Boost Your Brain’s Performance by Making 4 Simple Changes to Your Diet

The following is adapted from a new best-selling book, The Habit Mechanic, by Dr. Jon Finn.

Record-breaking and serial tennis Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic gave a fascinating pre-Wimbledon interview in 2015. In the interview, Djokovic explained to Daily Telegraph journalist Simon Briggs that he uses Self-Watching techniques.

That led Briggs to suggest Djokovic had the equivalent of a small CCTV camera on his shoulder, which allowed him to observe and break bad habits. The Serbian ace apparently liked the image; he agreed he is constantly monitoring himself for negative energy and wasted potential. Essentially, he uses his “camera” to intelligently Self-Watch his behavior.

If you want to build more helpful habits, you can take a page out of Djokovic’s book. You can Self-Watch your behavior to help you break your bad habits, then take some intentional steps to build better habits.

Although this process works with any habit—and there might be lots of unhelpful habits you want to change—you will be more likely to experience “habit building success” if you start by targeting one single habit. Since a poor diet is destructive for your short- and long-term health, happiness, and performance, it’s a good candidate.

If you have unhelpful dietary habits, your brain will not function properly, which will make it difficult to do anything to the best of your ability. However, chances are you can make improvements to how you eat, so this is a good place to begin to build new habits.

The Dangers of Poor Dietary Habits

A good diet boosts brain function. To explain more, I want to share one quick insight that covers a lot of ground and is simple to understand.

BBC broadcaster and phone-in host Stephen Nolan learned how a bad diet with a high proportion of junk food affects our mental health. He discovered it damages the brain, not just the heart and the body.

By his own admission, Nolan has struggled with his diet and body weight. A few years ago, he produced a TV feature in which he traveled to New York to meet Professor Felice Jacka, a leading scientist from the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research.

He learned that a bad diet produces unhelpful changes in the brain and that we must feed our brains well if we want them to function properly. For example, Nolan was shown that a high consumption of junk food means the hippocampus receives less brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

Junk Food Damages Your Brain

BDNF is a protein the brain releases that helps brain cells grow and flourish. It helps us manage stress and learn more with less effort.

A bad diet reduces BDNF. This is a major problem, because not only does a lack of BDNF make it harder to learn and control our stress, it also can shrink the hippocampus—and brain shrinking is one of the signs of depression.

This was made abundantly clear to Nolan when he was in New York. The broadcaster was told about a recent experiment. A group of healthy males were fed junk food for a week. After that week, the group all showed significant signs of diminished cognitive or brain function.

So when thinking about diet, you should begin with the brain in mind. Your brain needs a combination of energy, building blocks, and antioxidants to work properly. Luckily, there are four ways to improve your diet for better brain function.

#1: Eat the Right Energy

Although your brain only makes up around 3 percent of your overall body weight, it uses about 20 percent of your oxygen and around 25 percent of your glucose. Therefore, it is best to eat complex carbohydrates, which release glucose slowly.

Some examples include green vegetables, and whole grain or whole wheat bread. Whole wheat pasta and brown rice, sweet potatoes, beans, lentils, and peas are also good sources of complex carbohydrates.

#2: Remember Fatty Acids

The brain is a fatty organ, so it needs fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6 to work properly. Typically, we eat too much omega-6 (poultry, eggs, nuts, cereals, whole grain breads), but not enough omega-3.

To boost your omega-3 levels, eat cold-water fish like tuna and salmon, and oily fish like mackerel. Kiwi fruit, soya beans, spinach, flax seeds, chia seeds, and walnuts are also sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

#3: Stop Buying Junk Food

There is strong evidence showing that junk food can quickly damage brain function. Remember our story about broadcaster Stephen Nolan? Eating junk food for just one week had major implications.

Not only can junk food diminish cognitive performance, it can also cause depression and interfere with our ability to manage stress because it decreases the BDNF the brain releases.

#4: Get Plenty of Antioxidants

Along with eating complex carbohydrates for energy, including fatty acids in your diet, and avoiding junk food, it’s also important to make sure your diet includes plenty of antioxidants. Why? Because having too many “free radicals” can be damaging to brain function.

However, a group of molecules known as antioxidants can be used to combat the negative effects of free radicals. Oranges, other citrus fruits, red peppers, almonds, spinach, sweet potatoes, and broccoli all contain antioxidants.

Help Your Brain’s Wellbeing and Performance

As you can see, your eating habits can help or hinder your wellbeing, performance, and ability to build new habits. So, do your brain—and yourself—a favor, and take steps to build better dietary habits.

To help your brain function well, consider how you can incorporate complex carbohydrates, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and antioxidants into your diet. And, to help keep your diet healthy and balanced, engage in Self-Watching (like Novak Djokovic does) to help break the habit of eating junk food.

To help you build new habits, I have created a range of over 30 “Habit Mechanic Tools”. They are tried and tested in helping over 10,000 people to supercharge their motivation and build better habits in the following areas: diet, sleep, and exercise; stress management; confidence; productivity and focus; performing under pressure; leadership; team performance. You can learn more in my new best-seller book, The Habit Mechanic.

For more advice on how to build brain-healthy habits and supercharge other areas of your health, happiness, and performance, you can find The Habit Mechanic here.