Eating Out at Restaurants and Staying Healthy

Restaurants are notorious for sneaking in unhealthy ingredients. Some people think that the only way to remain truly healthy is to avoid eating out at most restaurants altogether. Or perhaps you can only eat at restaurants that are geared solely towards maintaining health. This simply isn’t true!

The truth is that with a little research and smart thinking, you can enjoy most restaurants from fast food joints up to four-star establishments and still maintain a balanced diet.

Here are some important tips to keep in mind as you continue to enjoy eating out:

1. Look for the light menu. Every restaurant won’t have a light menu, but a growing number of chain restaurants are promoting light alternatives without much searching. You may even find light menus up on the fast food board. You’ll soon find that light doesn’t always mean you’ll be giving up flavor.

2. Take half your dinner home. Dinner is served in larger and larger portions all the time. Sometimes your meal won’t be unhealthy, but your portion size will be. To avoid overeating, you can simply ask your waiter to serve you half the meal and box up the other half for you to eat for lunch tomorrow.

3. Go grilled. One way to eat smart is to opt for grilled instead of fried items. Fried foods have gobs of additional calories and fat. Grilled chicken or fish make great choices because they’re lean proteins as well.

4. Avoid drinking extra calories. If you’re watching those calories, don’t forget to count the calories that you drink. Drinking soda products or alcoholic beverages while you’re out can add calories quite quickly.

• Choose water as an alternative and then you’ll only need to worry about the calorie content of your meal.

5. Be salad smart. You can choose a salad as your main dish as a way to eat smart. You’ll probably find that there are bigger salads on the menu beyond the house or side salad. Many of them contain a bigger vegetable variety or meat such as chicken.

• Ask them to serve your salad dressing on the side rather than on the salad. Then the amount of dressing you put on the salad is up to you. When it comes to dressing, a little bit can go a long way. Here’s a tip: avoid the creamy dressings. That’s the fatty stuff!

6. Appetizers can make the meal. If the restaurant serves tasty appetizers, you can order an appetizer as your main dish. If that’s not enough food, you might want to order two appetizers. Many times two appetizers will still be less food than a main course selection.

7. Choose healthy sauce. Be aware of how the sauce is made in the dish of your choosing. If you’re eating Italian, for example, choose an option with a tomato-based sauce. This will provide you with a bigger benefit than a cream based alternative. This is also the case when it comes to choosing your soups; avoid the cream based ones if possible.

8. Include fruits and veggies. You know that fruits and veggies are an important part of your diet at home, so you should continue to seek them out when you’re making your selections at a restaurant. Steamed vegetables can be a great side dish, and fruits can likely be ordered in place of a dessert item.

Keep in the mind the same healthy information you use when building your home meals while you’re out. Don’t be afraid to indulge yourself from time to time, but maintain an awareness of your eating habits and portions and you can’t go wrong.

Are You Burdened With Negative Thoughts?

Every now and then, you can’t avoid negative attitudes from surfacing. Everyone goes through the same experience. However, you may have to act on the situation when the volume and frequency of negativity begin to rise in alarming levels.

Negative attitudes can do so much damage to your life. They can trap you and keep you from progressing. You need to counter them with positivity.

The Impact of a Negative Attitude

Your way of thinking greatly influences your actions. So, when you allow a negative attitude to dominate your behavior, you are really just sabotaging your own success.

A negative attitude also affects the people around you. When you complain incessantly, you repel others. Generally people like spending time with people who make them feel good.

The Manifestations of a Positive Attitude

While negativity dampens the spirit and kills hope, positivity does the exact opposite. In fact, a positive attitude can open up opportunities for you. You can also let the positive energy rub off on the people around you.

Contrary to popular belief, attitudes are not always fixed. But you can shape them.

Here are some tips for shaping your attitude and thinking positively:

1. Visualize. Train your mind to conjure pleasant and peaceful images instead of tragedies and worst-case scenarios. Imagine yourself succeeding in your plans. Savor the victory in your mind.

1. Write. Let out your frustrations. Keep a journal of the things you accomplished. This activity can put your life and thoughts back to order.

1. Decompress. Stressful situations magnify a lot of negative emotions. Find time to relax and restore positivity into your life. Visit your church; take yoga lessons; soak in the tub.

1. Affirm something. Read up on or invent your own set of positive affirmations. Worded in the present tense, positive affirmations empower you to pursue your dreams and remind you of your capabilities. An example is “I am strong enough to face my fears.”

1. Live. Don’t be content yourself with mere existence. Savor each day, even if there is nothing different about it than yesterday. It still is another day of life.

Each night The News Hour with Jim Lehrer shows the servicemen who lost their life. When I watch that I am reminded that another day of life really is a gift and not a given. As you attempt to shape your attitude and introduce positivity into your life, remember not to pressure yourself too much. Pretty soon, you will develop a positive attitude without thinking too hard. That is, we want this to be a reflex that instinctively happens.

How to Improve Your Emotional Health

Emotional health is as essential to our well-being as physical health. Mentally healthy people are in control of their emotions and behavior. Emotional health allows us to weather the roller coaster ups and downs of life, handle daily challenges and build enduring relationships to create  productive, fulfilling lives. When life hits a bump in the road or disaster strikes, emotionally healthy people have the strength to keep moving forward and the resilience to believe that life will get better. While many Americans work at improving their physical health, few realize the equal importance of actively working to improve mental health.

What is mental health? HelpGuide.org defines mental or emotional health as “your overall psychological well-being. It includes the way you feel about yourself, the quality of your relationships, and your ability to manage your feelings and deal with difficulties.”

People who are emotionally healthy share some common characteristics:

• They feel content. Life has meaning and purpose and is filled with satisfying relationships and activities.
• They enjoy life and people, laugh often and know how to have fun. They have created a comfortable balance between work and play, rest and activity, family and work.
• They enjoy learning new things and adapt readily to change.
• They have learned to cope with stress and adversity successfully, and when faced with problems are optimistic that life will improve.
• They have high self-esteem and project self-confidence.

There is a strong connection between mental and physical health. Adequate sleep, regular exercise, proper nutrition, a daily dose of sunlight, limiting alcohol and avoiding cigarettes and other drugs improve physical health while increasing energy and lifting your mood, contributing to positive mental health. Physical exercise releases endorphins that reduce stress and lift mood, helping to combat anxiety and depression. Adequate sleep decreases the risk of depression and increases resilience. Ten to 15 minutes of sunlight a day increases happiness.

It’s as important to nurture your mind and emotional health as it is to take care of your body. Try these strategies for decreasing stress and building positive emotions:

• Feel the world through your five senses.
• Explore your creativity.
• Share your life with a pet.
• Take time for contemplation.

Self-Help Techniques Improve Daily Life

There are many times when we need professional psychiatric help coping with a life crisis or moving through a major life change or finding our way during a particularly challenging time. People often need a psychiatrist’s professional support, skills and guidance to successfully meet life’s challenges and overcome major problems. But there are other times when we just need some practical guidance on how to help ourselves. Marks Psychiatry is pleased to introduce a new Self-Help feature on our website.

Click the “Self-Help” tab on our homepage to find useful articles prepared to help you improve your day-to-day living. Our first series of articles focus on self-help techniques designed to reduce stress, something we’re all feeling in these difficult economic times. We invite you to read the articles and listen as the specially prepared audio tracks help you achieve a rejuvenating state of deep relaxation.

Meditation. A process of blocking out external distractions and quieting the mind, meditation can help people achieve the mental downtime crucial to well-being, Dr. Marks explains. Meditation, which can take many forms, has numerous psychological and physiological benefits, including decreasing tension, anxiety and depression and improving concentration and memory retention. Regular meditation can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, lower blood pressure, decrease migraine frequency, enhance the immune system and increase energy, among other benefits.

Guided Imagery. A meditation technique that helps people focus their attention so they can achieve a state of restfulness, guided imagery is a way of visualizing a relaxing scene. By prompting you to imagine each sensory detail of a pleasant scene — a sun-drenched Caribbean beach, for example — a narrator helps you immerse yourself in the scene and live in that moment, completely relaxed and at peace. To experience this relaxation technique, click here to listen to a 10-minute guided imagery audio tape.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation. A meditation technique used to reduce muscle tension, progressive muscle relaxation is the sequential tensing and relaxing of individual muscle groups. Used to treat anxiety and depression, progressive muscle relaxation is a proven tension reliever. To listen to a 13-minute recording that coaches you through the progressive muscle relaxation process, click here.

Women’s Sleep Habits Linked to Mood

When mom doesn’t get enough sleep, the whole family suffers. In women, there’s a definite connection between sleep and mood. Worry, stress and anxiety can interfere with sleep, and sleep problems can increase depression and anxiety symptoms. According to a 2007 National Sleep Foundation study on women’s sleep habits, the relationship between sleep and mood is bi-directional. More than half of the women surveyed in the NSF poll said they had felt unhappy, sad or depressed in the past month, and one-third (36%) had felt hopeless about the future. Most reported problems sleeping, and 40% had been diagnosed with a sleep disorder.

Biology affects a woman’s sleep habits. The NSF study analyzed sleep patterns at each stage of a woman’s life:

• Menstruation. Menstruating women slept longest, averaging 7 hours, 32 minutes of shut-eye; however, 67% reported insomnia several nights a week. One-third experienced sleep problems during their cycle.
• Pregnancy. Women got more sleep during pregnancy than at any other time — approximately 8 hours, 14 minutes per night — although 84% complained of insomnia several nights a week and 30% said they never got a good night’s sleep.
• Post Partum. Women slept least — an average 7 hours, 46 minutes — after childbirth. Nearly half (47%) reported never getting a good night’s sleep, and 84% experienced chronic insomnia, 90% related to child care. Two in every 10 women experienced post partum blues or depression.
• Perimenopausal. During menopausal transition, women got the least amount of sleep (7 hours, 12 minutes). More than half (59%) reported insomnia a few nights each week; and 43% experienced a sleep disorder, hot flashes or night sweats that interfered with sleep.
• Postmenopausal. Postmenopausal women slept an average 7 hours, 19 minutes but had the highest incidence of sleep disorders (50%) and insomnia (61%). Forty-one percent used a sleep aid several nights a week.

Because of the link between sleep and mood, psychiatric treatment that addresses both issues through cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychodynamic therapy can be most effective. A board-certified psychiatrist like Dr. Tracey Marks with considerable experience treating sleep disorders can help you find workable and lasting solutions to sleep better and enjoy life more.

Psychology Plays Role in When You File Taxes

Today’s the day Americans pay the piper. April 15. The last day to pay your income taxes. Whether you filed your taxes weeks ago or plan to join the last minute queue at your local post office is as much a function of psychology as finances.

Financial experts say individual cash flow and return expectations govern how early individuals file their tax forms. People who expect a refund, particularly a large refund, tend to file early. Those with higher incomes and those who owe Uncle Sam money tend to file later. But, particularly this year, psychological forces are skewing normal filing trends.

Psychology often trumps financial considerations in determining when people file their taxes, contends Dr. Steven Krebaum, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “Generally, it may be that psychology plays a larger role than economics in decisions of when to file,” Krebaum said in an April 14, 2009 article on UPI.com. More people may be filing later than usual this year out of fear or anger, he suggested.

Fear. Difficulty facing the reality of personal finances after the decimation of investment and retirement accounts has caused many taxpayers to take a “head in the sand” approach and file tax forms later than usual. Putting off filing is a way of avoiding the harsh reality they expect is waiting on the bottom line of their tax form. Unfortunately, not knowing where you stand financially only heightens financial anxiety. It’s better to get it over with. Knowing where you stand financially allows you to act, and action decreases anxiety.

Anger. The government’s bailout of Wall Street, AIG executive excesses, foreclosures, rising personal bankruptcies, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, devaluing of retirement funds, loss of personal investments, skyrocketing unemployment — there’s a lot to be angry about and people are focusing their anger on the government. The feeling that government bailouts are being made at their expense has created a taxpayer backlash. Angry taxpayers who chafe at giving the government any more money are paying their taxes at the last possible minute. It’s a legal way of expressing their displeasure.

Is Lack of Sleep Making Us Crazy?

“Economic insomnia” is one more complication of America’s financial meltdown, and psychiatric experts warn that it could be making us crazy. People are losing sleep worrying about job loss, foreclosure and bankruptcy. The longer the recession continues, the greater the chance that the financial boogeyman will creep out of the closet and steal away our ability to provide basic necessities for our families. Nearly everyone knows someone who has lost their job to economic demons, and most of us have had to make lifestyle changes. Worry is making for a lot of restless nights. Researchers warn that lack 0f sleep increases the risk of depression and other serious psychiatric conditions.

“When you are tired, when you’re worn out, then everything becomes more of a challenge for you,” Dr. Adam Moscovitch, medical director of the Canadian Sleep Institute in Toronto, told Calgary Herald reporter Sharon Kirkey in an April 12, 2009 online article. ”Your confidence is affected, your ability to trust yourself. So there is a higher likelihood you’ll be ruminating about, are you doing things right? It significantly affects, from the psychologic standpoint, the [risk] of mental illness developing.”

Researchers have proven that lack of sleep has a negative impact on physical and mental health. People who get six hours of sleep or less per night increase their risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. Chronic sleeplessness weakens the immune system, causes changes in appetite, interferes with sexual interest, decreases the ability to concentrate, and negatively affects function and judgment. Growing evidence indicates that not getting enough sleep can also trigger mental illness, particularly depression, anxiety and mood disorders.

In a 20-year study of 591 young adults published in 2008 in the journal Sleep, Dr. Daniel Buysse of the University of Pittsburgh found that insomnia lasting two weeks or longer often triggered depression. The link between sleep and mental health appears to reside in the amygdala, the brain area that governs emotions. Harvard Medical School and the University of California-Berkeley researchers found that sleeplessness stimulates the amygdala, causing increased brain activity associated with depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. 

Because of the risk to mental and physical health, chronic insomnia that persists for weeks or months at a time should never be ignored. If worry is regularly interfering with your sleep, talk to your health professional today.

Hoodia Can Feel Good or Bad

Hoodia is a cactus-type plant from Africa that has many uses, however the native populations of South Africa have used it for indigestion or infection.  The plant Hoodia gordonii has been recognized as an appetite suppressant since the late 1970’s in Africa, but in the US there have been no definitive studies establishing it as a safe and effective appetite suppressant.

Despite this, media hype about the drug began around 2004 when 60 minutes aired a special on it’s effectiveness and since then others have followed suit such as the Today Show and Oprah catapulting it’s popularity.  To protect consumers, Hoodia exporters must be issued a CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) certificate by the office of Western Cape Nature in order for Hoodia to be legally exported abroad from Africa.  It is illegal to export Hoodia without this certification.

Why is a psychiatrist talking about Hoodia?  Having treated patients who took Hoodia (at their own initiative), I’ve seen how it has benefited most and also had some negative effects.  Most established appetite suppressants available in the US are stimulants and stimulants as a side effect can lessen one’s desire to eat.  It’s not clear what the active ingredient (P57) does, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not a naturally occuring stimulant.  As such, it can also have the unwanted affects of agitation and anxiety.  If you already have anxiety, this could really worsen your condition.

Some people have dealt with this by taking less than the recommended dose.  The pills are usually capsules and can’t be split, but rather than taking it three times a day, some people have taken it once a day at the time of their worst cravings.  I have heard some people say Hoodia “takes the edge off” their cravings giving them enough contol to choose not to eat junk or munch unneccessarily.

We know there is no magic pill to control weight, as controlling your eating requires behavioral change.  So for some who recongize that long term control of eating is a lifetime, lifetstyle adjustment, Hoodia can be something that gets them started in the right direction long enough to get used to a new way of eating and using food.

Of course, as with any drug (and herbal remedies are drugs too, just naturally occuring ones), a person considering starting it should check with their health care provider prior to taking it.