Does Raw Food Cure Depression? Can you Choose to be Happy?: My All Time Top Tips For Overcoming Depression
Hi guys,
So…there are a lot of videos being made in the 80/10/10 community about Robin Williams and whether depression is caused by being undercarbed.
DurianRider (freelee the banana girl’s boyfriend) made a video yesterday that enraged people saying Robin Williams was a failure in life because he couldn’t make himself happy with all the money and fame in the world. He said he was alcoholic because he was undercarbed and alcohol is carbs, so if you are on a low carb diet, you will get addicted to alcohol because it becomes your source of carbs, or sugar, which your brain desperately needs. He says he used to be really depressed but he made a choice to “harden the fuck up” and choose to be happy.
I hate when people say “choose to be happy” because in the moment you can’t choose to be happy and completely ignore all your emotions. It is impossible. Like if your family member died, you could not choose to be happy. :(
However, what you can do is choose to try to improve your life, and work towards being happy, like by finding out what makes you happy and going after it.
It’s so incredibly true money and fame don’t make you happy. It’s being able to do what you want to do. But if you have a million dollars in the bank and don’t or can’t do what you want to do, then you won’t be happy. What will you spend the money on? Fancy clothes? Where will you wear them? Fancy vacations? What if you don’t have anyone to enjoy them with…
Trust me on this one. Money doesn’t buy happiness.
The funniest guy in the world, some call him, wasn’t happy.
Think of Marilyn Monroe…the most beautiful full of life girl who ever lived, some say…also was extremely unhappy.
How to be happy? How to not be depressed?
This is a question I am always asking myself.
For a lot of my life I have been one of those depressed unhappy people. Why? I thought I was weird, fat, that no one liked me, I was very shy, inhibited, self conscious, had social anxiety…I thought I’d never have the love I wanted, I had a hard time opening up, connecting to people, felt different, was a loner. I had a lot of heartbreak from relationships.
But on the plus side, I was always very motivated to find out the answers and to find a way to not be sad and be happy instead. Like in college, when I was very depressed over a guy I was desperately in love with, I was sent to a psychiatrist by the school therapist and she asked me to take antidepressants. Everyone wanted me to. But I refused. I wanted to cure myself. I knew my depression was because of problems in my life and I wanted to find the answers to those problems. Everyone disagreed with me and told me it was a chemical imbalance in the brain and I needed to take drugs, but I knew I was unhappy because I had issues that I could learn to overcome.
After trying a lot of stuff, (like hundreds of self help books, mega doses of vitamins, exercising intensely training for a half marathon, mega doses of fish oil–none of those things worked like people said they did) I did cure myself of depression. Though I am still a sensitive soul who takes things hard I learned a lot of better life skills and now I don’t fall into a deep dark hole for years as I once did. I want to share some tips in case it helps someone. These are good tips!
1. If you are currently depressed, read the book Feeling Good by David Burns. This book is the book that lifted the spell of my depression. As it does for almost everyone who reads it. Check out the five star amazon reviews. I am an uber fan of this book, even posing as a therapist to go to a therapist conference to meet the author. Next read all his books multiple times as I have. I owe so much to this author. All his books continue to inspire me daily.
These books gave me the rules of life. It made me realize life will work out if you have the right attitude. It explains how to think rationally about your depressing thoughts. It really really works. This is my number one tip, even above fruitarianism.
2. Go fully raw 80/10/10 fruitarian or raw till 4.
Doing this will do a couple of things for you.
Improve your looks. Make you look younger. Noticeably improve your skin. Make you lose weight. How can that not make you feel good, when you see those changes happening.
Give you a new passion. You will start getting into the whole vegan scene. Reading 80/10/10 by doug graham. Getting into natural health. Watching a ton of youtube videos. Making new recipes. Trying out new tools, like a spiralizer. Connecting you to other vegans in the community.
Completely destroy the guilty panicked feelings you feel around your weight, over eating or eating junk food. You will never again feel bad about eating. Like, I ate wayyy too much. Or I shouldn’t have eaten that. Or I’m on a new diet starting tomorrow. Or I NEED to lose weight. No…you will toss all the stress and drama around eating and weightloss in the trash. Instead you will always be able to eat till your completely full. And still know over time you will lose weight.
Possibly give you a lot more energy in life and spasms of ecstasy and wellbeing. Especially if you go fully raw, you will experience bizarre super human like levels of fitness, energy, and amazing feeling of well being. Ok, this can only improve your life and feelings about life in general.
I recommend reading 80/10/10 by Doug Graham to begin with, and then maybe checking out some vegan youtubers like freelee the banana girl, foodnsport testimonials, or happy healthy vegan.
3. Every week make a very short list of 1-3 goals that you are going to accomplish that week, write it in your phone, and read it over every morning.
This one can be tricky cause you can feel bad if you don’t do your goals, but it will keep moving you forward in life and when you do achieve your goals, just because you wrote them down and kept them in the forefront of your mind, you will feel so good about yourself. Every week, on Sunday, make your goals for monday. You will be amazed at how much you’ve been putting off you can achieve just by looking at your main goals daily.
4. Write a desire list.
I got this from a really amazing book Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts that is one of my all time top favorite self help books. A desire list is a list of everything you want, from big to small. Anything from a piece of vegan pizza to your dream house to that outfit you saw in the store to world peace. Just make sure they are all things YOU And only you really truly want. The desire list is your way to get more happy. Those desires are the keys. Do what you desire and you’ll feel great. It sounds so simple, but only by pinpointing the things you truly desire in your life can you get what you want. Otherwise, you’ll never admit to yourself what you want and you’ll never get what you want, and you’ll wonder why your life sucks. That is so me. I hate to acknowledge and accept what I truly desire. But that’s how to be happy, people! It’s different for everyone. But first you have to figure out what it is YOU want.
Of course, this is harder than it seems. That’s why starting with the little things you want like …a massage… can bring out the bigger deeper things you want in life. Also it can be hard to accept sometimes what it is you want. Sometimes your desires can seem shameful, wrong even, weird, or like everyone will judge you and hate you if you go after what you want. Just remember, everyone is created differently, for different careers in life, and endowed with certain skills unique to them. What is right for you is 100% wrong for someone else.
Remember: your desires are an expression of who you are. You need to honor them, as hard as it may seem. This is something I struggle with a lot, but whenever I have just blindly trusted my desires, listened to my gut, listened to that little whisper telling me DO IT, then I have done it and wondered all the while why the hell is this soo much fun, why do I feel better than i ever have before, at peace, happy…
HAPPY. Maybe you’re not happy because you’re not acknowledging what you really want.
Trust yourself. Trust your desires. Trust that whisper. Trust the crazy voices in your head.
Practice accepting them until you can be proud about who you are and what you want.
So those are my best tips about happiness so far. I would seriously love to know in the comments if you stumble upon this post….what are your best…no..top tips…for happiness. Like what have you learned from your depressions in life about being happy? What worked? This is gold! Let me know, please. I”ll respond.
xoxox Love to all the unhappy people out there…and the recovered unhappy people out there. I get you. You will be happy again. If you follow my advice ;)))
You make it sound so easy! Read some books, make some lists. The worst part of my depression is my total lack of motivation. Finding books and making lists require motivation that I don’t have. The only reason I get out of bed most days is because my dogs need to be walked. Any suggestions for starting from zero?
Great question Nancy and thank you for reading the post and commenting! I agree I did make it sound easy lol when it is really one of if not the hardest thing I ever did… my first suggestion…Are you already seeing a therapist? I feel like that is a great way to keep motivated because the therapist will get on your back and make sure you are accountable. Also just reading Feeling Good by David Burns the book that cured me will take you from 0-50 without you lifting a finger. I really suggest reading it. You don’t even have to do the exercises in the book he recommends…just reading it makes you feel so much better. It’s hard to explain…but he even has a study in the beginning of the book that says like 90% of people who read his book reported RECOVERING from their depression at the end of the book. It seems crazy but it happened to me as well so I can’t recommend it highly enough. Best of luck to you, you WILL get through this!!!
I had a wonderful therapist for a few years, actually about 5. I had to stop when I couldn’t afford her anymore. I know there are cheap and/or free people available. I set up an appointment with one such agency, but on the day of my first visit with the woman assigned to me I had to tell her I had been denied Medi-Cal and when she relayed that info to her supervisor, I was turned away. It took an incredible amount of energy to set that up, go through the intake process and not get to speak with the therapist. I now have Obamacare and will go through their intake process once I’ve worked up enough energy to do it all again. In the meantime I’ll try to get a copy of the book you recommend. I prefer escapist novels, but I can make a exception this time. I’ll let you know what I think after I’ve started the book if you’d like. Thanks for responding to me. BTW, I came to your blog originally to read about Squeegy, as I also suffer with chronic nerve pain.
It is not easy to find a therapist I agree. Why does it have to be so complicated lol. Great job on your efforts thus far. Yes, the book will help for sure. When I read it, it helped way more than the therapist I was seeing at the time. Trust me, you won’t regret it! It’s a fun read. Are you trying to do raw food as well? So sorry to hear about the nerve pain.