Most people have experienced mood swings at some point in their life. Mood swings tend to cause a lot of stress not only to you but also to everyone who might come in contact with you. Conventional medicine does not have a lot of options to help us with this problem either, other than mood stabilizing drugs such as anti-depressants or anxyolitic. But what if your mood swings are just from feeling burned out, from feeling overwhelmed from our everyday stresses or just from a poor diet? Do we really want to get hooked on a daily anti-depressant for this problem?
Anti-depressants will just be a “band-aid” solution – they won’t address the root cause of your mood swings.
Here are a couple of simple nutritional and lifestyle tips that can be easily implemented that help in many situations. These tips can help you feel more stable and reduce your mood swings almost immediately.
- Start your day with at least 15 g of protein. This automatically stabilizes your blood sugars right from the beginning of your day. Say goodbye to your bagel and jam or to skipping breakfast and consider having a good protein shake that includes 1-2 tbsp of ground flax seeds. After a few weeks, you’ll get so used to this that your body will crave it when you skip it. It will also give you a more consistent energy level during the day.
- Skip sugary and processed foods as your snacks. These will tend to make your blood sugar spike and then crash. When we crash we feel moody! Not only moody, but we will also tend to crave more sugar, carbohydrates and gain weight… which leads to more moodiness! Consider the following snacks instead: nuts and seeds, veggies with hummus, 2 boiled eggs, rice crackers with goat’s cheese, or apple slices with unsweetened almond butter.
Plan today what you will eat tomorrow. This is will increase your success in making these changes consistently. You will notice that your mood swings subside fairly quickly. Enjoy!!!
