Elizabeth Somer - Eat Your Way to Happiness: 10 Diet Secrets to Improve Your Mood, Curb Cravings and Keep the Pounds Off

Blissfully thin. Take a moment to imagine what that would be liketo be joyously happy, fit, trim and sexy.

What would it feel like to wake up each morning after a deep and restful sleep, filled with energy, enthusiasm and anticipation of another wonderful day ahead of you? To have all the energy and mental sharpness to tackle any task that came your way, to thoroughly enjoy your job, family, friends and activities? To be filled to the brim every day with gratitude and hope, excitement and inner peace? To be calm, relaxed, at peace with yourself, your world, your future and your life?

What would it feel like to be lean, fit, confident and strong? To slip easily into a little black dress or the jeans you wore in high school? To have the energy and strength to bound up a flight of stairs, work in the yard all day with energy to spare, enjoy long hikes with the family or take up tennis? To feel comfortable in your own skin and to feel proud of yourself and desirable to others?

Accept that all of that is possible.

The Promise

No diet, book or teacher can guarantee bliss or a perfect figure for the rest of your life, just as no one can guarantee you will live disease-free until you die peacefully in your sleep at age 110. But I can promise that if you follow the secrets laid out in this book, you will stack the deck in favor of being blissfully fit. I also promise that if you follow my advice in the pages that follow you will feel the best you have felt in a long time, if ever, and will be thinner and fitter than youve ever been in your adult life.

How do I know that? I have been researching the link between diet and mood for decades. That research led me to write Food & Mood, which came out in its first edition in 1995. Since then, people have been sharing their stories with me of how that book changed their lives.

People have told me they followed my diet advice and found a new lease on life. Young, old, kids, teenagers, men and women all got happier, leaner, smarter or less stressed. Their energy improved. Their memories returned. They slept better, reacted faster, handled stress better. Menopausal women told me their hot flashes disappeared, men told me they no longer fell asleep in the recliner every night. Many times their depression lifted, or they were able to discontinue, or at least reduce, their medications. Often PMS symptoms vanished, or they no longer battled the Winter Blues. They were enthusiastic about life and looked forward to the future. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone told me, I never knew I could feel this good!

Michelle, a producer for NBCs Today show, is a perfect example. When she was 12 years old, she was hit head-on by a car. The car continued to drive with me on the windshield, and I eventually fell to the street and suffered a second blow to my head, she told me. She was left with a traumatic brain injury, as well as back and neck problems. As a result of the brain injury, she forgot how to read and do any type of math. Even something as simple as subtracting the number 6 from 10 was difficult for me in those early years. I suffered extreme anxiety and fell into a depression as well.

Slowly Michelle regained her life, her mind and her mood:

Good nutrition and health played a huge role in my recovery. It was Elizabeths advice about how to eat to improve my mood that helped me understand the power of foods and the effects of my eating habits on my brain and body. I gave up sugar and refined carbs and added in all the good stuff, especially depression-fighting foods she recommended, like salmon and berries. I made a full recovery and have accomplished more than anyone ever thought I would. I graduated from college with honors, served as a White House intern and now work for NBCs #1 morning show. I cant tell you how important eating well was in my recovery. It gave me the energy, determination and health I needed to battle my injuries. Food & Mood was my bible. Im so grateful that something inspired me to pull that book off my moms bookshelf. I cant imagine where Id be today without it.

You Are Exactly What You Eat

Youve heard the old adage You are what you eat. Most of us realize the truth of that statement when it comes to our physical health. We know if we drink soda instead of calcium-rich milk that somewhere down the road we are likely to end up with bone loss and osteoporosis. We know that a diet loaded with greasy fast foods will cause heart disease, at least someday. Maybe you supplement with a few extra antioxidants in hopes of slowing the aging process.

I am in full support of getting enough calcium for your bones, cutting back on the saturated fat to protect arteries and getting all the antioxidants you can to slow aging. However, it takes months, years, even decades for a bad diet to show up as a physical problem, while the link between your diet and your mood is much more immediate.

Literally, what you eat or dont eat for breakfast will affect how well you feel, how much energy you have and how clearly you think by midafternoon. What you have for lunch may well determine how sharp you are midafternoon or set the stage for whether you battle cravings at night for buttery popcorn or gallons of ice cream. It also might affect how well you sleep that night, which then affects how alert and energetic you are the next day.

Janet, an editor and actor in Southern California, says,

When I eat the right breakfast, keep my lunch and dinner light, balance protein with quality carbs and definitely cut way back on sweets, I have tons of energy, sleep better and think more clearly. Also, I noticed that when I overindulge in junk eating, I become oversensitive and weepy, which is definitely not me. What a wake-up call for how food can affect me emotionally!

Of course, your food choices today affect your long-term mood and mind, too. What you eat and how you supplement today will have a huge impact on whether you are depressed, develop dementia or Alzheimers, or lose your independence in later years. In fact, the better care you take of yourself today, the more likely you will live disease-free, sharp-as-a-tack and independent into your nineties or beyond. As one researcher put it, the older you get, the healthier youve been.