FOOD, MOOD AND MONEY!

 

“FOOD, MOOD AND MONEY”

By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, April 21, 2026

“The amount of MONEY you make is determined by the Mood you are in which is determined by the FOOD you eat and, WHEN you eat it!”

Helmut Julinot 

Fortune befell me when I had the opportunity to meet Helmut Julinot who authored the book, Food Mood Money: How to use the amazing connections between Diet, Boldness, and Wealth. Julinot is from western Europe. Not only did he author the book, but he also spoke at a local business club meeting and his presentations were eye-opening! The premise of his book and presentations is amazingly simple. Your potential earning capability is determined by the mood you are in, and your mood is not only determined by WHAT you eat but at WHAT TIME of the day you eat what you eat. 

During his presentations, he compared the human body to that of a gasoline engine like the one you would find in cars. Gasoline engines require fuel (gas) to run. The human body also requires fuel (food) to operate properly. He would explain that in Western Europe, the largest meal of the day is breakfast, whereas in the West, such as the United States, the largest meal is typically the dinner or supper meal. He would then make the analogy of someone embarking on a long road trip in their car. Would they drive until they required more gasoline late in their trip or would they fill up the gas tank BEFORE they began their trip? The answer should be obvious; you would fill up first and then start your trip. The same principle, according to Julinot, applies to the human body. People should “tank up” before they start their day, give their body the protein that it requires to properly function and then top it off later in the day before they reach their ultimate destination.

In his words, “westerners,” that would be you and me, have it backwards. If we eat breakfast at all, it is usually something light and then we eat a large meal in the evening. The evening meal is usually full of carbohydrates. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that if you ate a large late meal, you are going to go to bed while your body is trying to digest what you recently had eaten. That is why so many people have digestion issues, heartburn, and other such irregularities at night. 

Without being a scientist, it is impossible for me to know if he is right or wrong, but he makes a great deal of sense, at least to me. Our bodies ARE like machines and like a machine, it DOES require fuel to operate. If you eat a light breakfast or do not eat breakfast at all, you are like a gasoline engine running on fumes. 

It gets worse the older you become; I know this because… I was frustrated when we ate out in the evening. Most restaurants serve HUGE portions of food. They serve an amount that no one should ever eat unless they know they are going to go without food for days on end. It is not unusual that at least one-third of each plate goes home in a box; it is simply not practicable to eat the portion of food that they routinely serve. 

Sizable portions, unto themselves, are not the issue. The issue is that as we grow older, most of us, certainly not you, tend to become less active and this is where our health issues are only beginning. Maintaining a person’s ideal weight is no secret. Unless you have some underlying medical condition that prevents you from losing weight, the formula is simple. Food contains calories. You exercise or just move about to burn off the intake of calories. If you stop moving with purpose, the weight begins to build around parts of your body, usually beginning in the gut area. This is especially the reality of growing old because as most people grow older, they become less active and the weight begins to add up and add on. 

If you want to lose weight you must eat not only less but eat smartly. By “smartly” I mean you eat more real food and less processed food. You watch the number of calories you take in and avoid foods with high calory counts. In addition to eating smart, you must move your body to burn off the calories you ingest. Maintaining your desired weight becomes a mathematical formula. If you take in one hundred calories, you want to burn off one hundred calories! Your weight remains constant. You take in one hundred calories, but you only burn off ten calories, the weight begins to build. You do the math! 

Julinot describes the process in detail in his book. If you not only eat healthy food AND you eat the food at the right times of the day, but you also become more satisfied than if you were to eat a large meal at lunch and then expect to be at your best when you return to work. Or you eat a large dinner and then shortly thereafter turn in for the night, and your digestive process tries to work properly while you are attempting to get a good night’s sleep. That scenario does not work all that well. Can you see the advantage of filling up your gas tank with good healthy food in the morning, and then working it off throughout the day? You follow that routine later in the day when you eat a light dinner and turn in for the night. 

If you grew up as I did, you would have grown up with a mother who would say, “clean your plate, there are starving children in China.”  Cleaning your plate may be “good manners” in some circles but cleaning your plate when your stomach is full, is not healthy. Your body knows when you have eaten enough food, listen to what it is telling you. When you overeat, you do not feel well. When you do not feel well, you do not perform at your best. If you do not perform at your best, you typically do not earn as much money as you could. Can you see what Julinot has been trying to tell us? It is all about FOOD, MOOD, AND MONEY! I feel the title could have been reversed, MONEY, MOOD, AND FOOD! Or in movie language, “follow the money!”  

It is all about setting proper and realistic goals. What will your life look like when it is finished? Have you ever thought about your life in those terms? If you lived a long and healthy life, surely you must have a mental picture of what you will be doing, where you will be living, what kind of home you will have, etc. What will your life look like when your life is finished? Begin with the end in mind. If you have a mental picture of your life 40, 50, or 70 years from now, what does it look like? If you know what you want, you can reverse engineer that ideal life until you reach who and where you are TODAY! If you do, you can determine exactly what your next step (goal) should be that if done, will lead you to the life you envisioned for yourself and your family. You must have a vision and then identify the steppingstones (goals) that you MUST take one at a time, to reach your destination. 

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”  

Lewis Caroll. 

As Julinot points out, setting goals is a particularly promising idea but creating healthy eating habits would be crucial to achieving what you want to achieve, your life’s goals! The moment your health begins to fail, the more difficult it becomes to burn off the intake of the calories. More weight means more serious health issues and the worse you will begin to “feel.” That means you earn less money because you can no longer perform at the prominent level you have become accustomed to. Who knew your eventual success or failure was all connected to not only WHAT you eat but also WHEN you eat it? Who knew your success was connected to food whatsoever?

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR SURE!