An Easy Diet: How to Thrive with Depression Series (Part 7 of the Series)

Welcome back to the Thriving with Depression Series! Thank you for joining me on my adventure! 

To view the full series, check out our archive! As a reminder to new readers, you can start anywhere, even here as articles do not need to be read in any particular order. 

Hello! I’ve introduced the 3 main steps of learning to thrive. If you thought this was a challenging 12 step process, it is not. But there are things you can do to help the process along. While the process itself is easy, putting it into practice and waiting for it to work can take time. Learning to thrive with depression is like losing weight. Let’s say that you gained 30lbs while at your new, sedentary job (not that this happened to anyone I know) and you decided to make a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight. I know, that is such a cliché. You could do it any number of ways. You could join an organization with meetings that teach about weight loss, you could be part of a weight loss plan that includes prepacked meals, you can work with a nutritionist, or you could just make your own eating plan. The bottom line is you are going to eat food that has less calories, saturated fat, and sugar; especially compared to the calories you probably ate in November and December. You will probably drop ½- 2lbs a week. However, you can add in other activities to improve the process by speeding up the weight loss process, increasing your muscle mass and metabolism, or increasing your energy and well-being. In other words, you can make the process more effective and/or more enjoyable. 

While you are learning to thrive, anything you can do that improves your mental health, your physical health, and your physical well-being will bring you closer to thriving. 

Self-care needs to be a priority for you. It is harder to thrive if you don’t take of yourself. This may be challenging if you have a habit of treating your body poorly or your schedule makes self-care difficult. There are people who work two jobs or have ill family members to care for. Regardless of your situation, you can start to engage in self-care if you don’t already. I have seen it said that we need to treat ourselves the way we treat others. Depression is a catch 22. It is vitally important we treat ourselves well, but we often don’t feel like doing so. That is because with depression, our long-term vision is stunted. We can’t see past our current situation and the current day. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t exercised or eaten well. We feel like we are just trying to survive. If you feel like you are drowning, you don’t want to discuss if you have sunscreen or remembered to bring your beach towel.

 The rose colored glassed have been replaced with black lenses. 

This reminds me of dieting and trying to improve your health. (I realize that this is not always the same. You can diet in a healthy manner or an unhealthy manner. So, for the sake of this article, I am referring to eating well to improve health with a side goal of losing any weight if you are not in a healthy weight range). If you only diet, you will lose weight. However, if you lose weight AND exercise, it will be much more effective. Everyone is different but I have found exercising makes a huge difference for myself. I know many people in excellent shape who do a variety of activities to keep themselves healthy. They eat well, exercise, stretch, massage, and take time for fun activities. They do more than just eat healthy foods. 

There are many self-care activities that may help you to thrive. The activities usually fit into one of the following categories: they are enjoyable, they assist with physical pain and symptoms, or they help improve the well-being of your person or your living/working space. Here are some examples in each category: (some activities may fall into more than one category)

Enjoyable: sports (watching or playing), drawing, painting, photography, writing, reading, watching movies, music, visiting museums or other fun locations

Mange Physical Symptoms: Medication, yoga, biofeedback, massage

Improvement of Well-Being: psychological therapy, exercise, clean/organize office and home, decrease financial debt

It would be overwhelming to try and tackle too many things at one time. Perhaps select a couple of items above based on what is most important to you. Most likely, you will choose an activity that you enjoy as one of your top items. It is not unusual with depression that not much sounds fun. Or part of your depression is that you are unable to do many of the activities you once did. If you are having trouble identifying activities you enjoy or currently enjoy, I recommend doing the following activity. Make a list of twenty activities you used to enjoy. It does not matter whether you still like them or can do them. The point is to make a list. You need to have a starting point and this list will be your starting point. Here is my list:

My List of Fun Activities

1. Writing             11. Going to museums

2. Reading             12. Going to concerts

3. Playing Tennis     13. Walking dogs

4. Going to the dog park     14. Going to the pool

5. Going in a hot spa             15. Going to Las Vegas

6. Going out to eat      16. Organizing

7. Sitting in sunlight             17. Going to the gym

8. Going to the beach              18. Going to the Library

9. Visiting friends      19. Going to amusement parks

10. Watching Basketball      20. Watching movies with family  

This is not all-inclusive, and it is not in order. Also, I am not able to do all of these activities right at this moment.  But that’s okay because it is a starting point. For example, I may not be able to play tennis currently, but I can watch it on television so that I still feel involved in this sport. It will be awhile before I can go to a museum, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t look forward to the future by looking online and to see what future exhibits might be coming. But what if you look at this list and nothing sounds interesting because of your depression? That is okay. Your job is to use your memory to remember the times you did have fun with some of these activities. And if you have pictures of yourself enjoying some of these activities, now is the time to take them out to peruse them. I would be surprised if you don’t feel yourself pulled toward some of these activities, in some way, after doing this a few times. Lastly, what if many of these activities no longer sound that fun anymore? What if you feel like you have changed, and this just isn’t you? Well, most likely a couple still sound interesting. And, regarding the remaining, add in some things that either you would like to try or that pique your interest because a friend or acquaintance currently practices the activity. 

Later, once you have selected a couple fun activities to start with, you can add on others. 

Please note if you are in a lot of pain or you are not in good health, proper health care may help with your mood. If you are eating lots of sugar or in a lot of back pain- improved nutrition and yoga may perk you up.  

Learning to thrive not only is a very easy process to follow but there are lots of fun things you can do to make it more enjoyable as well! There is a popular belief that anything worth doing is uncomfortable, awkward, or downright painful. That is not always the case. Self-care can be a lot of fun! If you haven’t enjoyed yourself for a while, maybe it’s time!!