Friday, November 14, 2008

Happy Food For a Lousy Mood

Certain Kinds of Food Do Make You Feel and Sleep Better

Planning a wedding is no easy task. It is easy to be overwhelmed with the many minute details that go into wedding planning, much less stay on course with your bridal fitness routine. And ensure that you get enough rest, sleep and eat the right kinds of food so that you are on the path to looking the radiant and beautiful bride that you want to be! What worse kind of stress can a woman put herself through. That's enough to get one down.

With that in mind, we thought to devote today's article to tips on how to eat your way out of unhappiness. Eating the right kinds of food can make you feel better. How about that?

Nutritionists say that consuming certain kinds of food can indeed bring on a good cheer. What we eat can affect our sense of well-being and even how well we sleep. For instance, a little protein can raise the tryptophan levels in the body. Tryptophan helps the body produce serotonin, the "mood-lifting" brain chemicals that makes a person feel good.

Other sources of tryptophan include almonds, sesame seeds and peanuts.

But you won't be able to lift your spirits by simply tucking into a slab of steak or popping a fistful of nuts. You have to take some complex carbs too.

Complex carbs - found in whole grains, potatoes, pumpkin and yam - allow the body to uptake and metabolise tryptophan into serotonin more efficiently.

Besides making you feel good, serotonin also helps you sleep better at night - which, in turn, affects your overall well-being.

Chronic deprivation of sleep may lead to an increased risk of depression in the long run. Serotonin is used to make melatonin, a natural hormone produced in the body which acts as a natural sleep aid.

Small amounts of melatonin can also be found in certain food such as bananas, oats, corn, brown rice and tomatoes.

But can what we eat really help us sleep better?

Certain food like cottage cheese, turkey and milk, which contain tryptophan can help to form sleep-promoting serotonin. Drinking warm milk, or taking a warm bath before bedtime, might also help.

The warm milk causes your body temperature to rise. When the body temperature cools, there is a sleep-inducing effect.

Also, going to bed overly hungry, eating too close to bedtime (less than two hours before you sleep) and eating food cintaining cafeeine and alcohol will also disrupt sleep.

Just as certain food may put you in a good mood, a bad diet is likely to worsen your mood if you're susceptible to mood swings. Indulging in food that might makes you happy, such as sweet snacks and fried chicken, may end up causing you to feel worse. You may end up feeling bloated and unhealthy after eating all that greasy stuff.

This happens because simple carbs found in cakes, biscuits and white rice can cause your blood sugar levels to fluctuate. It is rather like a roller-coaster - you perk up for a short while, and then your mood dives again.

It is natural to feel sad sometimes, but if there is no apparent cause for that feeling (after all you have a wedding to look forward to), then you should take a closer look at your diet.


A bad diet - too much carbs, processed fats or mineral deficiency can cause brain-chemistry imbalance.

Key Points:

1) Take some protein. Sources of protein include lean meat, seafood, eggs and tofu. This increases tryptophan levels in your body, which is used to produce serotonin, a mood-lifting brain chemical.

2) Include some complex carbs too. Good sources of complex carbs include wholegrains, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yam. This allows the body to uptake tryptophan more efficiently.

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posted by Wedding Diet Site at 7:50 AM 0 Comments

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Recommended Read
By LogicGirl

I know I have said somewhere on my blog that fat people bother me because the extra weight they carry, to me, signifies a lack of control over their lives. But contrary to what some people imagine, I am not at all against or discriminatory against fat people. In fact, a really good friend of mine from my schooling days has been obese all her life. But that has not stopped me from being a good friend to her! Even if I wished she was thinner (ie visibly more in charge of her life), it is the person she is inside that matters more to me.

Still, it was a wonderful day indeed when she called me and told me about this online program, Fat Loss 4 Idiots, which she has been on. She has been on a secret mission to lose all that extra weight and she was actually making it happen this time. The reason why she did not tell me about her plans was that she has tried multiple online programs such as Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, and she had failed. Not this time. And the proof was in the photos she sent me - she looked so much slimmer. She told me that she has lost 30 pounds in 30 days!

Amazing! I don't usually buy into all of these weight loss gimmicks - I believe in hard work and proper diet. But then again, I have been trying to lose my extra 5 pounds for ages by pounding away at the gym for 1 hour, three times a week, and not seeing any real difference. So my friend's recent photos of her slimmer self was the motivating factor.

I got myself into the program - and I recommend it! The site itself is cool - attractive colourful cartoons, and it explains things in an easy to understand manner reminiscent of the XX for Dummies book series. But there is nothing idiotic about the subject matter.

Actually, this program may be more beneficial to those of us trying to lose some weight rather than for the grossly overweight - the program targets 9 pounds in 11 days, and focuses on the food we eat rather than exercise. Those who have to lose a lot of weight should incorporate exercise routines as well, but that is not the focus here. Nevertheless, it does contain valuable information on food intake, which the grossly overweight could use. For the rest of us, sometimes it is changing what we eat rather than those extra hours at the gym that will help us lose that tough bit of extra pounds we need to.

Excerpt of the type of information proposed in the program:

"You are overweight for the most simple of reasons -- because you're eating the wrong foods, the wrong types of calories per meal, and you're also eating meals in the wrong patterns each day. Think closely about what we're about to tell you, since it's going to change the way you think about dieting. FOOD is more powerful than any prescription weight loss pills, because the FOOD that you eat can either make you THIN or FAT. You don't get fat because of a lack of exercising, that's a myth. You get fat because you don't eat the right foods at the right intervals each day. Also, the pattern that you choose to eat your meals each day is more powerful than any prescription weight loss pills. This is true because your body is like an "engine" and it only needs certain foods at certain intervals each day, and if you don't eat the right foods at the right times then it won't burn those calories -- and you'll wind up storing those calories as fat tissue. (Hint: You need to eat more than 3 times per day to lose weight, but we'll show you the details later).You have gotten overweight by eating the wrong foods, that much is a fact. And guess what? You can get SLIM by eating the RIGHT FOODS at the RIGHT INTERVALS each day. It's not really any more complicated than that, and the way to start losing weight has nothing to do with starving yourself or jogging ".

And I liked their list of Top Fat Burning Foods! Not bad at all :)