Well, you did it. You completed the seven-week Feed Your Mental Health Challenge. And during this time, we have added some of the key concepts of nutritional psychiatry to your vocabulary, and now you are eating some of the healthiest foods on the planet for your mental health and for your brain health. My team and I want to say thank you. We hope you’re feeling it. We hope you’ve had a lot of fun and it’s helped make this last seven weeks really, really nutrient-dense, but also delicious and filled with information and inspiration that helps you take the steps that you need to take these days to defend your mental health, to take care of your mental health and defeat it.
Thank you for taking this time with us to feed your mental health. Your brain is going to thank you. And let’s just think about some of what you’ve done, some of what you’ve given to your brain.
We got into the concept of nutrient density, foods that give us more nutrition for our brain health and our mental health. That’s what we want to eat. And boy, what did we talk about? We got into lentils, all-time all-star, for all the folate, all the potassium, all the fiber and protein, just an amazing food a lot of people aren’t eating enough of. After that, we went into pumpkin seeds, papitas, an amazing source of tryptophan, but also just another wonderful source of magnesium iron, these minerals that are so important for our mental health.
Then we dropped into watercress, leafy green. A lot of people haven’t eaten. Reallyhas a wonderful spiciness in there. Lots of vitamin C, lots of vitamin K, and amazing amounts of phytonutrients. You can feel it and taste it in that spice.
And of course, after that, we moved into kefir of fermented food.
Kefir gave us an opportunity to talk about fermented foods and the brain-gut connection and how eating more fermented foods is so important for increasing the diversity of the different types of bacteria that inhabit your microbiome.
After kefir, we moved into sardines, a fatty fish packed with EPA and DHA, the two long chained omega 3 fats that I write about in eat to beat depression and anxiety and healing the modern brain, because these are the fats that so many people are not getting enough of on a day to day, week to week basis. Sardines are just a wonderful source as we got into. Also, wow, lots of calcium, lots of protein, perfect food for this season.
And then we moved into eggs, learning about choline, that B-like vitamin, kind of like folate. We talked about complete important proteins, and we talked about a really wonderful food that delivers great value and all of the brain nutrients that you need. And then this week we got into dark chocolate, finishing with the pleasure principle that all of this work that we do to eat nutrient-dense foods and get all of these amazing nutrients for our brain health and our mental health.
It doesn’t do anything for us if we’re not using our food for enjoyment, to connect with our friends and our community and family, to really connect with ourselves in terms of our enjoyment and our pleasure and the acquisition, preparation, and enjoyment of food.
I’ve been working in nutritional psychiatry for 20 years and challenges like this, seeing your engagement, your enthusiasm, getting some DMs that you tried lentils for the first time, or now you’re drinking kefir, it just makes my day. This is the whole reason that we have a movement going in nutritional psychiatry and the feed your mental health challenge is to help you take advantage of that, take advantage of these simple foods that are right in front of you. They’re great value, they’re packed with nutrition, and we can eat them with confidence that we’re feeding our mental health.
Everyone, thank you so much for taking part in the challenge. I look forward to the next one. Please drop your comments below. Let us know how you’re feeling. How did it go for you? Your brain is running on a whole lot more omega 3 fats, magnesium iron, potassium, fiber, fermented foods than it was seven weeks ago. And usually that makes a huge difference for people.
I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey, everybody, and I’ll see you in the next video. Please sign up. Please subscribe. Please sign up for our newsletter so you get alerts for things like the Brain Food Challenge. And I’ll see you down the road.
