One Morning Habit That Melissa Wood-Tepperberg Swears By to Minimize Anxiety

Eating a nutritious meal early can help stabilize your mood and boost your energy.

Melissa Wood-Tepperberg was photographed by Yu Tsai in Dominica / Yu Tsai/Sports Illustrated

When it comes to a morning routine, we all have our own personal preferences. But, we think it’s fair to say that everyone knows starting the day off right is important. The way you open your day often determines how it will proceed.

For wellness leader Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, the morning never used to involve an early breakfast. Admittedly, she doesn’t wake up hungry, she said in a recent Instagram clip. She used to hold off on eating her first meal until she felt ready to do so. But, recently, the Melissa Wood Health founder decided to make a shift, and it’s had a huge impact on her anxiety levels.

Now, she eats her breakfast before she’s “ready,” she revealed in the video. “It has helped so much ... [to] stabilize my blood sugar, but also my nervous system.”

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She has found that eating breakfast sooner than her body is “ready” has made the biggest difference in her ability to deal with anxiety. “I feel so much less anxious, and I’ve lived most of my life waking up with [anxiety].”

Her platform is built around a holistic vision of health, including, of course, mental wellness. “There’s nothing more important to me than prioritizing what brings more peace into my day,” she said in the post. For her, that means “listening to [her]self,” and giving her body the fuel it needs to feel good—mentally and physically.

But more than that, Wood-Tepperberg has realized that eating early gives her “a nice boost of energy” that she didn’t have before. Eating a nutritious meal early can help stabilize your mood and boost your energy.