hey there everybody and welcome today's presentation on depression and anxiety
treatment 101 improving nutrition I'm your host Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes.
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 gonna 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 Purple's 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 mangos 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 and 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 home 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 gonna 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 brand
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&Ms 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 snack sized bags in your pantry then and you get a craving at 2:00 in the
morning you may be likely to go through multiple multiple bags of them so I
recommend to people if they have 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 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 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 its 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