Five foods to ensure you remain a calm, cool and collected assassin.
When you’re blasting the gym all day it’s essential to relax when stepping away from the grind. Fear not, as you can chill out in your downtime and knock out during prime time with these essential stress-busting foods.
1: Papaya
Called “the fruit of angels” by explorer Christopher Columbus, this South American fruit is a godsend. Papaya stops the flow of stress hormones – the same ones that make your body store unwanted fat calories – making you more mellow than a meditating Machida.
Eating a whole papaya provides 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamin C (the vitamin essential for protecting the body against oxidative stress), while just half a papaya contains 75% more vitamin C than an orange. There’s no wonder the Brazilians are so laid back.
2: Pumpkin Seeds
If you want your Halloween to be a nutritional dream rather than a stress-filled nightmare, pumpkins are frighteningly good for you.
Make sure you save the seeds when carving out your pumpkins as these can put you in good spirits as they contain high levels of magnesium – a well-known stress buster.
Only 30% of us meet our daily magnesium requirements, putting us at a high level of stress, but just a quarter cup of pumpkin seed gives us half our daily magnesium intake. What’s more, magnesium is an essential electrolyte which will quite literally charge your body up, aiding energy conversion and muscle function.
3: Almonds
Almonds are a good source of vitamin E, an antioxidant that destroys the free radicals related to stress and heart disease.
To reach your day’s requirement from almonds alone, you need to eat about 40 to 50 nuts. Instead, mix them with other vitamin-E rich foods to add more dietary variety. While vitamin E may relax you, plunging inches onto your gut isn’t going to.
Fortunately for the more weight conscious pugilists, almonds are full of
healthy unsaturated fats which won’t give you a Roy Nelson belly, but rather provide bags of energy.
4: Oatmeal
A biochemical effect of stress is a depleted stock of serotonin, the hormone that makes you feel cool, calm and in control.
One reliable strategy for boosting serotonin back to healthy levels is to increase your intake of carbohydrates. That said, throwing mounds of donuts and pancakes down your throat isn’t a sustainable solution. Rather, to induce a steady flow of serotonin, aim to eat fiber-rich, whole-grain carbohydrates. The slower rate of digestion will keep serotonin production steady and prevent your blood sugar levels going all over the place (which leads to mood swings and mindless eating).
If it is all too much to take and you’re hankering for carbs takes over, fighters are actually encouraged to have a cheat day where they can stuff their face within reason. This way, if you do crack, it’ll stop you binging like a chubby checker who’s been living of a draconian diet of boiled chicken and lentils.
5: Salmon
It’s rare to find a fighter that doesn’t eat salmon as a staple of their warrior diet. It’s high in protein, full of omega-3 fatty acids (again, the healthy unsaturated fat), and is loaded with vitamin D which helps boost the immune system. But there’s another trick in salmon’s arsenal – a sleep-promoting amino acid called tryptophan.
One salmon filet has as much tryptophan as you need in an entire day, ensuring you’ll have your eyes blissfully closed at night, rather than being forcefully closed in the cage.
Stress Head
The symptoms of stress can affect you both mentally and physically – not ideal for stepping in the cage. If regularly you show signs like irritability, sleeplessness, chest pain and rapid heartbeat it might be time to try these tasty morsels.
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