by esperanza

Shawn Achor: Choosing Happiness

World happiness expert SHAWN ACHOR has struggled with his own depression, yet this Harvard -trained researcher insists that we can reprogram our brains to become more positive

by Robin L. Flanigan

FEATURES

Building Habits

It takes discipline and hard work to develop and maintain daily routines, but the long-term payoff of better mental health is worth it!

by Robin L. Flanigan

SOUNDOFF! Focusing on Good Habits

What are some good habits you’ve formed, and how did you build them?

Superfoods for Self-Care

Adding superfoods to your diet can help you lose weight and decrease inflammation––but these nutrient-dense foods can also boost your mood and cognition

by Sasha Kildare

Everyday Heroes: Dogged Determination

JULIE BARTON, author of the memoir Dog Medicine, has been adding to her arsenal of coping tools since a puppy pulled her out of severe depression.

by Elizabeth Forbes

Back Chat: Khalil Osiris

Author Khalil Osiris urges people to harness the power of their minds and break down mental barriers that prevent them from living in the now.

COLUMNS

Viewpoint: Finding Refuge From The 24-Hour News Cycle

by Jay Boll

Viewpoint: My Faith In Hope

by Margaret Lanning

Ask the Doctor: Putting Yourself On A Wellness Path

by Jesse H. Wright, MD, PhD

The post Summer 2019 appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Robin L. Flanigan

Coming up with a habit that will make life easier isn’t too challenging, but staying the course is an entirely different story. Use these strategies for making a new habit stick:

#1 Create a routine

That’s what Nick Wignall, a clinical psychologist, did to decrease anxiety and reduce friction in the morning on workdays. He calls his end-of-the-day routine the “4:55 Drill.” Five minutes before he leaves his office, he jots down the three most important things he needs to get done the following day and leaves it on his desk. “I’m implicitly telling my brain it can relax, because I know exactly what I need to do tomorrow and won’t forget,” he says. “And, it keeps me from going from email to some strange Wikipedia rabbit hole and losing an hour of productivity.

#2 Get in touch with your inner coach

Using a critical, judgmental voice to push you into a habit isn’t sustainable, according to life coach and motivational speaker Christine Hassler. Instead, coach yourself toward what you want. “When we focus on what we don’t like, the more what we don’t like shows up,” Hassler says. “When we’re focusing on where we want to go, the more where we want to go shows up.”

#3 Give yourself a month

“Try something new for a minimum of 30 days before thinking it’s not going to work for you,” says certified health coach Sharon Fraser. There’s normal resistance for the first five or 10 days, so mark off your progress every day on a calendar. “Having that tick there says, ‘I accomplished this.’”

#4 Find an accountability partner

It’s important to have an “empowered advocate” to help us elevate ourselves and stay anchored in new, positive habits, even when we want to abandon them, says certified holistic health coach Katie McDonald. “That accountability enables us to learn how to parent ourselves skillfully.”

Read more:
The Under-Appreciated Power Of Habits To Prevent Depression

Printed as “Building Habits,” Summer 2019

The post 4 Tips To Help You Create Life-Changing Healthy Habits appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Robin L. Flanigan

Habits against depression are hard to form, but they are worth the effort to put the power back in your hands.

So, you’re starting a new habit.

Congratulations. Changing just one negative habit into a positive one sets you on a path to better mental health and overall well-being. Think of it as a building block for a happier, more stress-free life. Pretty soon, a new and improved you is right around the bend.

Not so fast.

Maintaining that habit—especially over the long haul—isn’t so easy. There are countless justifications for veering off course, and they can be implausibly incidental.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge it’s often the seemingly little things that derail us in major ways,” says Nick Wignall, a clinical psychologist in New Mexico.

That’s because habits are hard. And when you’re not a huge fan of change, they’re even harder. What it takes to stay anchored is discipline. And not the punitive kind. This form of discipline is about control, about being rooted in what you want.

This is, ultimately, about freedom.

As author Gretchen Rubin writes in her book Better Than Before, What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits—to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life, we repeat about 40 percent of our behavior almost daily. That means if we change our habits—what Rubin calls “the invisible architecture of daily life”—we change our lives.

How soon can we expect results? According to a 2009 study from University College London, the average time it takes to form a new habit is 66 days.

True transformation doesn’t happen overnight—and there are definitely better ways than others to go after it.

“The place where people tend to stumble is when they’re being too vague,” says Wignall. “They have grandiose intentions. ‘I’m finally going to get healthy this year,’ or ‘I’m going to go to the gym.’ The key to good intentions is to come up with a specific set of routines and systems to help you stick with the habit over time.”

The fear of failure holds many people back from getting specific. But it’s not the only culprit.

“People talk a lot about what they want to do, but their fear of change—getting out of their comfort zone, being away from the familiar—stops them,” says life coach and motivational speaker Christine Hassler, author of Expectation Hangover: Overcoming Disappointment in Work, Love, and Life. “People are generally hard on themselves, so they avoid the backlash of the inner critic that will come out if they don’t succeed at starting a new habit.”

So, be clear with your goals, but understand that sticking with them is an imperfect process. There will be slip-ups along the way. That’s life no matter where you are on the motivation spectrum—whether the reason for behaving in a certain way tends to stem from within or from fear, from incentives or rewards, or from the desire to learn or be accepted. The gentler you are with yourself when these inevitable slip-ups happen, the more likely you’ll be to get back into the swing of things.

Exercise

Sarah, who lives in Georgia, joined a gym this spring without having a lot of interest in going. But she did join, and one week during a boot camp class, a fit woman in her 60s told her, “If I can do it, you can do it.”

That was all it took for 29-year-old Sarah—who’d been self-conscious about her body since middle school—to start a regular workout routine. While before she would drag her feet in the morning, trying to persuade herself to go to the gym, now she feels eager to get there.

Repetition and support have been key to staying on track. She takes the same classes every week and has made several workout buddies.

“There’s a lot of accountability,” she says. “The one day I didn’t go, people noticed that I was gone.”

Was this a case of mind over matter? Perhaps—and recent research out of Stanford University shows why that phenomenon may have legs.

The study, published earlier this year in the journal Nature Human Behavior, discovered after simply telling people they have a predisposition to certain genetic risks—such as a low capacity for exercise—their bodies’ physiology changed, even when their DNA didn’t have anything to do with the risks being described.

What if this worked in reverse? What if our bodies’ physiology changed for the better if we thought we had a high capacity for exercise?

A lot of what we do or don’t do comes down to self-sabotage, according to Sharon Fraser, a certified health coach from Pennsylvania.

“For example, you normally set your alarm for 7 o’clock to get up and exercise,” she says. “It goes off, and you say, ‘Ten more minutes?’ then hit the snooze button for 10 minutes—then another 10 minutes. That’s self-sabotage. You have a goal, and you’re working against your goal.”

Fraser proposes creating a daily schedule that won’t interfere with your exercise plan, even if you have to get up earlier to get it completed. Willpower is usually weaker toward the end of the day.

“When you feel as if you’re doing the right thing for yourself, it takes a lot of pressure off the brain,” says Fraser. “If you set a goal and achieve that goal, what greater feeling can you have? It propels you to get to the next level.

“And it’s not necessarily about big goals,” she continues. “Small achievements keep adding on and become a big accomplishment. Trying to climb a hill all in one step isn’t going to work.”

Food

Food-related decisions these days often have to do with two extremes—busy schedules or boredom.

“We’ve forgotten why we eat in the first place,” says Katie McDonald, a self-care strategist in Rhode Island. “It’s meant to do something for us. It has a purpose aside from entertainment, from numbing. It’s a tool for awakening. People should renegotiate their relationship with food, so there’s an opportunity to reconnect with themselves instead of using it as a tool to reward themselves.”

A 2006 study at Cornell University, published in the academic journal Environment and Behavior, found while people estimate they make roughly 15 food-and beverage-related decisions a day, the actual average is 221—most of them made on autopilot and unknowingly influenced by environmental cues.

In fact, science has found to save energy, the brain looks for triggers to cue behavior, and that happens without our conscious consent.

To be more aware of what you consume, McDonald suggests logging everything that “crosses your lips” into a notebook or food-tracking app. Next, have a plan for when and what you’re going to eat to make quick decisions unnecessary, because “the quality of food goes down when urgency goes up.” Start using recipes and read their nutritional profiles.

The trick for guarding new habits against sabotage is to be consistent.

“If we’re not consistent, then every day we have to make a choice again until we’re in a state of decision fatigue, and we become immobilized,” explains McDonald. “The criteria for eating now becomes about convenience instead of the higher standards of well-being, emotional stability, and mental restoration. It becomes about what’s in front of me, what’s fast, what gives me immediate relief from stress.”

Missouri’s Ruth, 66, realized she needed to limit sweets and sugars after becoming overweight and feeling less and less comfortable with how she looked. Because she “is lazy about cooking for myself,” she has come up with several habits that have led to a nearly 20-pound weight loss over the past year.

“I keep in mind that my habits don’t have to be the same as everybody else’s,” she says, referring to her breakfast routine of salad with cherry tomatoes, avocado, and sugar snap peas, as well as occasional low-sodium, low-calorie croutons.

In addition, Ruth keeps her freezer stocked with frozen, store-prepared fresh fish. This allows her to warm up something quickly for dinner—a move that keeps her from ordering a pizza she’d be tempted to eat in one sitting. She eats only until she’s no longer hungry, and snacks between meals on veggies, fruit, low-salt pretzels, and nuts.

“It’s OK to break my own rules on occasion,” she says. “I treat myself with no more than two pieces of dark chocolate. Then I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself, and i don’t eat the whole box at one time. I just get myself out and walk around the block a couple times to make up for it.”

McDonald says deprivation has no place in building new habits around food. Adding worthwhile choices, on the other hand—such as incorporating whole foods into meals and keeping clutter off the table where you eat—is exponentially more helpful.

“I’m not interested in the word ‘diet,’” she says. “The first three letters spell ‘die.’ That is not going to inspire me to bring about change.”

Instead, McDonald works with clients over a six-month period to develop a plan for meaningful change. The first week is the honeymoon period; clients typically are excited to be starting new habits. By the second week, they’re often struggling. This is when McDonald tells them she doesn’t care if they feel like sticking to the plan—she cares that they want a certain kind of life and they’re taking certain steps to get there.

“While I’m all about being in the moment,” she says, “I’m not about being in the moment when it comes to what you choose to eat when adopting new habits.”

Sleep

Raj, from New York City, used to get between five and six hours of sleep, if she was lucky, when she was feeling particularly anxious. Now that she has established a nighttime routine—incorporating a transitional time of rest in which she stops texting and rests on the couch—she gets about seven hours of sleep.

A morning ritual has been just as important. “It’s definitely part of your sleep habit and dictates how you’re going to jump into the day,” says Raj, who spends at least 20 minutes drinking coffee, writing down her plans, and staring out the window.

Unlike most sleep-habit advice she found online, Raj doesn’t subscribe to the idea that she has to shun all technology at least one hour before bedtime. Scrolling through curated social media—mostly pictures and videos of dogs, babies, and affirmations, and no ex-boyfriends—relaxes her so she can fall asleep at all.

She recalls: “At first, my psychologist said, ‘No, this isn’t a good idea.’ But then we talked about ‘harm reduction’ and how I needed to make changes in my life that work for me.”

Robert N. Glidewell, a licensed psychologist and certified behavioral sleep specialist in Colorado, has two thoughts on that: “One is that people are very creative and oftentimes they can intuitively find solutions that are right for them, and they don’t need us as experts to be sticking our fingers in it. The other side is with insomnia, often the intuitions we have about what to do actually make it worse.”

That said, he posits that if Raj was in his office and she made a good case for why her solution was soothing, he wouldn’t have any objections.

For most, Glidewell says, good sleep habits start with acting like you want to go bed. Spend 20 to 30 minutes winding down—brushing teeth, changing into pajamas, meditating, reading a book, or listening to music, for instance.

Research has shown changing the content of your thoughts before hitting the sack also yields benefits. Glidewell points to a 2009 study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research showing gratitude before bed predicted good sleep quality and duration for people with clinical impaired sleep habits.

“Whether positive or negative, our thoughts will change our sleep for the better or worse,” he wrote in a blog post on the subject.

Try this for at least two weeks: About a half hour before bed, spend five minutes writing down five experiences or events you are grateful for that happened within the last 24 hours. Then spend 30 seconds thinking about each experience on your list.

“The more you focus your thoughts on fully remembering each experience, the stronger this exercise will be,” he wrote.

Money

If you’re not great at managing your money, you’re not alone. Personal finance expert and journalist Kristin Wong has dedicated numerous articles—and wrote the book Get Money: Live the Life You Want, Not Just the Life You Can Afford—about just that.

“When you regularly tell yourself things like ‘I can’t save more’ or ‘I’m just bad at money,’ it’s like giving yourself permission to ignore your financial situation,” she writes.

Wong says the good habits that work best when it comes to money—sticking to a budget and being frugal—are not new.

This isn’t about avoiding spending. It’s about planning for what you spend. Want to go to a Broadway play? Tuck a small amount of money each week into an envelope for that purpose and watch how you can get what you want rather painlessly.

“Managing your finances becomes less about money itself and more about accomplishing the things that actually matter to you,” writes Wong.

Abde knows about envelopes. Growing up in middle-class India, he would see his father give his monthly paycheck in cash to his mother, who would divide it among multiple envelopes for rent, groceries, clothing and pocket money.

“Money is always a scarce commodity no matter how much you have, so frugality was always a virtue,” he remembers.

As a result, Abde now manages his finances by a couple of tenets.

First, differentiate between needs and wants. “The need,” he notes, “is that you’ve got to live in a clean and safe environment. The want is that you’d like to live in a fancy clean and safe environment.”

Second, he adds, is that “delayed gratification is an important thing. Just because you have the money doesn’t mean you have to spend it.”

Compassion

Though writing their book for schools, noted educators Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick present useful information for anyone inLearning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success. Those habits include persisting, thinking flexibly, taking responsible risks, striving for accuracy, and finding humor.

Notice that one of the habits is striving for accuracy—not achieving accuracy.

Be merciful when things don’t always go as planned, or you fall a bit short of your expectations.

“It’s hard enough when you slip up—don’t go adding shame and disappointment that gets you weighed down and hopeless,” says Wignall, the clinical psychologist. “Get at this idea of gentle habit formation. Instead of going to a default, probably negative, script, be compassionate with yourself. And be realistic.”

Read more:
4 Tips To Help You Create Life-Changing Healthy Habits

Printed as “Building Habits,” Summer 2019

The post The Under-Appreciated Power Of Habits To Prevent Depression appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Elizabeth Forbes

Author Khalil Osiris urges people to harness the power of their minds and break down mental barriers that prevent them from living in the now.

Jailed for the second time at age 25, Khalil Osiris began a journey of self-transformation. After his release 15 years later, he worked on social programs to help others stay out of prison. He also shares his path to inner peace and purpose as an inspirational speaker, coach, and author of the guidebook A Freedom That Comes from Within.

You’ve said anger was what landed you in jail. How did you let that go?

I spent much of my youth being angry and blaming “the system” for the injustices I saw around me. My turning point was the realization that, no matter what I believe is wrong with the world, I have the power to choose my response to it.

I discovered the meaning of [Holocaust survivor] Viktor Frankl’s piercing observation, “Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

How did you pursue that?

Freedom is a process of looking inward and engaging in deep questioning. This process isn’t so much about discovering yourself in the context of your circumstances or personal history, but about your ability to create yourself in the moment—in the Now—through the infinite power of your thoughts and choices.

Freedom is a choice. To sustain your freedom, you have to choose it daily, sometimes moment-by-moment, in every situation.

Where would one start asking “deep inner questions,” as you call them?

Start with questions about what you love or feel passionate about or want to improve about yourself. Start with what you think you know about your beliefs and personal relationships. The point is to start and make a commitment to continuing the process.

Journaling was a powerful practice for you. Any advice?

I encourage people to use journaling as an effective way to deepen their understanding of others as well as themselves. The personal benefits of journaling lie in the process of being self-reflective and open to discovering your power to change your life from the inside-out. 

You write about the importance of “silence and stillness.”

Silence and stillness was, and is, my meditation and mindfulness practice. It’s my way of examining the core of my life from an inward perspective. It’s the heart of my existential practice of deep questioning.

What were the hardest things for you on your journey of self-discovery?

My biggest barrier was my self-limiting thoughts and beliefs. My harshest realization was that I was incarcerated long before I was arrested. I’ve come to believe that everyone, regardless of their history, is in a prison of some sort, whether they realize it or not. 

By seeing clearly the prisons we construct through doubts, fears, and limiting beliefs, we can begin to transform our thoughts, our lives, and our world.

Any help from behavioral health specialists along the way?

One of my mentors in prison was a behavioral health counselor. We had many robust conversations about the meaning of mental well-being in a normalized violent environment.

How can people living with depression and anxiety implement your philosophies?

People living in “biological prisons” need to identify their internal strengths and practice using them in way that enhances their sense of self-determination. For example, if a person is on psychotropic medication, we would need to focus on enhancing their sense of autonomy and responsibility for taking their meds. By so doing, that person will develop a visceral understanding of how freedom and responsibility are inseparable.

What about hope?

Hope is as essential to good mental health and spiritual well-being as air is to our physical existence. It’s the elixir of life. Hope inspires us to see and transform our deepest suffering into a monument of the best that we are.

Printed as “Back Chat: Khalil Osiris,” Summer 2019

The post Khalil Osiris On How We Escape Our Mental ‘Prisons’ appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

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(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Sasha Kildare

Although eating healthier can cost more, there are a number of readily available budget brain foods.

#1 Almonds

Almonds have lots of vitamin E, which has been shown to prevent cognitive decline, boost alertness, and preserve memory.

#2 Apples

The antioxidant quercetin in apple skin is believed to block free radicals, which can damage brain cells.

#3 Eggs

Eggs are high in protein, B vitamins, vitamin D, iron, and carotenoids.

#4 Leafy green vegetables

Leafy green vegetables are brimming with magnesium, which helps dilate blood vessels and boost blood flow to the brain.

#5 Oranges

Oranges have a lot of vitamin C, which helps keep brain cells healthy, and flavonoids, which are associated with improving memory and cognition.

#6 Seafood (canned)

Canned seafood provides protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and B vitamins. Limit consumption of tuna to only a few times per week and stick to the smaller varieties, labeled “chunk light,” to limit your exposure to mercury.

#7 Sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes have iron, calcium, selenium, most B vitamins, and vitamin C, high in fiber and beta-carotene, an antioxidant, which converts to vitamin A once consumed.

#8 Whole grains

Whole grains like brown rice, steel-cut oats, and whole-grain pasta contain many nutrients that refined grains generally don’t have, such as B vitamins, iron, magnesium, and selenium.

Read more:
Superfoods For Better Moods––And Less Depression

Printed as “Superfoods for Self-Care,” Summer 2019

The post 8 Superfoods That Help Fight Depression & Anxiety appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Sasha Kildare

Adding superfoods to your diet can help you lose weight and decrease inflammation, but these nutrient-dense foods can also boost your mood and cognition.

We all know hangry, and Martha from Southern California is no exception. “When my 9-year-old daughter is asking me questions, and I get irritated, I know that I’m not going to feel better until I stop and eat something,” she says.

Hunger, which deprives your brain of fuel, can trigger a stress response, which often expresses itself as irritability or anger, i.e., being hangry. Whereas providing your brain with optimal fuel, such as superfoods—nutrient-rich foods that promote health—could help ease your depression or anxiety.

Brain food

“A lot of nutrients, such as B12 and omega-3, are involved in chemical production in the brain and are necessary for optimal brain function,” says Kristina Petersen, PhD, APD Assistant Research Professor, Department of Nutritional Sciences Penn State University.

“Diet is causatively associated with anxiety and depression. Suboptimal diets have a much higher association,” she says, which means eating unhealthy food can exacerbate symptoms of depression and anxiety. Petersen defines a suboptimal diet as one that is high in processed sugar, added sugar, saturated fat, a lot of processed foods, and ultra-processed foods, such as soda, instant noodles, and chicken nuggets.

Eat Complete author and founder of the Brain Food Clinic in New York City, Drew Ramsey, MD, notes, “For some folks, dietary change might be the only intervention they need [to address their mental health concerns]. For others, it may be a combination of dietary change and talk therapy or may include medication.” Ramsey add that fruits and vegetables of all colors have varying health properties related to depression and anxiety. “We always encourage folks to eat the rainbow, because the variety in color represents variety in phytonutrients [plant nutrients].”

Conor, from Southern California and now 24 years old, has struggled with anxiety since childhood. Competitive baseball served as his coping mechanism, but, at 20, an injury took him out of the game, and he finally sought treatment for anxiety and depression. “Nutrition was one of the first things [my] medical provider tried to help me with,” says Conor, who immediately made changes such as cutting out all processed foods, alcohol, and sugars.

He noticed the biggest improvement came from cutting out alcohol and sugar, which had left him tired and lethargic from the crash once the sugar wore off. This contributed to his anxiety.

“It helped a lot, but it wasn’t enough. Ultimately, we decided that I should try medication too,” Conor says. His dramatic improvement from treatment, of which nutrition was a significant part, inspired him to write Coping with Depression & Anxiety: There is Hope, a book that is meant to be a tool full of tips and techniques he has learned to use for daily life.

Inflammation influence

“If you are susceptible to anxiety or depression, nutrition can make a difference,” says Natalie Parletta, PhD, Master of Dietetics, BPsych(Hons), and adjunct senior research fellow at the University of South Australia. Parletta published a study in December 2017’s Nutritional Neuroscience, which noted a decrease in depression for those fed a Mediterranean diet supplemented with fish oil.

For a Mediterranean-based diet that benefits your brain as much as possible, she recommends:

• making sure to include fish, seafood, legumes (beans and lentils), leafy greens, other vegetables, olive oil (monounsaturated fat), and nuts;
• not forgetting lean red meat, which has B12 and iron (low iron has been linked to depression);
• avoiding processed foods as much as possible; and
• especially avoiding ultra-processed foods that are high-calorie, low-fiber, and mostly made up of refined carbohydrates, saturated fats, sweeteners or salt, such as mass-produced and packaged snacks, including breads, desserts, ready-made meals, and processed meats.

Eating unhealthy food triggers an immune response in your body. Constantly eating unhealthy food turns the immune response into chronic inflammation. Obesity can become a double whammy as excess body fat has also been linked to inflammation.

 “If you have a diet rich in anti-inflammatory food, you can decrease inflammation, which can improve mental health,” says Petersen.

Anti-inflammatory are foods that contain antioxidants. Ramsey explains, “The antioxidants are . . . like signaling molecules, and recent studies suggest the way they help us is by changing the [gut] microbiome to decrease inflammation.” 

There is another benefit. “Inflammation is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Improved blood flow from a healthier cardiovascular system benefits the brain,” Petersen points out.

Processed problems

Replacing processed foods with foods rich in the nutrients your brain requires to function optimally can be a significant part of de-escalating your depression or anxiety.

According to a 2015 Australian study published in BMC Medicine, too much junk food and too little nutritious food are both linked to shrinking your brain’s hippocampus, which plays a role in mood regulation.

“We’ve changed the human diet more in the past 100 years than the last 100,000. Overall, we [are losing] the nutrient density of our diet as we eat fewer plants and we are eating more refined carbohydrates,” says Ramsey, who is also a farmer and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.

“Avoiding heavily processed foods and eating a nutrient-dense diet has tremendous benefits for the brain. While some brain benefits are readily apparent, others work silently beneath the surface and have long-term impact,” Ramsey notes.

“I used to grab packaged foods from the supermarket that had a page[‘s] worth of ingredients, such as frozen taquitos,” recalls Martha. She has since replaced ultra-processed foods with superfoods, such as chia and sunflower seeds, fish, lentils, eggs, and berries. These gradual changes enabled her to lose 90 pounds and keep her depression and anxiety from taking over.

Going vegan

Although vegan restaurants and vegan menu options are springing up across the U.S., going 100% vegan poses challenges. Ramsey says, “Eating a vegan diet does often lead to nutritional deficiencies. That said, it is possible to supplement appropriately.”

Now in her thirties, Lauren, from Kansas, spent her early years of college living on candy bars and coffee. This suboptimal diet led to dehydration and exacerbation of her undiagnosed depression. She eventually made her way to a therapist who diagnosed her depression and realized how much her diet was having an impact on her symptoms.

With this diagnosis in hand, Lauren eventually embraced a vegan diet, and the challenges that go along with it. She fortifies her vegan diet with B12 and a supplement containing aquatic vegetables, and makes sure to eat a lot of green leafy vegetables to help get enough protein. She says, “I used to take iron, but I started cooking with a cast iron skillet,” which can add iron during the cooking process.

Although a vegan diet may work for some people, the takeaway here is that the foundation of healthy eating isn’t a fad diet. While some extreme techniques may work sometimes, for some people, it’s much more effective—not to mention safer—to structure your diet around whole, healthy foods, eaten in moderation.

Body signals

Becoming aware of which nutrient-dense foods work the best for you is a process. Considerations include food preferences, food intolerances, and expense.

Food intolerances involve the digestive system and can cause weight gain, gas, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. They are not life threatening, but can keep your body from absorbing nutrients, which can contribute to depression and anxiety.

Drew, 32 and from Cleveland, Ohio, co-founder of The Gut Program, was diagnosed with anxiety as a teenager. However, his biggest breakthrough came several years ago when he learned he had a fructose intolerance. Drew went on a low-fructose, low-FODMAP (types of carbohydrates) diet, which included eliminating high-fructose corn syrup.

“Within three weeks, I was more relaxed and had much less anxiety,” says Drew. “No brain fog and a lot sharper. Gone was the sense of worry and dread.”

Since his new diet has the additional payoff of decreasing his anxiety, Drew has become much more aware of the connection. “We go on vacation to different resorts, and, that whole week after, I am stressed out and anxious. It takes a while to get back,” He says and then quickly adds, “No one’s perfect.”

Before getting started

Make sure you have these basic unhealthy habits in check, so as to not cancel out your gains from eating superfoods.

Meal skipping

Skipping breakfast or other meals can wreak havoc on your blood sugar level and induce shakiness, dizziness, confusion, and trouble speaking.

Dehydration

Not drinking enough water can make your heart race and leave you feeling light-headed and dizzy.

Caffeine intake

Caffeine is a diuretic, which can lead to dehydration. It is also a stimulant and can cause jitters and irregular heart rhythm, which can feel like a panic attack.

Ready, set, go . . . slow

If you’re feeling low, change can seem daunting. Parletta recommends starting gradually by making small improvements, such as an extra vegetable every day or committing to one serving of fish a week. Once the small changes make you feel a little better, you’ll be motivated to make further changes.  

Lauren almost wishes that someone had told her at the peak of her depression that feeling like herself again would be a process because, “It comes so, so slow. Slowly, you feel better.”

Read More:
8 Superfoods That Help Fight Depression & Anxiety

Printed as “Superfoods for Self-Care,” Summer 2019

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