Behavior Modification
is Step Six in
TORQUE BACK
a System to Fight
Bipolar Disorder
by Ken Jensen

Much of what causes bipolar is never discussed in a doctor's office. If the truths that comprise it do get touched upon, they are not given their due or they're so ineffective by themselves, their true value is lost.

Sometime a doctor hits on something good, something other than one more medication but doesn't realize that that one thing will only do its job when used in tandem with all the other things people like me teach.

This is a crime, albeit, a misunderstood one, I am sure. I feel certain that many doctors would give their blood if they thought it would bring relief to their patients. But they are trained in some other way to look at this problem of bipolar disorder. Theymhave a skewed or muddled view of how much behavior modification affects the outcome of bipolar treatmentor what its most effective parts should be.

Let's fix that:

What are some exercise and eating for good health programs that you've tried? Have you found any that are easy to use as a bipolar person? Please tell us!

Ken Jensen

Help for Bipolar Disorder

Wellness Guidebook
Second Edition 

This guidebook contains many details concerning nutritious supplements and their effect on the mentally ill mind. Great care was taken to ensure the accuracy of the information in the text. This book is intended to provide general information only, and is not a substitute for medical or psychiatric evaluation or treatment.

The author and the publisher are not engaged in providing professional services or medical advice to the individual reader. Each individual's health is unique. All matters regarding health or a particular health situation like behavior modification should be supervised by a health care professional.

The author and the publisher shall not be held responsible or liable for any harm or loss allegedly arising, directly or indirectly, from any information in this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise without express written permission of the author. You may not forward, copy, or transfer this publication or any part thereof, whether in electronic or printed format, to another person or entity.

Copyright 2010

Ken Jensen

URL: http://www.bipolar-disorder-survivor.com
Behavior Modification

Just in case I didn't already make it absolutely clear:

Step Six of TORQUE BACK (E):

Eat right and Exercise

Had to combine the two as they go hand in hand, and this was the only way to make the acronym work.  ;-)

These are two separate subjects, of course, and both are humongous in scope. For our purposes right now, I want to keep this simple and doable for you. This is really all about behavior modification in two of the biggest areas of impact. Eating well and exercising involve life changes. They are as much about behavior modification as how to interact properly with others in social settings, or how to keep track of your day, how to stay on task, etc.

But, you get these two right and watch how much easier all other behavior modifcation efforts become!

Part One - Eating Right

Anything that enters your body affects your mind and vice-versa. You can eat your way to insanity and you can think your way to poor physical health. The two are not separate. They are intertwined and most doctors seem wholly unaware of this fact, or do not give it the merit it deserves.

Beginning with food, you must only ingest the best sources of nutrition you can find and/or afford. You can't eat garbage and expect excellence from your body. Eat bad enough for long enough and you can't even expect mediocrity from your body. This is an incredibly tough behavior modification for most people, bipolar or not.

It matters where your meat came from and where your vegetables came from, how the animals were raised and what they ate, and what was fed to the plants as they grew. So go with organic as much as possible. You'll have to change how you food shop. You'll find that to be a complete behavior modification but doable with time.

Think of your body as a racecar. If two identical racecars are provided with two sources of fuel, one with a substandard gas of common mix and one with high test racing fuel, the car with the better fuel (the high test) is going to go faster and perform better, if all else is equal between them. Even the same awesome driver will not be able to get the car with the poorer quality gas to go any faster than the car with the higher quality gas. Your body is exactly the same.

The good:

You want as much fruit and vegetables in your day as you can comfortably tolerate. You want them in as close to the form they were picked as you can get. And you want them raw as much as possible. Cooking breaks down many of the nutrients in fruit and vegetables that do your body the most good. You must learn to cook and prepare your meals differently. Big behavior modification.

Plants have nutrients in them that are different from vitamins and minerals. Phytonutrients, they're called. They do wonderful things for you and they can only be found in plants. Eating veggies uncooked makes sure as much of these phytonutrients get in you as possible. Fruit has similar properties with different names. "Good for you" items only found in fruit.

Eat beef occasionally, once or twice a week tops, and choose the leanest cuts possible. No marbling.

Add more fish, chicken, and turkey to your diet. Bake or broil everything. No frying. If you must fry, use a spray like PAM but no deep-frying, ever.

Add smoothies to your day, whenever they work best for you, and mix in a protein powder with each. Ideally, you want 10 or 20 grams of protein going into you every three hours. A "Builders" Bar from Clif does the job well. A scoop of isolated whey protein in a glass of milk, juice, water, or smoothie will do it too. This type of whey plays a direct part in coming off of meds. Truehope can tell you why this type of whey is such a helpful behavior modification to your diet.

Eggs are awesome. The proteins in eggs are divided between the yolk and the white, and are totally different from one another. They complement each other and you need both in your diet. All whites, all the time, is not effective. The yolks have all the vitamins, minerals, elements and more. The whites are just protein and water. So make omelets by separating the yolks from the whites.

This seems like a pain in the butt behavior modification and it is until you get the hang of it, then it's quite easy. Like anything else. Put two, three, or four whites in a bowl and throw in one or two yolks. Mix 'em up and cook in a pan. They taste great that way and couldn't be healthier.

Drink your eight glasses of water a day. I drink about ¾ of a gallon up to three gallons per day, depending on how much exercise I'm doing. Water makes up most of your body and even more of your brain. Running low causes problems. As you dehydrate, thinking becomes clouded, fatigue sets in, hunger can be felt in place of the thirst, irritability sets in, all symptoms some doctor would love to give you a pill for when all you really needed was some water. Think about that and make the behavior modifcation.

For the best source without spending too much, get a Brita water filter or something similar. Get a house or sink filtration system if you're able. Bottled water costs too much, adds plastic to the world, and isn't always what it claims to be. Just filter your own tap water and you win.

Skim milk. All milk other than skim has too much fat in it, regardless of percentage. That's only a marketing ploy. And the homogenization makes the fat molecules smaller than they'd be naturally, allowing them to get stuck in tiny places in your body where they go to work poisoning that part of you as they turn rancid.

Olive oil. Use it in place of corn oil or butter in most dishes. Olive oil is a "good" fat and has many great healing properties.

That's a brief rundown of what to put in. As a behavior modification to your diet, it is much easier to just focus on the good. The next section gives you a picture of why I say that. Let's see what to keep out.

The Bad:

Anything that has been taken from its original form in nature and put in a box, can, or bag, is suspect. This is the absolute Number One behavior modification that all people need to enact while shopping. It is the hardest for most but necessary for the bipolar crowd. Necessary! Processing food kills the nutrients within. What you're left with is maybe cellulose (a fiber), carbs, and maybe some fats. The protein is probably denatured (no longer useful), too.

The canning process annihilates anything good in a vegetable so no canned veggies. They're junk. More harm than good.

Canned fruit is usually buried in syrup. And the good stuff has been hammered out of it as well. Just globs of sugar, soaking in sugar. Begin the behavior modification of realizing that fruit is not the same. It has to be fresh or frozen to be good for you. Fruit cocktail is bad.

Cereal, no matter what the box tells you, is just baked sugar chips, coated in sugar. Almost all cold cereal is hazardous to your health. Health food store varieties would be better but even some of them are suspect. Eat cold cereal sparingly.

Prepared hot cereal. Same same. Sugar wrapped in sugar. Eat whole oats, "old fashioned," or "rolled oat" oatmeal instead. You want the oat looking like an oat, not grains, or chips, or powdery. Eat it in the form it came out of the fields as.

Fruit snacks. As stated above, anything with fruit, other than an actual piece of fruit, is just empty sugar. Poison to your good health.

Fruit juice. Again, if you didn't squash, press, or squeeze the fruit yourself, it's just sugar.

Artificial sweeteners. Aspartame and all the rest do not belong in the body. They break down into components found on factory floors, one of which is formaldehyde. Nervous system disorders and much else happens with consistent intake. Here's a critical behavior modification that might save you life all on its own: Use Stevia instead, or if you are forced to make the choice, use real sugar. At least it is close to a food source.

Stevia can now be found outside of health food stores. This wasn't so when I first wrote this guidebook. It is a perfectly healthy, calorie-free, plant alcohol extract. I use it in my coffee and tea. It also does NOT create an insulin response in diabetics!

Coffee and tea. Talk about one of the worst behavior modifications! (I love coffe.) Yeah. Gotta limit these two, coffee in particular. Caffeine is just a bad idea in a bipolar mind. It also promotes depression, which makes you tired, which makes you drink more coffee, which…

Any stimulants. Guarana, white willow bark, kola nut, ephedrine, diet soda, Red Bull and similar drinks, weight loss pills, all of these will cause a bipolar person to freak out. Bipolar disorder and illnesses like it have a strong depression component sometimes. You get tired so you have an enrgy drink. Puer poison. Make the behavior modification of permanently removing these from your diet and watch how fast you feel a little or a lot better!

Crackers, cakes, pies, pastries, chips. Mostly sugar, fat, chemicals, MSG, trans-fats, unnatural additives, etc. Eat sparingly as these are hard to quit entirely.

No margarine. Oil and water made to stick together is what margarine is. Gross stuff. Use butter if you must. At least it's real. Or PAM for cooking or olive oil. I pretty much use olive oil in place of anything needing butter.

Sugar in any form. Again, do your best to avoid obvious forms of sugar. But learn to read your labels at the store. Sugar is hidden in everything packaged, usually in the form of a corn derivative. Corn is worked into most things we eat, or fed to the things we later eat. Corn is everywhere and that is usually not a good thing. Not in the form we get it, which is usually corn syrup.

*And there's a beauty of a behavior modification tip.* Read your ingredient labels. They are listed in order of weight. If corn syrup is listed in first or second place, you are eating something that is almost all sugar.

Fat free labeled foods. Usually packed with sugar in order to offset the lack of taste and texture from the fat not being present.

One last labeling behavior modification: bad ingredients are called by many names. The marketers often use good-soundoing terms for very bad ingredients in an effort to throw you off the scent. Check out Natural News for great info on this.

As you can see, this goes on, and on, and on.

So eat most of your food in a day in its most natural form. Easiest behavior modification to your shopping? Shop the EDGES of the supermarket. That's your best move.

Action Plan for Step 6 (Part One):

Before anything else, begin keeping a food journal. This is an important behavior modification in that you're directly learning to become aware. You're waking up to important news from your own life!

Write down what time you ate or drank, what it was, and whatever mood you may have been in around then. Write down anything that is going on inside you, be it mental or physical. Just brief notes and this doesn't have to be exact. You're looking for links to foods that make you feel bad or times of day when it's not good to eat something.

You'll easily see what you're eating and how much you're eating. This picture allows you to better plan your meals and make them healthier.

Quick Tip: I learned this behavior modification trick from Lee Labrada, an Olympia contender and top-four placer at the Mr. Olympia all through the Eighties. He was famous for his year-round leanness. (I'm paraphrasing.) "Never eat until you're full. Leave the table when you're close to full but wanting a tiny bit more. You are never as hungry as you think you are in one sitting. If you stop eating before you get full, and wait thirty minutes, you'll notice you're not hungry at all. Had you stayed at the table, you would have consumed needless calories, which equals body fat."

Don't starve yourself. Just don't pack yourself full.

An actual plan for eating right is extensive and varies from one person to the next based on many factors. While keeping in mind what I said above, eat most foods in their original form,  avoid as much processed foods as possible, and start taking an honest look at your fridge and cupboards.

You want to stop eating the junk that is easy to spot. You want more actual cuts of meat, poultry, and fish in your fridge and freezer than frozen dinners and microwaveable foods.

You want more fruits and vegetables and less pastas and cereals. Grains won't kill you (but can make some people very ill) but keeping them to a minimum is a good idea. This is in direct defiance of the food pyramid developed by the FDA, which is upside down wrong. This is another key behavior modification I'd love for you to make. Do not use the FDA as a basis for your good eating habits. Please. Trust me. They have an agenda that has nothing to do with your health and everything to do with satisfying lobbyists and special interests. No conspiracy. Simple truth. Just good business, as they see it.

And since we're discussing food let's use the following analogy: "Eat this elephant one bite at a time."

Don't go at this like a rabid convert for good health. As you use up snack foods, replace them with good foods when you shop. Give yourself permission to make the change gradually. Behavior modification can be gentle as long as you're consistent and persistent. This doesn't have to be torturous.

Keep some snack foods and chips on hand if you like and dip into them only when you absolutely must. If you try to completely clean up your diet overnight, your cravings will haunt you. So eat a little less of the bad things one day. Maintain that level of decrease and in a week or two, decrease it a little more. No need to punish yourself into healthy eating. You'll end up becoming defiant about it and stop trying. EASE into this.

If you normally have three cups of coffee, whittle it down to two and make the third cup a tea instead, or water, or a piece of fruit.

Shop the EDGES of the supermarket more than the aisles. (That bore repeating.)

Here is an incredibly helpful behavior modification: Cook large portions of food ahead of time, break them down between multiple storage containers, and refrigerate or freeze for later. Cook one time and be able to eat three or four times from that one effort. Invest in one or both of the ebooks below and start training yourself to recognize the good foods. Will Brinks has a membership site where you can have software design your diet plan. Tom Venuto explains fully, all there is to know about good eating. I safely recommend them both. They recommend each other. Doesn't really matter which one of them you pick.

It is not necessary to be a gym rat to use these. Most people aren't.

"Burn The Fat" is written By Tom Venuto and "Fat Loss Revealed" is written by Will Brinks. Both men are trustworthy beyond reproach.

These ebooks can be found by clicking on the images below:

Part 2 - Exercise

This is an even tougher behavior modification for those of us pressed for time and those of us who are so bipolar that going out into the world has become the Great Impossibility.

The human body is designed to move. Too much holding still causes breakdown. The physical breakdown leads to mental breakdown. The inactive life births mental breakdown just due to lack of stimulation. The boredom and lack of challenge will rot your mind just as much as the physical deterioration will. Remember: the body and mind are one. Bodymind. That's a key behavior modification to become aware of. Break free from the general idea that your brain is somehow in a speparte compartment in your head, having nothing to do with the rest of you. This is where psychiatry and meds fail us. Take care of one and the other stands a better chance of being OK. And they both like a challenge.

What I found was, after I'd given the supplements and Holosync a few months to work on me, I calmed down and perked up enough to get back to the gym and begin hiking in the woods again. The woods came first as I didn't have to face any people there.

For you this may mean a walk around the block or a bike ride. If you have a stationary bike in storage, dig it out and get on it. Just MOVE in some fashion. Take a swim, walk the dog, shoot some hoops, have a solitary game of handball, whatever you'd like. Very simple behavior modification. Just MOVE!

The sooner you can begin to move again, the faster your body will clear out any buildup of psychotropics lingering within you and the faster all toxins will begin to leave your body. Yet another key behavior modification: Stop thinking of your meds as something good for you. They are the complete opposite. Good food and supplements are good for you. Meds are a hurtful additive, nothing more. They buy you some time, at best, but at what cost?

I know how incredibly hard it is to restart exercise. It's even harder if you've never been much of an athlete in the past. Well, your brand new life starts as soon as you can get yourself moving.

Following my system is not just a way to remove bipolar from your life. It's a new WAY of life. It's entirely behavior modification. But don't let that scare you. Embrace it and look forward to it!

This process I am leading you through is going to open doors in life you can't possibly foresee right now. Just trust me on that. But these doors need opening. And you have to find them before you can open them. By having bipolar disorder, you have been marked as one who MUST take on this challenge in order to survive. Sorry, there it is. And this includes regular exercise.

Action Plan for Step 6 (Part 2):

I will share one more ebook and system below from Will Brink. It will explain how to begin using the gym again, but really, just do anything you'd like that involves motion. Anything. Start easy and choose goals you cannot possibly miss: 10 minutes on the stationary bike, or five, doesn't matter. Short walk around the block, park, or woods. Brief bike ride. Baby steps are the key. Rack up tiny victories as you go and you will gain the confidence to shoot for larger ones.

The two ebooks and systems mentioned above in Eating Right will also be a big help to restarting your exercise plan. Both men have such great information to share. In sharing the info from these guys, I expose you to another crucial behavior modification. Be open-minded. Be inquisitive. Ask questions and search for answers. Learn to at least consider what someone else is telling you, especially if they seem to be feeling better about things than you do. Maybe they know something you don't. Maybe they do not and are completely wrong. But at least consider.

Don't worry about any supplements for exercise beyond whey protein isolate and maybe glutamine and/or glucosamine sulfate. Glutamine is a healer of all things in the body and glucosamine heals your joints to some degree. But if money's tight, just go with the whey protein isolate. Here's where I get mine super cheap and super quality:  www.proteinfactory.com I currently use CFM Whey Isolate. One scoop in a smoothie every morning and one mixed with Cran-Grape and water after lifting. I also will put a scoop into a bowl of oatmeal at night before I go to bed.

If you return to the gym go very, very easy. Especially if you've been out of commission for a while. Behavior modification is good, masochism is bad. ;-)Better yet, invest in a personal trainer to help you get underway. Fully explain your situation and they will adopt the appropriate training plan for you.

Can't afford a trainer? Watch anyone who looks like you want to look and reverse engineer what they are doing. Watch how they place their feet, how they breathe or hold their breath, how they hold their body when doing a certain lift, hand grip, arm or hand spacing, foot spacing, position on machine, where equipment touches their body or how it travels, etc. Behavior modifcation tip #100. Be observant of the world around you. The answers you seek and nedd are, and always have been, right in front of you. This is something you'll learn to master while using Holosync.

Once you're up to some conversation, wait for the person to complete the set they're doing, and then ask them why they're doing a particular lift. Most people in the gym LOVE it when you ask them for their guidance. It is verification that they look good or you wouldn't consider them knowledgeable about what they're doing. BIG ego boost! Just be sensible and don't pick someone who is obviously training hard, intense, and interrupt him for info. It is best to leave some of the monsters alone. The mindset of one who is training intensely is all about grim determination in the face of massive pain, hunger, and exhaustion. He doesn't even see the rest of the people in the gym. It's called "The Zone." Leave that guy alone until you know him a little. Plenty of less-driven folks to speak to anyhow.

 Will Brink's Body Building Revealed can be found by clicking on the image below.

You do NOT have to be a hardcore gym rat to be helped by this book and Will exposes some critical scams within the supplement industry.

This book will lead you to Will's membership site where professional trainers and some pro lifters answer any questions about lifting that you may have. Invaluable resource!

Alrighty then! That was a lot! And this is yet another area that entire libraries of books elsewhere have covered. I gave you enough here to get you underway. The books I endorse in this section are written by men who will not bow down to the industry. They fight to share the truth.

It's very simple. The body, when viewed as a machine made of organics, instead of metal, has very basic needs. Fulfill those needs and the machine will handle quite a bit of other wrongs done to it, in stride. Ignore the basics and you can't possibly hope for any "specialty" items to help make it work right from there.

Or let's try a different analogy. It's kind of like having a house that's built in mud, start sinking into the ground, and you buy boots to keep the mud off your feet inside. You're sort of taken care of but you're still losing your house. You're just feeling more comfortable as it happens.

Your house (body) needs work. Needs maintenance. Regular cleanings have to take place. Stripping of old material and replacing with new. Screws tightened. Boards replaced. Dirt removed. Fresh air let in. Plumbing scoured. Cracks repaired.  Seasonal appliances must be occasionally started when not in use.

If the house is falling apart, a new coat of paint is not enough. Even if it's the best paint in the world. If you don’t eat right and exercise, to the best of your ability, nothing much is going to help from there. Meds won't. The other steps in my system won't. There is a certain amount of care and upkeep required here, and there is no escaping it. My whole system is about behavior modification but these basics simply can't be ignored. They're mandatory for everyone, bipolar or not.

Oh, you can slide for many years really, but then you face more problems that might take many years to reverse. Everything equalizes in the end.

Think on it, gather your inner strength, and start picking away at the materials in this step.

Be well

Ken

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