Mood Food
Do you know the impact of the food you eat in the thoughts you think, the emotions you feel, the decisions you make and the reality you create for yourself?

By Javier Ramon Brito

mood-food, food for your mood, food that makes you feel good, healthy food, ayurveda

What is Mood Food?

You may have heard the phrase “You are what you eat”. It is usually related to dietary advice. But I want to use it here in a very different sense. I am going to share with you the extent to which the food you eat can influence your mood and your thoughts.

Suppose that you have a problem or situation and want to take the best decision and course of action to resolve it. You naturally start by analyzing the situation and pondering the choices you have. Then you decide in favor of what you think is the best thing to handle it.

While you do that, you might be under the influence of many factors, be them emotional, mental or psychological. All of them may influence your mood and your attitude.

But what people do not usually realize is that during the analyzing process, your biological chemistry is also going to play an important part in the way you approach the situation and react to it. The food you eat or have eaten that day is going to have an impact in your emotions and therefore is going to condition the way in which you handle the situation. This is mood food conditioning.

How Mood Food can Condition You

Some kind of food might make you feel lethargic and therefore prone to procrastination. Other kind of food can ignite your fire too much, making you take a fiery attitude towards your problem and a willingness to “solve it” by displaying anger and taking aggressive actions that may include the wish to control others to “have it your way”. Yet some other kind of food might make you feel too “airy”, ungrounded, less confident and even a bit fearful in the way your approach your situation.

So, while you may think that you are approaching the situation objectively and taking the best course of action to solve it, your perception might be inadvertently conditioned by the mood you have as a direct result of the kind of food you ate.

You might think that “it is only natural that you are angry at the situation, because it is so irritant and is driving you nuts”, or that “it is only natural that you feel frightened and nervous about it, because it is so challenging”, or that “it is only natural that you feel like procrastinating, because the matter is not urgent and can wait”.

But your thoughts are really being influenced by your food, although you are not noticing it. You attribute all those thoughts to the situation itself. And the risk is that you might take the wrong course of action as a result of it. Just like a drunk person who does not make the best choices while being drunk, you may end up taking a course of action based on a perception that is somehow conditioned by the kind of food you ate.

Main Types of Mood Food and Effects

Pungent food that makes you fiery (chilies, hot spices, heavy meat, strong alcohol drinks), also known as Pittagenic in Ayurveda, might prompt you take lots of aggressive actions, like someone who shoots a lot of arrows expecting that al least one hits the target. When you discover that it was all a waste of energy and that you ended up very stressed for nothing, you realize that it would have been better to calmly focus on the target first and then take one single precise action, like the one a karate expert takes before breaking a brick.

Food that makes you feel heavy and lethargic (junk, oily fried food, wheat, rice, dairy food), also known as Kaphagenic in Ayurveda, might prompt you to postpone the solution to a problem only because you do not have the energy to handle it at the present time, and if there is some kind of deadline you might miss the opportunity to handle it in time.

Airy food that makes you feel spacey and ungrounded (flours, yeasted food, fermenting foods, cold foods, dry foods), also known as Vatagenic in Ayurveda, might undermine your confidence and make you see the problem as more intimidating than it really is, so you may end up “hitting below your weight” during your performance to handle the situation.

Use Mood Food to Balance Your Emotions

The good news is that once you become aware if this, you can use your food to balance your mood and thoughts, instead of conditioning them.

If you have already too much “fire” in your system –as when you feel anger- avoid hot spices, fried foods, heavy meat or alcohol. Have instead something like salad, rice and naturally sweet food.

If you are already lethargic and tired, you have too much “water and earth” in your system, so avoid oily, dry foods, fried foods, dairy and sweet food. Have instead some warm, light, dry and spiced food.

If you feel spacey and ungrounded, you have too much “air” in your system, so avoid fermenting foods, yeasted foods, dry foods and cold foods. Have instead something hot and oily (like a soup) and proteins.

Mood Food and the Law of Attraction

By watching your food, you wisely manage not only your biological chemistry, but also the impact that food has in your mood and thoughts. Your moods and thoughts, as you may know, are utterly important for the law of attraction purposes.

When people want to apply the law of attraction to create their reality and fail to achieve the results they want, it is usually because they are thinking one thing and feeling another one. Your mood is part of your feelings. And one of the factors that influence your mood is the food you eat. So choose your food wisely to be in an optimal, balanced, harmonious state because pursuant to the law of attraction, you need your best, unclouded thoughts for the decisions you have to make and for the reality you want to create for yourself.