The Proven Effects of Nutrition on Your Exam Performance

Studying is always stressful, despite taking time to break down your materials and lessons into approachable bits. The panic before an exam or a test also increases in correlation with its importance, which is why many scholars experience nausea and even faint due to worries.

Often known as test anxiety, the feeling of distress is usually caused by fear of failure, which is common among teens. However, the lack of preparation and previous poor performance on tests indeed trigger strong emotions, so, as a student, there are a few ways to accomplish a better academic status.

You can adopt efficient studying habits, learn to manage your time to balance school with your social life or try not to procrastinate, especially close to an exam. But you should also consider your nutrition as a contributing factor to a successful test score, because what you eat can affect your brain’s functions.

What to Avoid for Healthy Studying

You should usually eat less to no processed foods and sugar, as they not only increase the risks of diabetes, obesity, and depression but also won’t help your brain work correctly in the long run. Processed foods have a lot of added sugar, commonly found in sweetened beverages, which are usually consumed for more concentration, like energy drinks, by students who study difficult areas and have to take chemistry classes or physics online tuition.

Artificial ingredients, like coloring and preservatives, are not recommended as well, but you should check a product’s label thoroughly to find them. At the same time, refined carbohydrates, which are usually the most delicious, like pizzas, pastries, and waffles, can trigger a high spike in blood sugar levels and make you feel energized at the moment. Still, when the effect disappears, you’ll most likely feel sleepy and hungry.

But there’s more - foods low in nutrients and fiber, quick calories and trans fats can also affect your brain’s productivity. Of course, eating them from time to time is fine, but daily consumption is not advised at all. But since that’s a lot of info to take in, maybe it’s more helpful to know what you can eat.

Foods to Introduce in Your Daily Meals

As opposed to the elements mentioned above, your diet should consist of tap or sparkling water, which has numerous benefits for health, such as maintaining your blood pressure and properly cushioning the brain. Then, eating healthy carbohydrates, like veggies, fruits and beans, is great, accompanied by whole and unprocessed ingredients. Remember to add high-fibre foods, like whole grains and nuts, and healthy fats, such as coconut oil.

Besides these regular guidelines, it has been shown that the following foods will boost your brain power:

• Berries can improve your attention span and mental performance;
• Citrus fruits enhance brain functions;
• Dark chocolate gives you energy and boosts memory;
• Nuts improve overall brain health;
• Eggs strengthen muscle function for more memory storage;
• Fish contributes to better brain functions;
• Avocados improve memory accuracy;
• Beets improve blood flow and influence performance;

It’s essential to diversify your meals, including these ingredients, so that you don’t get bored with the same foods, but this implies you do your shopping properly and avoid buying ingredients impulsively. So, meal planning might be the best solution for a student because it’s also budget-friendly.

Meal Prep Ideas and Strategies

Eating healthy at the right hours without having an excuse to interrupt your studies, all this while balancing your social life, can be challenging, which is why meal prepping is the right thing to do. It involves preparing all your major meals for the week at the weekends.

A meal-planning app can help you stay on top of your meals, but you should also acquire a few food storage containers and a lunch box. Additionally, labels will help you organize your meals better. Regardless, when you go shopping, make a list containing the healthy things you need to get and try to get healthy snacks as well. If you want to make meal planning easier, look for frozen vegetables or meat that can be quickly cooked, and even canned food, such as tuna or beans, is okay.

Tips for Saving Money While Meal-prepping

As a student, you might be limited to a certain monthly budget, but you can save money while meal planning if you’re smart. For example, you can choose to shop somewhere in the evening, where some products are discounted. You can also buy in bulk, especially products like pasta, rice, and oats, since they have a long shelf life and will be part of most of your meals.

When it comes to proteins, you can find chicken tights, eggs and tofu at great prices, and they can be mixed with different ingredients. Ingredients for snacks, like popcorn and granola bars, are also easy to find at affordable prices.

Following your list and goals will help minimize food waste, but this can only happen if you cook meals that delight you, which is why it’s best to devote yourself to creating nutritious and delicious meal-prepping foods.

One Week of Healthy Meal-prepping Ideas

Here’s a brief idea of what would one week look like if you would prepare your meals at home, so you know what to expect.

A week of breakfast would consist of:

• Porridge, toast, yoghurt, eggs, smoothie, chia pudding, oatmeal bites;

For lunch, you can have:

• Pasta, veggie and protein salad, a creamy soup, chickpea couscous, veggie and hummus sandwich, falafel, quinoa salad;

Dinner can consist of:

• Fish with veggies, steamed tofu, roasted chicken, cabbage roll, cauliflower fried rice, stir-fry, shepherd’s pie;

Snacks can vary, and since you may want to consume them during study sessions, it’s best to make them as healthy as possible.

Are You Ready for Your Next Test?

Doing well on your exams might be considerately stressful, especially as an anxious person. However, to make it less dreadful, you can improve your overall performance with proper study sessions, accompanied by nutritious and balanced meals that will help your brain gain strength and add more storage for memorizing.