Food Mood

I have never realized the major impact that food (and caffeine) have on my emotional stability. I have long suffered from depression and some anxiety. Now a lot of the depression has been brought on by life circumstances, but sometimes it has been a little crazy. I would cry for an hour because I lost something. I would flip out if my husband laid something down on a space I had just cleaned or organized. I think these irrational things came from a food mood.

Yesterday I did not eat horribly, but certainly a more free day than I usually do. I had cinnamon swirl bread for breakfast, Diet Coke - for lunch a Salmon Burger on Ciabatta with mashed potatoes at Lonestar, more cinnamon bread for a snack and a Hershey Almond King Size Bar for dinner with another Diet Coke. This is not a terrible calorie day, but also not a terribly nutritious day. I did not drink as much water as usual either.

I had trouble falling asleep last night and then slept terribly. I woke up and couldn't bear to get out of bed. It took me over 30 minutes to really rouse myself. I sent my girls to go play for a whle whilst I tried to get up. Then after breakfast I was writing a big stack of thank you cards that I kept putting off while the girls played. When we were finish I went up to get them to go to the Parent/Tot Play Center in town and they had destroyed their bedroom that I had spent time yesterday cleaning. (They are generally not allowed too many toys in their room because we have a HUGE toyroom right next to their bedroom). I flipped. I mean I yelled, then had to go lay down and started crying my eyes out. For 15 minutes. All because my children did something that all children do - make a mess. Something that didn't take that long to clean up.

It hit me after I calmed down that I have not had an episode like this in a few months. Since I've started eating healthy and exercising and limiting diet coke. An "Aha" moment went on in my head. My depression in part (or at least the outward actions of it) may have been linked to my food and caffeine consumption. Food does affect the chemicals in your brain. I'll keep track of these emotional outbursts in the future to see if they are corresponding to food intake. But it seems that I might have figured out a fundamental problem in my response system. I must keep the Food Mood in check by continuing to eat healthy.

How do I diet, let me count the ways...

So I was browsing the library shelves today looking for something interesting to read regarding weight loss. What I found was a plethora of books which would make anyone's head spin. Here's just a sampling of what we had at our local library (not including what you can get in the library network)

The Zone Diet
The Atkins Diet
The Okinawa Diet
The G-Diet (gluten free)
The South Beach Diet
The Flexitarian Diet (a vegetarian type diet)
The Flat Belly Diet
The Tea Diet
The PH Balance Diet
The Mediterranean Diet
The Geno-Type Diet
The Cardio Free Diet
The 3 Hour Diet
The Abs Diet
The Inside Out Diet
The Rice Diet
The Reverse Diet
The New York Diet
The Hamptons Diet
The Hallelujah Diet
The Sonoma Diet
The Fat Smash Diet
The No Flour No Sugar Diet
The Raw Food Detox Diet
The No-Fad Diet
The Starch Blocker Diet
The No-Grain Diet
The Blood Type Diet
The Real Age Diet
The Bone Density Diet
The Ketogenic Diet
The Weigh Down Diet
The Philosophers Diet
The Paleolithic Plan for Diet
The Metabolic Diet

There were more..these were just the easiest titles most written after the year 2000.

We all know there are more: The juice diet, The detox diet, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, LA Weight Loss, Volumetrics Diet, The leek diet. The beet diet....these are just the ones coming off the top of my head. Is it no wonder people don't know how to lose weight??? There is so much different information how would anyone know which is right and what achieves results?

Isn't it crazy? I throw in the towel with all of this and just go back to the basics.

Eat less, Eat better
Move more, move faster.

My shoes weigh 1.6lbs!

Who would have ever thought that shoes could weigh so much! I got on the scale today with shoes and the number was 275. I thought that was a little high so I took my shoes off.. 273.4. Now I thought that was much better! Just to make sure I weighed my shoes at home by themselves. How crazy is that? I will never weigh with my shoes on again, because that 1.6 lbs is the difference between rejoicing in my achievement and wallowing in sadness that my efforts are not paying off. It's the little things that make a HUGE difference, isn't it? And Little by little these small losses will add up to one major one. I can't wait.