Strategies for Focus Motivation and Concentration

This podcast discusses how nutrition can enhance alertness, focus, and motivation by boosting dopamine levels, a neurotransmitter linked to these mental states. By optimizing diet for dopamine, individuals can improve energy, concentration, and productivity throughout the day.

Transcript

(00:10):

Challenges, focusing, challenges remaining alert, remaining driven, remaining on task. It's something that I hear about almost on a daily basis, and nutrition has a lot to do with your ability to focus, your feeling of motivation, as well as how alert and cognitively aware you are. Hi, I'm Julia, and welcome to the Jolie Life Podcast, where we talk about health, nutrition, wellbeing, and beauty, and how all those things relate, which they so beautifully relate to each other. Today we're going to dive into strategies for alertness, focus, and motivation, using food, using your daily nutrition to help you achieve those states more easily and to stay in those states When you desire to alertness, focus and motivation are moods, let's say, or states of mind, an ability to focus your brain to remain cognitively excitable. These are modulated by dopamine, and most of us have heard of dopamine.
(01:29)
It is a very, shall I say, sexy neurotransmitter that is often in the media. And there are many books written about dopamine, dopamine nation being one of them. So dopamine is a neuromodulator, and what that means is that it directs neurotransmitters, the function as well as the stimulation of neurotransmitters, and it affects neural pathways that are associated with motivation, that are associated with reward and that are associated with learning. Dopamine is also a precursor to other neurotransmitters, so it is the sort of starting point of other neurotransmitters that are needed for activities of learning for a positive mood, for memory, and for focus. So dopamine is really, really important. Dopamine is super important during the morning and the afternoon when we're doing work, when we need to get our day done, when we need to sit down and learn, like if we're in school or if working on a new project, dopamine is very, very necessary for that.
(02:50)
And dopamine is synthesized using amino acids that you ingest. So this gives us a clue that you eat what you eat and the timing of your food can influence your mood, your ability to work and your energy levels quite quickly. This is an important clue that we can build on and we can use to our advantage to raise our dopamine levels at times where we want to get work done, where we want more focus, where we want more concentration. It also gives us a clue of what we don't want to eat. So the amino acids that are contained in our food are so incredibly critical that we basically eat until the amino acid needs are met. One of the branches of the vagus nerve, which is super famous because it is credited with doing many things to, we are going to talk about its connection in the gut.
(03:57)
So the vagus nerve runs from the brain to the gut, and there are other, let's say, branches of the vagus nerve that connect to other organs. We are focusing on the connection to the gut. The vagus nerve relays information about what's going on in the gut to the brain, so it monitors inflammation levels, it monitors the amount of food that's there. It monitors if there is an inflammatory response happening or if there seems to be an invader in the gut. It also monitors the quantity as well as the makeup of the amino acids in the belly. This information travels up the vagus nerve and it goes to your brainstem, your brainstem processes. This information assesses how many of each type of amino acids are available in your stomach, and based on that, it relays this information to other parts of the brain that are involved in regulating hunger and satiety signals that are involved in metabolic responses to food and that are involved in neurotransmitter production.
(05:22)
So when we have the adequate amino acids to make the neurotransmitters that our brain needs, then the satiety signals are switched on and we feel full and we don't feel hungry. That's one mechanism by which they're switched on. There are others, but those are less important to us today. So when we have the amino acids to create dopamine, that signal is sent to the brain, and the brain then is able to prime itself for dopamine synthesis. I just want to stop and be clear because oftentimes people think of amino acids as coming only from animal protein, amino acids being the molecules that make up a protein. Amino acids are found in vegetables, they're found in grains, they're found in nuts and seeds. They're found in legumes, they're found in meats and in fish as well as dairy. The reason why animal protein is, let's say, focused on or highlighted is because all of our essential amino acids, so the amino acids that our body cannot make itself are in the right proportions in animal proteins, they're in the proportions that the body needs for its functions.
(06:59)
When you have a largely plant-based diet or an exclusively plant-based diet, you can get all of your essential amino acids from plants. However, plants are not laid out as simply. So this means that you have to eat a very varied diet. You need lots of different vegetables, lots of different whole grains to make sure that all of your amino acids are covered. But you can do this, there are bodybuilders who are able to create huge amounts of muscles that are totally vegan. So I just want to highlight because I don't want any misconception that you have to eat meat in order to have focus, alertness and motivation. You don't. But meat is the path of least resistance, shall we say. But you can get these amino acids from plants also. So I digress. You need two critical amino acids, tyrosine and phyl lining for the production of l-Dopa, which is the precursor to dopamine deficits or insufficient amounts of dopamine in your body, are characterized by a depressed mood, lack of drive, fatigue, concentration, challenges, irritability.
(08:28)
Those are some of the ways if you find yourself in those states during the day, that kind of clues you in that maybe your body isn't able to produce enough dopamine during the day because it's drive. It's up a peppy mood. It is energy, it's concentration. It is a calmness that we seek during the day in order to get our stuff done. So we then look at, okay, how can I increase dopamine? You also might get a clue that you could better support your brain in producing dopamine if you find yourself with lots of sugar and caffeine cravings. The thing about cravings, and I will do a separate podcast on cravings, is that often cravings are truly a desire of your body to communicate need and sugar cravings. Caffeine cravings are sometimes symptomatic of dips and dopamine. Your body needs energy. It wants to be able to focus, it wants to be alert, it wants to get things done, and so it's looking for other forms of energy.
(09:49)
And so most often then you feel that in a sugar craving or a caffeine craving. But in reality, if you increase your precursors or the amino acids that you need to produce more dopamine, you will find that your sugar and your caffeine cravings will become greatly reduced. So our strategy, getting to our strategies here is to concentrate our morning and afternoon nourishment on foods that contain tyrosine and fentanyl lining. We want foods that have those amino acids in them, and we want to avoid foods that stimulate the antagonistic neurotransmitter to dopamine, serotonin. And that too we can discuss in a separate podcast because serotonin is really important for you to feel calm, for you to get a good night's sleep, for you to feel revived. That is super, super important for that. So let's get back here. So for a healthy abundance of the amino acids that you need to promote dopamine production, we cannot eat the typical American breakfast and lunch.
(11:17)
So eating a croissant, eating a sandwich, eating a wrap, eating a grain-based bowl is not going to help you produce dopamine. And here's a little spoiler alert to the next podcast on this subject that actually those foods are really, really, really good at supporting serotonin production. They're really good at making you calm, making you zen, making you get ready for bed. They're good at that. So we don't want those foods during our mornings and our afternoons when we're trying to get things done. Instead, we want foods that support dopamine production, and those foods are nuts and seeds and animal proteins and vegetables like broccoli and spinach and cauliflower and eggs and fish and quinoa. That's the type of food that we want. So you notice the theme here. We want high protein foods and we want vegetables, and we want nuts and seeds. So we notice we're staying away or not on this list are the traditional carbohydrates like oatmeal or rice or pasta or bread or tortillas, things of that sort made out of wheat or corn or other grains.
(12:52)
The exception here are when you find things like we use and the Jolie meals that are, it looks like a tortilla, but it's not made out of wheat. Instead, it's made out of almonds or it's made out of chickpeas. That's going to give you a different amino acid profile and it is going to support dopamine. So think for your breakfast, you want something like scrambled eggs with peppers and spinach. You want something that looks like the Jolie. Morning Pot, Jolie breakfasts and lunches are designed with your dopamine production in mind. So they're a beautiful template. They are high in protein. They are high in grains that contain amino acids that are pro dopamine like buckwheat. We use almond flour, we use coconut flour. We use a lot of flax and chia and things of that sort so that you have a high protein meal that will help you to stay alert and satiate it.
(14:03)
And remember that satiation is related to dopamine here, to there being sufficient amino acids. That's the signal that it gives off, is that you're satiated. That's why the breakfast is focused that way. That's how your breakfast should be. It should not be laden with carbohydrates because those really favor serotonin production. So we need a little bit of a paradigm shift. So for example, for your lunches, you might have grilled chicken and vegetables. You might have a salad with lots of different vegetables in it, like broccoli and cauliflower and kale with say, chickpeas and pumpkin seeds. That would be an excellent lunch that really supports your focus, your alertness, cognition, your drive, your ability to analyze things and get things done. That is a breakfast of champions that you would want. So the impact of food, this is the wonderful thing, is quick as digestion liberates, the amino acids tyrosine, for example, absorption begins and from absorption to the production of dopamine is less than five minutes.
(15:19)
So our body's response to our food is really fast. It's really quick. So these are strategies that you can begin to implement immediately and immediately you will feel the effect. One of the things that clients always report back when they're on Jolie is, oh my gosh, I no longer feel tired at the end of the morning. I no longer feel tired in the afternoon. Why? It's because your food is feeding your brain to be alert, to be clear, to learn new things, to remember new things. It is priming the pumps of your brain. That's what we do, and that's what I want you to do so that you can just be your best self. And the cool thing is that once you begin this shift of changing your food and you begin this shift of feeling the difference on a daily basis, you create a beautifully positive feedback loop Where I eat this way, I feel good, I get stuff done.
(16:30)
Isn't life great? I eat this way, I feel good. I get stuff done. Isn't life great? And that motivation that you're building through what you're eating is producing more motivation. So you keep feeling better and better and better and better and better. So I encourage you to begin to look at your breakfast and your lunch and your snacks and to ask yourself, is this putting me in a space where I am more alert? Is this putting me in a space where I am more motivated? Is this putting me in a space where I'm learning more easily, where it's easier for me to simulate information, to use information and eat? That way you will be surprised how much your morning and your afternoons will change. You'll be surprised how much you get done. And then in a subsequent podcast, we'll talk about how from getting all those wonderful things done, how you unwind with serotonin foods that help your brain to make serotonin, to help you wind down.
(17:45)
So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If it has helped you, please leave a comment, let me know. Please share this podcast with someone, and you can find us on Instagram at the Jolie life. You can email me at julia@thejolielife.com. You can check out our website, the Jolie Life, and we look forward to hearing from you. Have a beautiful day, and be productive in every way that you want. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Jolie Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast. I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejolife.com and please follow us on Instagram, the Jo Life. Our website is the jolie life.com, and it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the Jolie life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving lots of love.