Top 4 Food Strategies to Lift Your Mood
By: Lei Mapindan
Are you feeling as chipper as you'd like? When negative feelings have taken hold of you, you might have tried adjusting sleeping patterns and ramping up workouts to combat their ill effects. However, it's likely that they didn't fully adjust your mood.
That's probably because you overlooked one major factor. How and what you eat can have a significant impact on your mood each day. And while you're busy eating high-sugar foods to "comfort" yourself, you're doing more harm than good.
Adjusting from a cranky mood to a cheerful one is actually more about what you feed your body than anything else. By making wise, healthy food choices, you can expect your mood to improve almost immediately.
Use these food strategies to uplift you and heighten your positive feelings:
- Cut the sugar. Be warned. Sugar is the enemy of stable, positive moods! You'll almost always get a rush from a sugar binge. But you can almost always expect the crash that comes when it hits your blood stream, too!
- Sugar sometimes helps when there are other factors affecting your energy level. But avoid turning to it as your source of energy.
- Remember that sugary foods have other negative effects apart from the crash. Excess sugar is stored in your body and puts you at risk for weight gain, skin reactions, and even diabetes.
- Increase intake of nutrient-rich foods. While many nutrient-rich foods might not be as "exciting" as sugar, they're better for you. They help your bodily functions perform optimally and actually elevate your mood.
- Folate, thiamine, and magnesium are believed to heighten your mood. Research has shown that these minerals positively impact those with depression.
- Although you may not be suffering from depression, you can likely expect the minerals to work wonders for your mood over time.
- Choose foods like lentils, leafy greens, pistachios, and pumpkin seeds as great sources of these minerals.
- Eat smaller, more frequent meals. Try breaking your arsenal of healthy foods into smaller meals. It might take more effort to have five meals instead of three, but your results will make your effort worthwhile.
- Larger meals are harder for your body to process. Your metabolism slows down after consumption of a large meal. As a result, you'll likely feel sluggish.
- Sluggishness doesn’t always lead to a bad mood. But lacking the energy to be productive can result in a negative outcome. That can, in turn, affect your mood!
- Stay hydrated. You've heard lots of stories about water doing wonders for your body. But you probably didn’t know that lack of it affects your mood. Believe it or not, water may be the key to addressing that lingering bad mood you've been in.
- Neglecting to stay hydrated daily can lead to uncomfortable side effects. In most cases, a mildly dehydrated person experiences headaches, fatigue, tension, and anxiety.
- These things definitely affect your mood, and you'll quickly become the person nobody wants to be around!
- Dehydration also impacts concentration, reasoning, and alertness. It's very easy to get frustrated with yourself when you're far from being on the ball.
It's always important to consider the impact of diet. Remember that your body performs in accordance with what you give it. Give it a healthy selection of foods so it has the best chance to keep you in a positive state of mind!