Elevate Your Performance Through Eating the Rainbow

Are your nutrition choices hampering your performance or exam results??

What happens to the quality of your performance or exam answers when you skip breakfast or neglect to feed your brain with quality and nutritious food? Is it time to take a moment and think about the food you are eating every day and its effect on your body?

Do you ever wonder how to simply and easily ensure you gain what your body needs for optimal energy and nutrition? Here is a manageable and straightforward solution.?

Look for the rainbow.?

Plain and simple.

Deanna Minich originally coined the term “rainbow diet”. According to Minich, it helps care for the seven systems of the body: adrenals, reproductive glands, digestive system, heart, thyroid, pituitary gland, and pineal gland. Her book The Rainbow Diet – A holistic approach to radiant health through food and supplements broadened our perspective on the importance of making sound nutrition choices, especially at breakfast.

Unfortunately, as we traipse through the supermarket aisles filling our trolleys or shop online, we are exposed to some of the best marketers in the world enticing us to part with our hard-earned dollars for sugar loaded or highly processed foods. Even if we read the labels, we may not be aware of the additional 56 names to describe sugar content. Are you? https://www.eatingwell.com/article/284643/other-names-for-sugar/

These include sorghum, sucrose, dextran, dextrose, corn syrup, fructose, glucose, etc. And don’t get me started on the numbers used on labels. Most labels on prepackaged foods note nutrition information per serving size. If size portions are in 100 grams you might consider thinking of the numbers as percentages. For example, 45 g of sugar means the product contains 45% sugar. ?

May I encourage you to spend more time in the fruit and vegetable aisles and look for seasonal fruits and vegetables? www.seasonalfoodguide.com.au Not only will you save money buying seasonal food, the items you buy will taste better because they have not been in cold storage for months. Remember food is medicine and we need to make nutritious food choices to maximise our exam and on the job results.

Upfront, I declare I am not a nutritionist. However, in my coaching and tutoring business, I have a passion for my clients, students and parents, who are notorious for underestimating the impact their diet and lifestyle have on their work, exam, school, and university results.

Our diet has a way of catching up with us.?

What we eat truly does determine how our bodies grow and ultimately how we manage our lives – the health of our eyes, the strength of our bones, the condition of our skin, teeth and hair, the functioning of all our vital organs and of course, the growth of our brains. And alongside this is the ability to calm our bodies and cope with everyday joys and disappointments.?

Our microbiome, what lives in our gut, determines almost every aspect of our being. The mix of our microbiome will determine how we fight disease, and many other functions including how we control our emotions contributing to a healthy and balanced mental state.

Importantly, what happens when you arrive at your workplace or working from home location with no nutrition in your body? Similarly, what happens when students reach the school gate in the morning with no nutrition in their bodies? Brains have nothing to work with, or on, throughout the morning and then the brain and bodies are in catch-up mode all day. Have you ever considered how well you function completing your everyday tasks on an empty stomach?? Or even worse, a caffeine only breakfast??

We do not want you, or your child, running out of energy or experiencing brain fog part way through an important lesson or exam or meeting. You need the energy both physical and mental to continue when the going gets tough. And tough can mean just making it through to lunch for many of our kids who leave home with poor nutrition or no breakfast at all.

The Rainbow Diet means consuming plant foods of various colours. The colours of various plant foods are indicators of the beneficial nutrients and antioxidants they contain. This article does not allow me room to drill down with the entire model. However, in a nutshell (remember nuts and seeds are excellent protein source and pick-me-up, particularly if you have an afternoon exam or important after lunch meeting), this list may be helpful before your next shopping trip.

Colour: Red and pink

Contains: Vitamin A and C, manganese, antioxidants (quercetin, lycopene).

Where: tomatoes, berries, cherries, beets, radishes, grapefruit, watermelon, red apples, red potatoes, red peppers.

Colour: Orange and yellow

Contains: Vitamin A, B6 and C, potassium, folate, antioxidants (beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, lutein.

Where: carrots, pumpkin, squash, sweet potatoes, oranges, bananas, apricots, cantaloupe, orange and yellow peppers, peaches, nectarines.

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Colour: Green

Contains: Vitamin K, B vitamins, folate, potassium, antioxidants, chlorophyll, carotenoids, lutein.

Where: Broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, leafy greens, fresh herbs, asparagus, green beans, peas, zucchini, avocado, kiwi, green apples, green grapes, pears, green peppers, okra, broccolini.

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Colour: Blue and purple

Contains: B vitamins, antioxidants (anthocyanins, resveratrol, flavonoids)

Where: eggplant, red onions, purple cabbage, purple potatoes, blueberries, blackberries, plums purple, carrots, purple cauliflower, black grapes.

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Colour: White and brown

Contains: Vitamins C and K, folate, potassium, antioxidants (allicin, quercetin, anthoxanthins)

Where: cauliflower, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga (swede), mushrooms, onions, leeks, horseradish.

Super Smoothies are a great way to combine your favourite, multiple brain nourishing foods from the above list, just add water rather than dairy products and you are good to go. If you are time poor, consider preparing the smoothie the night before. Alternately prepare a bulk quantity and freeze single portions. You can then defrost overnight and enjoy as a breakfast on the go.

The choice is yours. Let your children have fun with their smoothie combinations. Only one rule though - if they make it, they drink it.?

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Parents are Palate Pilots - why?

They steer the plane to safety, take off and touch down at the start and finish of every day. Their all-important flight crew is their family. We, as adults, must?calibrate for safety, acceleration and maximum efficiency at any time.

All children need guidance. All children need to be in an environment where food is seen as a necessary and important element in their lives. Food is not always something that has to taste as compelling as chocolate spread, chips, chicken nuggets, fizzy soft drinks, chocolate, or ice-cream.

A woman in the medical profession admitted at a conference I attended that her two children would never begin any meal without a glass of chocolate milk at the ready. She was asked, very gently by the compère, what would happen if she did not buy the chocolate milk. She said, “I can’t say ‘No’ to my children otherwise they will not eat their food.” These habits must be broken ASAP.

Children are smart and have access to vast information today.

Encourage them to research themselves on gut health, consuming excess sugar, why protein is important and high performance.

Consider doing this as a family project, ‘Let’s improve our eating habits as a family’.

Encourage your child to create and trial a weekly menu for their breakfast options. Tweak it each day until they create variety, ease of cooking/preparation and then review it day by day. Encouraging children to research and make healthy decisions about their nutrition can be easier than you believe it to be.

Are you eating 30 different vegetables and fruits each week?

This may sound like a lot and a daunting task but once you get the hang and habit of reaching for more veggies and fruit, the options and numbers increase.

Encourage your kids to count the colours and celebrate when all are on a plate or are eaten in a day.

Poor eating decisions are not the domain of a particular demographic or lower socioeconomic area – it happens in families of all demographics, public and private schools alike, elementary, or high school, or university or beyond.

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Finally, lead by example. As an adult, or as a parent, what are you feeding your brain at breakfast? Eating a healthy breakfast may mean getting out of bed 15 minutes earlier than you normally do. On the job, you might call it a cost benefit analysis, is it worth the investment?

Trust me, you and your child’s concentration, brain development and improved performance and school results will make reviewing your breakfast menus and rainbow seeking extremely worthwhile.

For more articles by The BRAIN WHISPERER ?, Jill Sweatman, visit www.jillsweatman.com?

You are welcome to download her latest eBook, ‘What are the Secrets of High Achieving Students’ on her website www.jillsweatman.com

Jill Sweatman is available for presentations and coaching both in the workplace and one-on-one.?

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