Food and Your Mood

I was talking recently to a friend who has three children. She was telling me about how she had terrible post-partum depression with each of her births. It got to be so bad that her obstetrician suggested that she go on an anti-depressant. Well, as a breast-feeding mommy, she was wary of medications and how they would affect her baby, so she did some research and she talked to some mommy friends and one friend suggested a book to her that changed everything.

Before I tell you the name of this book, let me ask - how many of you have experienced that midday slump? You know, the one around 2pm where you just want to fall asleep? How many of you have unexplained surges in your temper, when you know that you shouldn't be mad about something, but for some reason you just can't control the anger? What about self-esteem issues, anybody suffer from those? Do you think you are lazy? Are you exhausted, but don't know why? What about the blues, do any of you just get sad for seemingly no reason? Well, there IS a reason and it's on your plate! What we eat affects more than just our waistlines, ladies - it affects our moods as well! You don't have to feel this way. So many people come up to me and ask how I can be so positive all the time. I will tell you it's not that I just have a "sunny disposition"; it's in the way I choose to eat.

White flour, white rice, white pasta, white sugar...they need to be eliminated from your diet! The book I was talking about is called "Potatoes, Not Prozac" by Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD, in addictive nutrition. Now, I am not saying go run out and buy this book, or that it will change your life. I have not read it, I just heard about it from a friend whose life it did change. However, from what she was telling me, the premise of the book is about how what you put into your body affects your brain chemistry and your blood chemistry and can wreak havoc with your mood and your metabolism and cause you to crave even more of these unhealthy white foods. It becomes an endless cycle. You eat the white foods, you feel tired and depressed...so what do you do? You go to the fridge and you look for something to boost your energy and your mood. What is it that we crave when we are depressed? Ice cream? Cookies? Cake? Comfort foods! We get a quick burst of energy and feel better for a little while, maybe we even get something done, but then what? We CRASH! The big sugar let down! We are exhausted again, we are depressed again, maybe we are even beating ourselves up for eating what we ate. So what happens? We go to the fridge again! And what do we eat this time? Carrots? Celery? Some yummy berries? Nope! We go for the soda, the pretzels, the chips...the comfort foods again! Are you seeing a pattern here, ladies? White sugar, white flour, white, white, white! Get rid of it!

OK, now there are some of you who are saying "But Iva, I don't eat that stuff and I still feel moody, depressed or exhausted!" Well, then it's time to look further into your diet. If you have gotten rid of the overt sugar and white flour and such in your diet, it's time to look for the covert suckers! They hide from you in seemingly innocuous places. Ketchup - loaded with sugar; wheat breads - most on the market are made with wheat flour...that's white people! You have to look for "whole grain" if you want to get away from the white. The so-called power bars - they are filled with several types of sugar. You can be eating "healthy" and sabotaging yourself without even knowing it! These foods trigger cravings for more of the same unhealthy white foods and it becomes an endless cycle!
It does the same to our kids. We let them snack on this junk and then we wonder why they can't stop running around, hitting each other and swinging from the chandelier! Or we wonder why they need to sit around watching TV all day or playing their video games. It's hidden in the food we feed them. Do you want to be healthy? Do you want your kids to be healthy? Then your job is simple...get the white out! Now, nobody is saying it's going to be easy (simple, yes...easy, no)! Going back to my friend for a minute, she told me that the end result was that she was no longer depressed, that her weight came off and stabilized, that she was able to boost her energy and take care of her family and herself. BUT - it was hard work. There were withdrawal symptoms that sometimes were worse than what she was going through while she was eating badly. But she knew that the end result would be a happier, healthier mommy...and one that would understand how to feed her family to keep them healthy and energized. She was lucky enough to have a buddy to talk to and to cry to when she was feeling her worst. So nobody is telling you that turning Mrs. Hyde back into Dr. Jekyll is going to be easy. There are steps that you need to take to ensure that you can do this, but it all starts with taking a good look at what you put in your mouth! Now, any of you who are snacking right now...did you just put the cupcake down?