Real Talk About Mental Health

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Recovery is not a “one-and-done” deal. Healing is a lifelong process. Some of us will take pills. Others won’t have to.

When you’re not managing your condition as a full-time job it can free up your energy to focus on other things. I will refer followers to buy the summer issue of Magnolia Journal. To read the Chip Gaines Last Word essay. He wrote that choosing to wear the same outfit (the same brand of tee shirt, jeans, and boots) every day freed up his energy to devote time to the things that were more important to him than choosing what to wear.

Gaines knew our emotional energy is finite. The theme of the summer issue of Magnolia was boundless. The editors list the dictionary definition of this word: They contrast this to their definition of boundless:

Traditional Definition:

  • Having no boundaries; vast, unlimited, or immense.
  • Abundant; limitless. 

Magnolia’s Definition:

  • To see ourselves and the world around us through a lens of unlimited potential. 

Illness is not a dead-end. It offers us yes the chance for a boundless life. The fact is that if taking medication gives a person the potential to have a better life I say: Go For It.

Define unlimited: Not succumbing to internalizing that we’re hopeless. Not comparing ourselves to what other people can do and have. Expanding our limits and shifting our mindset to think: “What if?” and “Why not?” when it comes to dreaming.

What I’m against: In the evening TV news commercials sell drugs and state that a side effect can be fatal. You could die taking those pills. There’s a cost-benefit analysis to calculate: is this risk worth it to find relief from an illness?

The goal is to get rid of the shame that surrounds getting a diagnosis. A woman told me that when she was told she had breast cancer she didn’t want to tell other people. The woman thought they’d look at her with pity.

Shame lives in secrecy silence and judgment. Everyone should be proud of who we are and what we stand for. Our lives aren’t easy having an illness. Yet they can be better.

I know that if I didn’t have a disability I wouldn’t be the person I am today: championing that people living in recovery can have our version of a full and robust life.

We can have this life not despite our condition. Because of it.

The MMD (Modified Mediterranean Diet)

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This week I checked out of the library the book Change Your Diet Change Your Mind. In fact, Dr. Ede in her guide states that some of her patients choose to stay on medication while adopting the Keto Diet.

Dr. Ede is against using the Keto Diet for new or worsening psychosis.

I wanted to read her book to see exactly what she wrote and whether the hype in the YouTube interview was credible. As regards to the content it feels to me like she cobbled together evidence to make her case about the Keto Diet. She also refers to the Paleo Diet being an option.

I’ve created and coined the term MMD for Modified Mediterranean Diet as the kind of eating plan I’ve been adhering to.

My approach is what I’ve written here before: what I call my “little bites” philosophy. The strategy is to consume everything in moderation.

So that if you’re eating too much of a food Dr. Ede tells the reader is a no-no that could be a concern. Having adequate not excessive RDAs of food makes sense to me.

The issue is whether the standard RDAs recommended are valid. One M.D. in another book stated that these guidelines were set by food industry staff.

In fact, over the last 15 years, I can’t say I’ve consumed the RDAs of fiber and calcium at all. Not from drinking milk do I get enough calcium. I think lifting weights that is weight training has kept my bones intact.

What I have every day is around 60 grams of protein which is the RDA for my weight.

Only sometimes and not often always do I have the recommended “5 a Day” servings of fruits and vegetables. More likely I have 2 to 3 servings of a vegetable daily and a serving of fruit 3 or 4 times a week.

On page 281. Dr. Ede lists the fruits and vegetables acceptable in the Quiet Paleo Diet she goes into along with the Keto Diet.

These are food items I’ve been having all long with the eggs chicken and dairy in my weekly diet.

Think of choosing what to eat from these “diets” as assembling a tray in a cafeteria from the options on display. My Health Coach thinks it’s pretty hard to adhere to solely a strict high-fat diet like Keto.

My stance is that it comes down to what your intuition tells you to do as regards to what food and how much you should eat. Just like our intuition can guide us to make decisions in other areas of our lives.

Dr. Ede lists nuts and seeds as a no-no. I regularly have a serving of cashews when I need to maintain my energy in the afternoon. Dr. Ramsey the other psychiatrist who wrote a book about food and mood recommends cashews.

Dr. Ede gives mixed advice about what foods to eat and what foods to avoid. It appears she lists certain food items to avoid that are also listed in the category of foods to eat.

Choosing the eating plan that will benefit us I think comes down to researching and hooking up with a reputable Integrative Health Coach. Not deciding on our own like one woman I knew who limited her “diet” to 700 calories per day so she could lose weight.

The obsession with losing weight and being thin must stop. Dr. Ede in her guide states the often-parroted ideal weight scheme that I’ve been against for decades: If you’re 5’0″ you should weigh 100 pounds plus 5 pounds more for each inch over 5’0″.

No I don’t think so. I’m 5’0″ and today I weigh 107 pounds.

This ideal weight guideline I don’t think is realistic.

Coming up in July after this blog carnival about food and mental health I’m going to review a couple of recent cookbooks I’m using to create recipes with.

Health Coach $100 Dollar Holler

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On Sunday morning I reported on the YouTube video I watched because I think it’s worth exploring a food-based option when all other treatment fails. For those of us who have a better life because we take pills I say not so fast to discontinue this treatment.

However I know that the food we eat plays a big role in how healthy we are. Mangia Bene Vivere Bene Eat Well To Live Well is a truism.

I won’t tell others: “This is my 2 cents.” I think the information I give is worth way more than 2 cents. That’s how I created the term $100 Dollar Holler.

Today’s advice comes from a reputable Health Coach I’ve talked with after viewing the YouTube video. In fact I think in the interview Dr. Ede said not everyone is helped with the ketogenic diet. I will have to watch the video again to verify this.

What I agree with Dr. Ede about is that so-called experts are giving advice that is not credible. I think what she is saying about the erroneous information is right.

Like the idea of having smoothies. I don’t drink smoothies at all. In the era of anti-science government leaders I think we need to educate ourselves more than ever.

The profit-driven Big Food marketers will claim anything to get us to buy their processed food. Maybe it’s because I have come to question the authority of elected leaders that I’m wary of believing the claims about health and nutrition that the current regime is passing off. In the form of essays that no reputable M.D. has published and that are not peer-reviewed but written by lackeys parroting the president.

Who can we trust to give us the right information?

Per the Health Coach:

“Doing a keto diet is not great for everyone, but incorporating healthy fats is an important part of diet for mental health, hormone health, and so much more. A high fat diet is pretty hard to execute.”

This is why I’m no fan of outright discontinuing psych meds if those pills enable a person to have a full and robust life they wouldn’t be able to live otherwise.

The idea that anyone can hang out a shingle as a nutrition expert is what alarms me. In the early 2000s I contacted a woman. She charged $1,000 per month for her advice. Where did she get her training?

The keto foods I eat that are “animal” fat are eggs and chicken every week. The other fat I get is from a handful of cashews every day and a tablespoon or 2 of organic peanut butter. Plus the healthy omega-3 fatty acids in seafood.

The Health Coach thinks a whole foods, low carb, healthy fat diet (like the Mediterranean diet yes!) is a great balanced diet for most.

Her eating plan is exactly the one I’ve used for over 10 years. Minus the smoothies. Minus grains. Minus meat.

In fact the Director of the USDA is often a person chosen who used to be a Big Food industry person. As early as 1993 I bought and read the original Mediterranean Diet paperback guide.

Decades ago on the government food website the recommendation was to have 6 servings of grains per day. This was obviously because the government subsidized farmers who grew wheat.

There’s a book I think it’s called Grain Brain that talks about eating grains. For 20 years I haven’t eaten grains. Only every so often.

I’ll end here with this: it’s worth exploring other options for achieving optimal mental health when everything else has failed.

My take on this is that I think some people have what I call “beautiful brains” and this is why the medication works. What a person eats can be a factor in why treatment works too.

More than the food we eat our lifestyle choices can buoy our mood and mindset.

Coming up after this blog carnival I will talk about the simple effective changes I’ve made in the last 2 months that have transformed my health.

Food and Mood: The Final Foray

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I’m going to top myself in this blog entry. I make no pie-in-the-sky promises. I don’t sell a product. I don’t guarantee that you’ll lose 30 pounds in 30 days by following my rules.

However what I’ve been writing in here for years about the food we eat improving our mood has been verified by two M.D.s

Drew Ramsey, M.D. the author of Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety I found out is a psychiatrist in private practice. Long before I read his book I was eating the food he recommends: eggs, cod, cashews, bell peppers, salmon, shrimp, fermented dairy (yogurt) and mussels. (Italians love our mussels!)

The connection between food and mental health has been taken up by Georgia Ede, M.D. in her 2024 book Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind.

After watching a YouTube interview with this nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist I was astonished to find out I’d been doing what she recommended as well long before hearing her talk.

She recommended a ketogenic diet. Though I don’t eat meat I was surprised that all along I’d been eating the other foods in a ketogenic diet for years.

I have three eggs for breakfast. Seafood like shrimp, mussels, salmon, red snapper, flounder, and scallops for dinner. Organic chicken.

No grains at all. (I stopped eating grains 20 years ago before an expert like Ede told people not to.)

Dr. Edie told viewers to cut out refined sugars and refined fats. Like Dr. Lipman she’s no fan of vegetable oils or canola oil or seed oils. She rails against the modern-day scourge of eating processed food.

On this note the Mediterranean Diet is toast. Even the Nutritarian Diet doesn’t hold a candle to eating animal fat.

Watching the video unsettled me. It shocked me to find out that I’d been eating all the food you’re supposed to be eating.

Even smoothies got creamed by Dr. Ede. She is against this standard advice experts give people when they tell us what to eat.

Dr. Ede has had success using the ketogenic diet to treat patients not helped by traditional psychiatric medication. Some had been ill for years or even decades. After Dr. Ede prescribed a ketogenic diet in coordination with slowly lowering the doses of the traditional pills they had a miraculous recovery.

I’m no fan of taking Big Pharma pills for medical conditions that are caused by lifestyle choices. I say Take the Pill! if you need to take a pill to be well mentally physically or emotionally. By all means take the pill if it’s helping you be well.

The friend I watched the YouTube video with clarified that the psychiatric medication hasn’t been effective for a lot of people. Things got better when they went on the ketogenic diet. This is one of the few instances where I think alternative treatment should be considered. I think this because in my own life I’ve benefitted by eating ketogenic food.

I turned 60. I look and feel decades younger. The proof is in the fact that I exercise consistently and eat well. I hope by reading this blog entry you followers are energized and empowered to consider what you swallow: the lies being told as well as the Coca-Cola.

Now: I will always take the pill I’m taking. It strikes me that maybe this pill works precisely because my diet aids and abets the pill to be effective. You can’t outrun chowing down on candy bars and expect to be healthy.

The best thing is we don’t have to be rich or go broke to eat food that can improve our mood.

”t

World Organizing Day

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May 20 is World Organizing Day. I found this out reading an article on the Container Store website today.

Right on cue unwittingly the shoe rack I ordered from the Container Store arrived today. I’ve been keen to organize my shoe collection better.

Does a woman or other person need 35 pairs of shoes? I wonder about this. Is having only 10 pairs of shoes okay?

You can’t wear suede shoes in the rain, so this makes having Converse in your array a benefit for inclement weather. Or else don’t buy suede footwear to begin with. Cutting down on your required number of shoes.

Oh–I think I have 30 pairs of shoes.

I’m going to review Christine Platt’s new forthcoming book Less is Liberation when it’s published. She wrote The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living with Less. Platt’s life took a turn for the better when she became famous after this first book was published.

Her motto was to “live with intention” in how you make choices. Paring down and helping readers do so had a profound impact on Platt.

You can subscribe to her new newsletter which I recommend. In a future blog entry, I’ll talk about Platt’s entreaty for readers to be “self-ish” that is chiefly concerned with our own life and livelihood and health and happiness.

Christine Platt wrote in The Afrominimalist’s Guide that she counted every pair of jeans she owned and found out that she had 53! Pairs of jeans.

How could a person buy and own 53 pairs of jeans. This boggles my mind. I own 5 pairs of jeans total. That’s all folks.

Taking the time today to just breathe is called for when faced with the overwhelm of an overstuffed living space. Starting out with a 15-minute tidying project can help. I will write in a future blog entry here too about a super time management strategy. It could be perfect to use this technique when embarking on a tidying festival like Marie Kondo talks about.

Happy World Organizing Day!

Protein Sources and Grams

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I Googled the grams of protein in serving sizes for a few food items. If you ask me a one cup serving is OK to have as vegetables are low in calories and high in benefits.

You can calculate your RDA of protein linked to your weight in kilograms. It will likely be lower than what some people think is acceptable. I tell followers to decide for yourself in consultation with a reputable integrative health coach.

I’ve read that a person should have 30 grams of protein by noon. Having 3 large eggs for breakfast (18 gm) with a container of Fage plain Greek yogurt (16 gm) would satisfy the requirement.

1 cup asparagus has 3 gm protein

1 cup Brussels sprouts has 3 gm protein

1 cup broccoli has 2.5 gm protein

1 cup cooked zucchini has 2 gm protein

1 cup cauliflower has 2 gm protein

1 medium-sized sweet potato has 2 gm protein

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3 oz chicken cutlet has around 26 gm protein

4 oz salmon has 20 gm protein

5 to 6 medium shrimp have 20 gm protein

20 mussels have 20 gm protein

6 large scallops have about 20 gm protein

1 crab cake has 11 gm protein

1 large egg has 6 gm protein

The Happy Home

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I’ve gotten a kick out of the book above. The subtitle is The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Home that Brings You Joy.

The six chapters are Uplift, Calm, Energize, Comfort, Empower, Express.

What I’ve believed is that a person can transform a drab space or a not-ideal living arrangement into a wondrous haven with a little art-felt ingenuity and creative decorating.

A person who lives in a room in a halfway house can hang a poster on the wall with Command hooks.

Ways exist to brighten your abode and boost your happiness living in it.

In a coming blog entry, I will talk about Christine Platt’s newsletter. She is the author of The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living on Less. Her new forthcoming book is Less is Liberation.

As said, I think that livening up your home can turn it from boring to buoyant with a little simple and not costly tweaks.

For years I’ve studied and practiced feng shui. Using feng shui guidelines in our homes we can attract abundance. Generating good fortune not with money more than anything else but with health and wellbeing.

Why settle for less. Like Marie Kondo attested in her book Kurashi at Home: Organize Your Space and Create Your Ideal Life. She wrote that you’re not limited in how you express yourself in challenging quarters like a 350 sq. ft. apartment.

The Happy Home book gives readers questions to write down answers to about your ideal living space and aspects in your space today that disrupt your ease and harmony.

With guidance for creating a home that instills joy.

Sometimes a tiny act can spark a right-then improvement. Like simply arranging objects atop your desktop in a neat and tidy way. Banishing the items you kept on the desk and keeping only za few items remaining.

Simply rearranging something like this can give cheer. I’m a fan too of removing items from view that clutter up surfaces and storing them out of view.

For instance: I took magnets and other small objects off the desktop.

I would say that clutter is an insidious force that can cause us to feel miserable not only about our homes. It can erode how we feel about ourselves and our prospects in life.

I’ll end here by saying that organization is a form of self-care by design. Forget the cleanses and bubble baths and other influencer-peddled forms of self-care that aren’t really effective in improving our health long-term.

If those forms of self-care had any real lasting benefits Americans would not be getting ill with diabetes heart disease and other issues like we are today.

Tidying up is one of the best forms of self-care that I know of. It works to give us self-confidence and a spring in our step.

Now that it’s spring I say let’s tackle a tidying project or two.

2025 Spring Lower Body Routine

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1.Dumbbell forward squat: hold both 12 or 15 pound DBs between legs + forward – hips back and chest up 3 x 12.

2.Split squats: one leg back on platform with one riser- DB on same side that goes down – harder side first 3 x 10 @ 10 pounds.

3.Kettlebell swings x 15 with 20 pound KB

Immediately followed by:

4.Romanian dead lift with 20 pound KB – hold with both hands + keep feet together – bend forward until stretch 3 x 15.

5.Clam shells: for glutes – lying on side stack legs – legs bent place DB on leg at thigh and open leg / separate 3 x 15 @ 10 pounds.

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Jumping jacks x 30

+

Plank – 15 seconds on one foot – 15 seconds on other foot

15 sit-ups / crunches

+

Wall sit – 2 x 30 seconds then one time As long as possible

2025 Spring Upper Body Routine

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1.Alternating DB chest press on floor (lying flat press DB to ceiling elbow touches floor at bottom) 3 x 12 @ 12 pounds

2.DB bent over row alternating DB in each hand bend over with straight back alternately row dumbbells to squeeze back. 3 x 12 @ 10-15 pounds

3.KB upright row holding 10 pound KB with both hands pull KB up to shoulder height – stand up straight 3 x 12

4.DB curls: keep base of weight touching the entire time 3 x 12 @ 10 pounds

5. DB skull crushers – 2 DBs – lying on floor bend at elbow to bring DB next to head then extend back to ceiling 3 x 12 @ 5-8 pounds.

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Fast paced step ups x 20 seconds

+

leg raises x 15 then hold last one above floor

Alternating leg tucks x 15

+

Twists x 15

Shrimp Sandwich Recipe

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This is a no-oven recipe if like me you buy grilled shrimp that is pre-cooked. Otherwise it might take 5 to 7 minutes to heat the shrimp. Either way it’s a quick and easy dinner to create.

I’ve altered this recipe. I thought it would taste better if the bread were toasted. So I used a panini grill for a couple minutes. The recipe originally called for softened butter. I don’t like eating raw butter. Plus it called for mayonnaise at the same time as the butter.

I opted to buy Primal Kitchen mayonnaise with avocado oil.

This brand of mayonnaise tastes better I think. As regular mayonnaise is made with soybean oil which comes from GMO soybean crops.

This sandwich is delicious. However it’s a light meal on its own so I recommend having a salad with the sammy. Or better yet in keeping with the seafood theme a can of clam chowder.

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1/8 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

2 slices of whole wheat sandwich bread.

2 1/2 tablespoons minced cooked medium shrimp

2 teaspoons of mayonnaise

I slice tomato

Crispy salted potato chips.

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Stir mayonnaise and shrimp together. Sprinkle Old Bay seasoning on one slice of bread. Spread shrimp on bread. Top with tomato slice. Then top with potato chips. Cover with other slice of bread. Cut bread diagonally.

The next time I make this I’m going to heat up New England Clam chowder to serve with it.

Tasty!