The most noticeable change was my roller coaster of happy-sad emotions seemed to have less dips and valleys. When I was able to maintain a positive state of mind that sensation lasted for a day or two versus the usual three or four mood swings in one day.

On Wednesday I gave into a homemade cinnamon-roll cake that my Mom had made for my little brother. I justified it by it being my “little brother’s birthday and how can I disappoint?” My cheating the PB isn’t what is remarkable here. What is remarkable is Wednesday would have been a 3 day positive state of mind streak. With the intake of those crappy bread carbs and sugar carbs I immediately felt lethargic and depressed. That experience, combined with these strings of comments has absolutely re-enforced just HOW IMPORTANT NUTRITION IS. That even though I may not be 100% in terms of a positive mental capacity despite my lifestyle change, I shutter to think what my mental state would be today if I hadn’t decided to clean up my lifestyle less then 2 years ago.

Thank you for communities like MDA and CrossFit. Lives are being changed and I am glad to be a part of it.

Zach

Your post actually inspired a lengthy related post on my blog. I referenced and quoted a small portion of this post to credit your input; just thought you’d like to know.

I’m sorry things are so tough. Going along with RG’s comment about Mindfulness books, I highly recommend Cheri Huber (Buddhist author). Her book There Is Nothing Wrong with You has great info about how our conditioned minds cause us to suffer.

And all therapy doesn’t mean taking pills, so you might check out some good therapists in your area…do some research on a form of therapy called EMDR and see if you think it might be helpful. (It did me a world of good!)

By the way, you should be very proud of all you are doing for yourself!!

Take care.

The fact that you do NOT want to be slave to the pills says a lot about you! Hang In There! We have all been there in one form or another. I recently went through some rough crap & sunk to the lowest I had ever been. But I finally realized that I had some awesome friends/family who stuck by me & held on & just knowing that gave me the strength to pull out of that hole. don’t look back! Look around & look fwd! Look at what you have accomplished so far, hold your head up & Be Proud! It’s hard to retrain your mind, but you have made the 1st & hardest step by recognizing your “faulty thinking”. I have found that it gets progressively easier to correct faulty thinking, soon the new replaces the old. Hey, if you have to, be like Al Franken/Stuart Smalley & repeat “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough & gosh darn it, people like me!”

I am so sorry life is pretty bad for you right now.

At times life takes lousy turns we cannot do anything about. Moreover, we may have been born with a propensity towards negative thinking and unpleasant emotionality. What to do?

You can take pride in the fact that Grok was similar – without habitually negative, anxious thinking he would have died by misadventure and humanity would have died out as a result of too much social and environmental risk taking. Grok was healthy, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes anxious. We had to evolve a capacity for fear and gloomy pessimism…it’s in my genes (especially as a Northern European who avoided risks such as emmigration!) Ever wonder why the world’s extraverts and positive thinkers tend to live in LA – the furthest point West requiring the biggest accumulation of risks in travel and social exchanges.

As I said in my previous post, my feeling about positive thinking is that it’s great if it is spontaneous, heartfelt and bubbles up from within. For most of us though, it’s not. Hence, I live a long way from Califronia (unfortunately!)

Second, I truly believe that the more attention we deploy to our thinking the worse we feel. A great researcher called Susan Nolen-Hoeksema writes of ‘rumination’ as a key component in depression. This involves our repetitive, recurrent consideration and over-analysis of life’s problems – usually we just figure things are hopeless and feel lousy. Deliberating over why, how, etc. leads us into spirals of anxiety and depression because we won’t reach answers. Likewise, worrying leads us nowehere.

We cannot stop the tide of intrusive, negative, worrisome or gloomy thoughts – but we do have executive control about how long we extend our contact with these thoughts. For example, I might make a mistake at work. I might have an unavoidably fast intrusive thought like ‘I’m an idiot’. I may then spend the afternoon considering all the other mistakes I made in life, or wondering what my colleagues think, or trying to find evidence that I’m not really an idiot and that I’m just stressed and I’m really a good guy. At the end of the day this extension of my thinking – this ‘rumination’ – leads me further into stress and depression. I get nowehere with it.

Instead, I need to note it, then refocus. It’s our only armour against our negative minds and it works. Our prefrontal lobes can guide us to nonjudgmental awareness of the world as revealed by our senses, not our internally generated thoughts. In a phrase – ‘think less and observe more’. Try to utilise your full mental capacity noticing your environment, colour, shapes. Notice sounds, be curious. Tune in to radio shows while driving. Listen in detail to the drummer in your favourite band as a track plays…listen and look in detail at life.

Stay active as this gives your attention frequent anchors…conversations, art, music, books and literature, magazines, sports, outdoors…a full life provides good opportunity to live outside the confines of our minds’ automatic operations.

This what Zen masters actually mean when they say ‘live in the moment’ – they mean that we gently disregard our mental monologues, live life and pay attention to tangible aspects of living.

I hope this helps. You may benefit from looking up John Kabat-Zinn online, or any of the westernised Mindfulness literature.

Good luck Zach!
RG

I feel for you, man. I imagine it can be incredibly frustrating doing everything “right” from a health standpoint and still battling something as pervasive as stress and depression. I think this question deserves an elaborate answer. I’ll try to work it into my schedule. Thanks for the comment, Zach, and stay in touch.

I have written you (Mark) previously about nutrition but this post hits home in another fashion. I am stressed out. Plain and simple. I seem to have this inherent negative outlook on everything. I am not confident, I over-analyze everything, I am cynical and the list goes on. I have always been that way. The best thing I have going for me, mentally, is I have a great sense of humor. I laugh A LOT. People say that all the time about themselves but with me it is true. If you met me you’d probably think, “Wow, that is a happy guy”. Inside I am anguished and lonely despite my large group of friends.

Within the last year and a half I have changed my lifestyle to include PB and CrossFit. Nutritionally and physically I have changed my life around. I have lost 80lbs. BUT I AM STILL NOT HAPPY. I know I need to tighten up in areas but I have been dealing with depressed emotions for a while. Whether I am 100% for a month or a solid 80/20 streak.
What intrigues me most about this article and RG’s response is the “faking positivity…fake smiles…fake phrases”. RG touches on it briefly, what one can do to start generating those honest positive thoughts. Can either of you elaborate?
My Dad is clinically depressed, my Mom is going through her second divorce. I am really struggling here. I firmly believe that PB and exercise is the best way from a health stand-point but how can I stay out of the shrink’s office and away from the same type of collection of pills my Dad is on?

Zach

PS – my job sucks

There’s a lot of evidence that depression (the physical condition, not just feeling a little pissed) negatively affects the immune system, for example.

There’s less evidence that actual positive thoughts benefit the system over just non-negative thoughts, but it can’t hurt to try.

I’ve forwarded this to a friend who has leukemia and another cancer concurrently. OK he is taking some very heavy duty meds, and is also doing as much as he can through dietary means to reduce inflammation, control his BG etc. etc. but I’m certain sure that his never say die attitude has literally helped him to live for something like five years longer than he was supposed to.