Food Fight: Depression

Inspired by Meg's blog from yesterday. ;-) I posted some of this over there, but thought I'd expand a bit in my own blog.

I find it so hard to eat well during the winter months. Vegetables aren't as fresh because they take longer to arrive in the grocery stores because they're coming from farther away. It's natural to want to take in as many carbs as possible, and my girls are already carboholics. Luckily I've been able to add a lot of whole grains to our diet, but the girls could live on pasta. Whole grain or multi-grain or not, I can't tolerate pasta nearly as often as they can. Thankfully we all enjoy soups, and as far as Manny is concerned, the heartier the better. I do make a lot of soups during the colder months, and I try to pack in as many of those sad-looking vegetables as I can. But really, even when your VEGGIES are sad, it's really hard not to join them.

As well as having the generalized anxiety disorder, OCD and depression, I'm very much prone to SAD. The food list below is great... and luckily I do buy most of those foods on that list. I'm thinking of cutting carbs for a few weeks too, especially if it means it'll help fight depression AND lose some weight.


Foods That Fight Winter Depression:

"Eat wisely. This means, pushing away the leftover cake and eating sensible carbs to stimulate serotonin. Sweets and simple carbs, like white rice and white bread, quickly raise blood sugar, flood you with insulin, and then drop you in a hole. Eating wisely also means watching the caffeine, which suppresses serotonin. "If you must drink coffee, save it for after the meal," Ross says."

and

"Protein, she says, should be eaten three times a day. Another good rule is to eat four cups of brightly colored veggies a day. "This is enough to fill a (pardon the expression) 1 quart ice cream container." Vegetables are carbs, but the kind that feed into your system slowly.
Samantha Heller, MS, RD, senior clinical nutritionist at the NYU Medical Center, tells WebMD it's best to substitute fruit for cookies and chocolate ice cream. In general, the good carbs of veggies, fruit, and beans help energy levels."

and

"...try eliminating all white, starchy foods for two weeks -- bread, rice, potatoes. 'You will be amazed at how good you feel' she says. 'But you need to stick to it to see a difference.'

Even as a nutritionist, she admits to having experienced the opposite. 'I was going to visit my mother and bought a muffin for her and one for me," she says. "After I ate it, I felt like I had been drugged.'

That's another thing about seasonal affective disorder -- the lows are lower. If you are already serotonin-challenged, what you eat will have a bigger impact than in summer.

Foods to Have on Hand

If you suffer from seasonal affective disorder, you may be too shot to run to the store. This can work for you if you keep fairly healthful commodities in the pantry. Some suggestions:

Popcorn
Oatmeal (original, not desserty)
Nuts
Egg whites for omelets
Peanut butter
Prewashed veggies
Fruit
Whole grain crackers and bread
Deli turkey
Cottage cheese"


Eh, and since I'm on a health topic today:


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