Good Mood Diet Articles

Susan M. Kleiner, PhD, RD, FACN, CNS, FISSN

Family dinners, tea ceremonies, sharing a bottle of wine, religious ceremonies, family game night, or curling up with a good book... All of these are rituals in our lives. Imagine life without them; a life without patterns, without the ability to know what's coming, or what to look forward to.

Rituals decrease stress and anxiety. When you have a plan, or you know what to look forward to, you don't have to worry about what is going to happen, what is expected of you, or whom you will be sharing your time with.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony is a great example. In an article published in 1996 in the Holistic Nurse Practitioner Journal, Keenan wrote, "When people attend a Japanese Tea Ceremony, they often remark that it had a calming effect on them." The effect comes from ritualizing everyday chores and giving them an aesthetic dimension. Rather than focusing on the mundane acts, you concentrate solely on the present moment, shutting out worries about the past and anxieties about the future.

Research has shown that adolescents raised in families with frequent family dinners and celebrations have better mental health, better relationships, and fewer high-risk behaviors. According to the researchers, "Family rituals such as regular mealtimes may ease the stress of daily living in the fast-paced families of today's society."

If you look, you'll find lots of rituals built into The Good Mood Diet. The most obvious is the pattern that you follow as your Good Mood Template every day. Your hot cocoa in the evening is a very important end-of-day ritual to look forward to as you ease into rest and relaxation, and finally sleep.

If you are a tea drinker, your afternoon tea can also become a ritual that you look forward to. I have a cupboard full of different teas that I enjoy depending on my mood in the afternoon. I have loose teas for when I'm home, and I have bags for when I'm out and about. I find it especially important to carry tea with me when I travel, bringing a little bit of home and comfort with me while I'm on the road.

Alcohol plays a big ritualistic role in our society. It is part of religious ceremonies and celebrations of any size. We associate it with relaxation. It acts as an ice-breaker at a gathering, giving party-goers something to talk about and to do with their hands.

Alcohol (more than 2 drinks per week) is on the Feel Bad Foods list. Because of the important ritual surrounding alcohol, I would never remove alcohol from The Good Mood Diet without giving you another ritual as an alternative. If you enjoy the ritual of alcohol more often than twice a week, we have created a great alternative for you. While you won't have the alcohol, it may actually be the ritual of it all that you really enjoy.

In the recipe section of the book you'll find several "smoothie" recipes that are actually wonderful juice drinks. Call them "mocktails" if you must, but we have created them to create a whole new Good Mood ritual. You can still use the fancy glassware, and get all dressed up, but instead of drinking a Cosmopolitan, drink a Good Mood Metropolitan. The Mango Mambo and Blackberry Bliss were big hits at our last Good Mood Diet Club party.

So create some new rituals that feel good to you. Even better, create some new Good Mood Juice Drink recipes and send them in to us to share online. Have a party. Get your club together and get those creative juices flowing!

Susan M. Kleiner, PhD, RD, FACN, CNS, FISSN

Heart Disease accounts for the deaths of 1 out of every 3 women. It is considered nearly epidemic. For years the symptoms and risks of heart disease in women were ignored. This week the American Heart Association published the most comprehensive guidelines yet for preventing heart disease in women. The focus has changed to a woman’s lifetime risk for heart disease, rather than the short-term risk that was the focus of the 2004 guidelines.

According to Dr. Lori Mosca, chair of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) expert panel that devised the guidelines, “Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women. The rate of awareness among women has increased from 30 to almost 60 percent, but we still need to work on the confusion around preventive strategies. We are very encouraged that the release of these new guidelines can help clear up some of this confusion and help our women engage in more conversations with physicians and health care providers as to what are the best strategies to reduce the burden of the number-one killer of women.”

The new guidelines include expanded recommendations on lifestyle factors such as physical activity, nutrition and smoking cessation, as well as more in-depth recommendations on drug treatments for blood pressure and cholesterol control that you can pursue with your health care provider.

Highlights of the changes include:

Help manage blood pressure by controlling weight, increasing physical activity, moderating alcohol intake, restricting sodium intake, and especially eating fresh fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products.

Quit smoking. If you need to quit, the 2007 guidelines recommend counseling, nicotine replacement or other forms of smoking cessation therapy.

If you need to lose weight or sustain weight-loss, exercise. Include at least 60 to 90 minutes of moderate-intensity activity on most, and preferably all, days of the week. Brisk walking is a good, moderate-intensity activity.

All women should reduce their intake of saturated fats to less than 7 percent of calories, if possible. (See the Chapter Notes for Chapter 1 in The Good Mood Diet for more information on saturated fats.)

Eat oily fish at least twice a week and consider taking supplements as follows:

• Women with heart disease should consider taking a capsule supplement of 850 to 1000 mg of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).


• Women with high triglycerides should take a capsule supplement of 2 to 4 grams of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).

Not recommended to prevent heart disease:

• Hormone replacement therapy and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) are not recommended to prevent heart disease in women.



• Antioxidant supplements (such as vitamins E and C and beta-carotene) should not be used for primary or secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.



• Folic acid should not be used to prevent cardiovascular disease. This is a change from the 2004 guidelines that did recommend it be considered for use in certain high-risk women.

Aspirin therapy may be considered as follows:

• For women age 65 or older, regardless of their risk for cardiovascular disease, routine low-dose aspirin therapy may be considered, if the benefits are likely to outweigh other risks. (Previous guidelines did not recommend aspirin in lower-risk or healthy women.)


• For women with a very high-risk for heart disease, consider reducing LDL cholesterol to less than 70 mg/dL. (This may require a combination of cholesterol-lowering drugs.)

All women should take these guidelines very seriously. If you are in a room with 2 other women, the odds are that one of you will die of heart disease. Make the choice to change that statistic today.