 to 2 weeks.

Phase III: Mastery or Growth phase. This is the most intense period of training. Once the body adapts to exercise, there is a short window wherein very rapid improvement occurs.

Phase IV: Recovery phase. Exercise intensity is reduced to allow microtrauma to heal. If timed correctly, fitness improves during this phase, until the body is recharged and ready to begin Phase II again. If done for too long, Phase I should be repeated. The recovery phase, which can also be called a transition phase, is a major part of P90X. Power 90, due to the variable adaptive phase, doesn’t have a recovery phase built in.

Plateau: occurs when Phase III is extended too long.

Most sound fitness programs follow a similar plan. This alone does not keep plateaus from occurring. They affect everyone who engages in any exercise program, from couch potato to Olympian. In fact, the more finely tuned your body is, the harder it is to avoid plateaus, mainly because there is less margin of error to play with. But even though they are a natural part of the process, it does not mean that you have to give in to them. At some point along your fitness path, you are going to encounter a plateau. Here are 5 tips to help you snap out of it:

Back off. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t exercise; it just means that if you ease up a bit, you’ll likely recover and get stronger. Oftentimes your body is overtrained, exhausted, and just in need of a break. If you are finding it suddenly difficult to get through a workout that was easy the week before, this is most likely the case. You should cut down on your intensity and focus on technique and flexibility. It’s a perfect time for a recovery-specific workout like Slim Series® Cool It Off!, Tony Horton’s Ho’ Ala ke Kino, or some easy cardio, yoga, and/or stretching workout. Another option would be to lower your workout weight or pick easier workouts. Gauge this so that you finish workouts feeling refreshed rather than knackered. When your energy level returns, launch back into your original program, or a more difficult one, harder than you did before.

Turn it up a notch. The antithesis of backing off, because a plateau may also happen when you’re purely bored and/or listless. The easiest way to increase intensity is by adding resistance. Change bands or add weight so that you start failing at around 6 to 8 reps on all of the exercises, which changes the energy system you’re using. This added intensity will force your body to adapt and turn that improvement line skyward again. You’ll know if this was the right tactic in one of two workouts because you’ll either respond by feeling energized or you’ll hardly be able to finish the workout.

Streamline your diet. Most of our diets could always use a little improvement. If you’ve been giving yourself little rewards for a job well done (a good idea in general), then it’s time to stop. Try a super-strict week wherein you do everything perfect. If you don’t have a great example—like the P90X diet—scour the Message Boards for help.

Add some morning cardio. Twenty minutes or more of easy- to moderate-level cardio in the morning on an empty stomach can help get your metabolism steamrolling again. You can train your body to more efficiently use stored fat as fuel, and this is one of the easiest ways to do it.

Add or subtract 500 calories per day. If everything else seems fine and you’re at wits’ end, then try this. Your diet might just be miscalculated and you could be under- or overfeeding yourself. This is common, especially as you get fitter, because your body composition changes, which is why adding calories is one of the main ways our members kick themselves off of plateaus. Five hundred calories per day works out to 3,500 per week, which equates to a pound. Keep in mind that this will only work if you are eating proper nutrients. If not, try #3 first, and then try altering the number of calories you’re ea
ting.

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Being overweight is a problem for teenagers. Experts say that more than 31% of the teens in the US are considered overweight or obese and those numbers are rising all the time. There are a lot of experts that say the problem is that teens don’t get enough exercise and spend too much time in front of the TV and computer and they don’t watch what they eat. Those are problems that affect a lot of adults to but for teens it’s more of a problem. Weight loss for teenagers is important because children and teenagers will carry the eating and exercise patterns that they learn early in life through life with them. Children and teens that are overweight are more likely to be overweight as adults so weight loss plans for teenagers can keep teens from becoming overweight adults and having health problems later in life. One of the biggest aspects of weight loss for teenagers is exercise. Teenagers are going through a lot of growing and changing and their bodies will grow and change as well. Eating a healthy diet and getting lots of exercise can help a teenager’s body regulate itself through all the hormonal changes that the teen is undergoing. Since exercise is so important when it comes to weight loss for teenagers how can you get your teenager to exercise more? There are lots of ways that teenagers can incorporate more activity into their daily lives. If you don’t live far from school have them walk into school instead of driving them. Or buy the teen a bike so that he or she can bike to school and bike to friends houses or the mall instead of driving. Limit computer and tv time to just two to four hours a day. That’s still a lot of of TV and computer time but most teens spend double that amount of time watching TV or on the computer so limiting that time spent watching TV or playing on the computer can really help teenagers lose weight. Look for ways to get the whole family to be more active. Go camping or take everyone to the park for a game of soccer or football. Encourage your teenager to play a sport at school or in a community league.

If your teen is very self conscious about his or her weight and doesn’t like to exercise in public because they are embarrassed buy him or her a home workout DVD. Your teen can exercise at home where he or she feels comfortable and can start losing weight and feeling better about themselves. Soon they will feel comfortable enough to go for a walk or a bike ride while still doing their home workouts. There are hundreds of different home workout tapes so it will be easy for a teenager to find one that suits his or her taste. Dance workouts that incorporate hip hop dance moves or belly dance moves into a strong aerobic workout routine are very popular with teenagers.

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By Steve Edwards

Stress is a part of everyone’s life. And, as the tabloids remind us, even the most successful, fit, got-it-made-in-the-shade celebrities are not immune to it. It disrupts our ability to function at work. It affects our moods. It upstages the things around us which we should be grateful for. Stress distracts our attention and, when it does, it gains power in what becomes a vicious cycle of reacting to stress, and building on it. But even though we’re all susceptible to its evils, we’re also in control of how we let it affect us. Let’s take a look at a few ways to keep our daily stress to a minimum.

As you might imagine, your lifestyle plays a huge part in how stress affects you. What you may not be aware of is just how important your diet is for how well your body can cope with it. It seems obvious that just eating better would help you deal with stress more effectively. Sure, but there are dissenting opinions over how if affects your body.

According to the American Dietetic Association: “It’s a common myth that our bodies use more nutrients when we’re under mental stress. Although pressures at home or work sometimes cause people to neglect eating well, we do not use any more or fewer essential nutrients while under stress.”

Since everything the body does alters its use of nutrients, this statement seems suspicious. According to Leo Galland, M.D., author of Power Healing (Random House, 1997), it’s just plain wrong. “Chronic stress is not just harmful to the heart, it depletes the body’s essential supply of magnesium, the nutrient most important for handling stress and contributing to sound sleep; relaxed, healthy muscles; and staying calm.”

He goes on to add, “The fight-or-flight syndrome causes magnesium to pour out of the cells, which makes you more vulnerable to anxiety’s negative effects. What’s more, the substances we often reach for when we’re tense—caffeine, sugar, high-fat foods and alcohol—leech even more magnesium from the body. Leafy vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, on the other hand, are full of this nutrient. Load up on these foods if you’re under a lot of stress. And it’s not a bad idea to consider taking a magnesium supplement.”

Judith Wurtman, Ph.D., a research scientist at MIT, adds, “Complex carbohydrates are champion stress-fighters, too, because they boost the brain’s level of the mood-enhancing chemical serotonin. These include an array of vegetables (broccoli, leafy greens, potatoes, corn, cabbage, spinach), whole-grain breads and pastas, muffins, crackers, and cereals. Make them a part of your regular diet. Bananas also help quell anxiety.”

Is someone right or wrong here? It’s hard to say, exactly, but we can make an educated guess. History shows that western science is usually slow to embrace ideas which are intangible or which lack scientific study, which probably explains the ADA’s position. Common sense, however, makes a good argument for a nutrient-rich diet, regardless, since it would have many benefits beyond pure stress reduction. And, it must be noted, many of these unarguable effects, such as health, weight management, and fitness level, have the potential to reduce stress levels. Regardless, some caution should be used before embarking on a “de-stressor” diet of crackers and muffins.

The safe assumption is that if you eat healthier and pay closer attention to the details of eating, the level of stress in your lifestyle will most certainly decline. And if you feel more run down or sluggish as a result of stress, it can only help you to get back on your feet by making sure to get the proper nutrition from food and supplements. Here are a few ways to reduce the amount of stress in your daily life.

Take some time for yourself. Even if it’s only a few minutes a few times throughout the day, claiming some of your busy schedule for yourself in order to focus inward and relax can do wonders for your stress level. Of course, the more time you have the better, but the real key here is not time, but focus. Concentrate on yourself during this time and let those day-to-day troubles fall by the wayside.

Exercise. Since you’re reading this, chances are that you have already committed to exercise, but no study on stress ever leaves out its importance. Exercise makes your engine run smoother, removes toxins from the body, lowers anxiety, and makes you feel good about yourself. Nothing puts the brakes on a stressful day like a long walk, run, bike ride, or even a hardcore dose of P90X®.

Drink water. We can’t stress (pun intended) the importance of drinking water. Water hydrates and cleanses your system, removes toxins, and makes you less hungry. Forcing yourself to drink a glass of water a few times a day is the simplest body regulator there is.

Eat breakfast. Take time out for a healthful breakfast before your day starts. It will help you get going for your busy day and will keep you from feeling hungry just when you need to be gaining momentum. Keep in mind that breakfast doesn’t mean “Trucker’s Special.” A grapefruit, banana, or protein shake are much better options.

Drink tea. With zero calories and a host of antioxidants—which are basically stress-combatants—tea provides rationale behind the historical significance of “tea time.” This afternoon ritual was created with de-stressing on its agenda. Turns out this was a nutritionally sound practice as well. Just hold the scones with clotted cream.

Stop and breathe. Not everyone has time (or interest) to work on meditation, but there is no doubt that more meditation would lead to a less-stressed world. Mini-meditation sessions focused on breathing can be stress reducers. It’s as simple as taking a minute from time to time and just concentrating on your breathing. Sitting or standing quietly, take a deep breath, filling your belly up with air as you inhale. As you exhale, silently count “one” to yourself and empty your belly of air. Continue inhaling and exhaling until you reach the count of 10; repeat as often as you wish. It works.

Snack well. Don’t binge or just grab whatever is in sight once you get hungry. By taking some time to plan your snacks, you keep your blood sugar constant; nothing adds to daily stress more than a sugar crash. If food has ever altered your mood or made you feel sluggish, you know what we’re talking about, and if it hasn’t, you’re probably not reading this anyway.

Stretch. You don’t need a full-blown yoga session to alleviate your stress (though that will certainly help). Finding a few minutes to stretch each day will both center your mind and elongate muscles that tend to contract as you become stressed. Starting each morning with 2 or 3 minutes of light stretching as soon as you get out of bed can do wonders for your outlook on the day. Remember, however, that in the morning you aren’t warmed up, and when we say light stretching, we mean light. You aren’t trying to exercise; just get your blood moving and muscles warmed up.

Do yoga. If you do have the time, try adding some yoga into your life. There’s a reason it’s the fastest-rising exercise in the western world. Yoga is a full-on assault against the daily onset of stress. It’s a whole-body workout that combines body and mind to enable you to focus.

Supplement your diet. But not just with magnesium, as Dr. Galland suggests—though magnesium is good. Ensuring you have enough vitamins and, especially, minerals will help you ward off stress. Two other supplements that are particularly useful are fish oil and antioxidants—these are two areas in which our diets are often deficient.

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