How Your Diet Impacts Your Resilience to Stress

We all know that a healthy diet, in addition to other self-care lifestyle choices are vital to obtaining and maintaining good health.

In the West, food is considered and used to provide energy and nutrition, with medicine seen as a separate category to treat illness. However, throughout the world, food has been used as medicine to prevent disease and illness for over 4,000 years.

So How Does Food Influence Health?

Food is fuel for your body, similar to petrol for a car. Just like your car functions best with a specific type of fuel, your body works the same way, in that it runs at its optimal performance when you fuel it with nutritious, whole foods.

When the foods you eat on a regular basis are nutrient-poor e.g. contain artificial colours, chemicals, preservatives, additives, trans-fats or are highly processed, your body may begin to malfunction, as these are nutrient empty, so this will inevitably lead to negative health consequences over time.

In addition to negatively impacting your physical health, research has shown that these processed foods also affect your thinking, and more importantly your mood, emotions and your ability to cope with life. So, knowing that every meal that you consume influences the way that you feel one way or another is a powerful wakeup call to taking responsibility for your health.

Let’s admit it, at some stage we have all used food as an emotional crutch, to soothe the nerves or help numb overwhelming feelings of loneliness, overwhelm, insecurity etc. Unfortunately, this creates a catch-22 situation, in that eating highly processed, chemical-laden foods has been shown to reduce our ability to cope with stress and also increase our food cravings.

According to Eastern medicine, there is no ‘one-size fits all’ healthy diet – it all depends on what internal imbalances exist in your body. This means food is not considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and what may benefit others, may actually wreak havoc on your system. It’s all about learning to listen to your body and adapting your diet to what your body is telling you it needs.

However, using ‘Food as Medicine’, is more than what you eat, as stress has a major impact on how efficiently your body is able to utilise the nutrients in the food you eat. So, self-care stress management techniques go hand-in-hand with addressing and improving both your mental and physical health.

Now that you know how food can heal, at every meal you have the opportunity to choose to make food choices that will increase your energy, your health and your mood! Research: Diet Quality and Resilience through Adulthood

Rosanna Commisso - Founder, StressCare Solutions

Championing Workplace Wellbeing | Mental Health & Trauma Advocate

As the Founder of StressCare Solutions, my passion for helping organisations navigate the growing challenge of stress and trauma in the workplace, is personal.

With over 30-years’ experience spanning health, training and community services, and my own lived experience with mental health, burnout and trauma—I bring both professional insight and ‘lived experience’ understanding to my work.

My mission is simple: to empower organisations, and their staff, with the tools they need to recognise, manage, and reduce stress before it leads to burnout, and to implement trauma-informed practices to support their staff.

Through engaging, evidence-based workshops, impactful speaking engagements, and trauma-informed workplace support, I help teams build resilience, improve wellbeing, and thrive.

Let’s build healthier workplaces—together.

📩 rosanna@stresscare.com.au | 🌐 www.stresscare.com.au