Life Hacks to Improve Nutrition for Mental Health

Hey there everybody, and welcome to today's presentation on depression and Anxiety Treatment 101, Improving Nutrition. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Now, nutrition is one of those sort of sneaky things that we don't think about a lot, but it can play a huge role in improving your health and mental health. And I'm not talking about completely scrapping the way you eat and eating in a way that you feel deprived or you feel unhappy. I'm talking about making some small, simple changes one at a time. Maybe you decide you're going to start drinking more water. Okay, let's focus on that for the rest of the month. And then once you're comfortable doing that and you're regularly drinking more water, then you can try to do something else. Make these small changes because they're going to be more likely to last. Another change you can make is eat colorfully. When you have your plate in front of you, try to have at least three colors on your plate at every single meal. Blues, yellows, oranges, greens, purples, blacks. There's lots of colors. Experiment with new recipes or foods. I am 50 years old and I am still finding new foods that I haven't tried before or I haven't tried in a really, really long time like artichokes or asparagus or mangoes. And some of those things I tried when I was younger and I didn't like them. But trying them again as an adult, I found that they're actually not so bad. Or maybe I try cooking them a different way. Asparagus, for example, when it comes out of my garden and it's like hours old, fresh, it is really, really good and I even like it raw or lightly steamed. I still don't like asparagus from the supermarket because it tastes too bitter to me. Once it's been picked for more than 24 hours, I find that it has too strong of a taste and that's my preference. My son does not like store bought spinach because it's too strong. However, I grow spinach hydroponically at and he loves that. He is more than happy to eat that because he says it's not as strong. Be willing to experiment. You can buy those tabletop hydroponic setups where you can grow your own salad greens. And you know, it sounds a little gimmicky, but it really is, really produces a much different tasting food and it gives you the option to try different things. You can try different types of lettuce and different types of greens to increase your Water. Keep a water bottle with you all the time. If you're carrying it with you, you're going to be more likely to sip on it and that can help you stay more hydrated. Try to pay attention to the caffeine you drink because caffeine will typically. Well, caffeine is a diuretic and will cause you to be more dehydrated. So will alcohol. So if you're drinking caffeine or alcohol, make sure to also drink extra water. Gradually reduce processed foods. And I say gradually do this because so much of the American diet is built on processed foods that if you decide you're going to eliminate all processed foods or, you know, all flour or whatever it is, cold turkey, you're probably going to feel stressed, depressed, deprived. So gradually reduce it. Maybe start out by having one meal a day where you don't have any processed foods and then two meals a day and then hey, three meals a day. It will be easier once you start identifying non processed foods that you like, like oatmeal that is not highly processed. You can get the steel cut oats that are easier to use. You're not having to take it from the oat itself and grind it up. But we're using things that haven't been over processed and had all of their bran and good stuff removed. A dietitian friend of mine suggested that unless you have to for medical reasons, don't eliminate anything completely. Because when you do that, oftentimes it leads you up to feeling deprived and you end up binging on it later. Find ways to allow yourself small portions of it. At our house we keep chocolate in the freezer. That way you can get out a piece of chocolate and it takes longer to eat because it's frozen and so you're sucking on it for longer, whatever it is that you like. If you like M&M's for example, you can tell I like chocolate. Get the snack sized bags and keep them in a place where you can only access one at a time. If you have all of the snacks, snack sized bags in your pantry and you get a craving at 2 in the morning, you may be likely to go through multiple, multiple bags of them. So I recommend to people if they have a hard time with self control, only buying a snack sized bag at a time or only allowing themselves access to whatever that preferred food is at a restaurant. If you love pizza, for example, only have pizza when you go to a restaurant and then don't bring more home so you're not tempted to graze on it for the next three or four hours and keep prepared vegetables and fruits handy for snacks. Baby carrots are great. Apples are great. Grapes are awesome. These are things that tend to be, comparatively speaking, lower calorie than a lot of our processed foods, like chips and things like that. Raw broccoli is great if you like it. Celery, there are a lot of things and then you find that you're getting a lot of your multiple colors through your snacks and you have things available. And an eighth thing that is on here or not on here. But I will add a lot of studies have shown that we tend to eat whatever we see the most. Don't keep processed foods. Ideally, don't keep any food at all on the counter where you're tempted to grab it as you walk by. But if you must keep something on the counter, keep things like fresh fruits available. So if you are tempted to grab something when you walk by, it's an apple or a banana instead of something like cookies or cake. I hope that gave you some ideas on some easy ways to start improving your nutrition. As I said at the beginning, take one suggestion, whatever sounds the easiest or most exciting I guess to do right now. Start with that one. Do it for a month or more until it becomes habit and you're not even thinking about it, and then make another small change in order to make sure that your changes are lasting.