ave you ever noticed how sluggish and grumpy you feel if you skip breakfast? Conversely, think of the pure joy you may feel when biting into a piece of luxuriously rich chocolate. Perhaps you have suspected that what you eat—or don’t eat—can influence how you feel for the rest of the day. The foods we eat don’t just supply us with energy; they trigger chemical reactions in our bodies that can affect our blood sugar levels, our serotonin levels and other aspects of our brain chemistry.

Having deficiencies in certain nutrients has been shown to affect mood. Skipping meals or making the wrong food choices for our bodies can also mess with our mood-related chemistry.

The emotional power of food should never be discounted in the role it plays in our moods. Food is woven into the fabric of our lives and therefore can have many emotions and memories tied to it. I believe that there are four common food-mood relationships that can be manipulated with food in order to change your mood.

1. First thing’s first: breakfast. Have I not hammered the importance of breakfast into your head after all these years? Aside from breakfast’s slimming benefits, it can also perk up your mood. Ideally, you will sit down to a bowl of oatmeal with some milk, nuts and fruit within one hour of waking up. This balanced meal of whole-grain carbohydrates, healthful fat and protein makes your brain secrete positive neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine that perk up your mood. The balanced nutrients in the meal will help further by making you feel focused and satiated for about four or five hours.

Unfortunately, most people either just skip breakfast altogether or run out the door with some sugary pastry or bagel and wash it down with a few cups of coffee. If you fill up your body with refined carbohydrates and caffeine, you probably feel irritable, sluggish, stressed out, and cranky – not to mention jittery and hungry. Without the proper fuel or the right balance of foods, you brain doesn’t readily produce the neurotransmitters that increase alertness. Skipping your morning meal after an overnight fast can send your body into starvation mode, where your brain, your blood sugar and the rest of your body function erratically and your mood and energy levels dip. To avoid starting off the day feeling like a grouch, take my advice and eat a good breakfast like the one described above.

2. Kick the caffeine and carb habit.If you find that you require several cups of coffee to get your brain started in the morning, and/or you crave carbohydrates throughout the day, then your body may be telling you something. Specifically, you may need to break the cycle of food- and caffeine-related highs and lows. After chugging a few cups of coffee, you may initially feel more alert and focused, but soon afterward you’ll hit bottom, possibly with a headache or heart palpitations and almost certainly with drowsiness and irritability. If you can’t live without your morning coffee, then eight to 16 ounces of coffee or tea a day is considered acceptable, but try to have them either with or soon after a balanced meal. Since you can build up a tolerance to caffeine, take breaks over the weekend so it takes less of it to get you going on Monday morning; you’ll sleep better, too.

In terms of refined carbohydrates and sugary foods, both basically work the same way inside your body. They are easily and quickly converted into blood sugar (glucose), requiring a rush of insulin to deliver it to your cells. Once the sugar is delivered, glucose levels drop dramatically and your body begins craving more refined foods to help bring the levels back up. At the same time, your mood is on a blood sugar-related rollercoaster—up when blood sugar levels are high, and down when levels are low. It’s normal to want the quick pick-me-up that sugar can provide at certain times of the day, but ultimately it slows you down. Try to fight the craving with balanced meals and limited amounts of refined carbohydrates and added sugar. Instead of eating a candy bar for a snack, try a piece of fruit with an ounce of nuts to help control your blood sugar and your mood.

3. End emotional eating. Almost all of us have turned to food for comfort at some time in our lives — we feel sad, so we reach for a cookie to help cheer us up; we feel happy, so we celebrate with a slice of cake — but some people do it regularly and they inevitably choose foods that perpetuate the cycle of emotional eating. If it’s your heart that’s hungry and not your stomach, then food should not enter into the equation. Indulging your urge to eat when you’re not hungry can provoke feelings of guilt, failure, and shame on top of the negative emotions that you may have already been feeling.

If you tend to fall into this cycle of trying to restrain your emotions with food, then you need to break the cycle. Keep a food journal and include notes on what and where you eat, your mood at the time, and the social setting. This will alert you to any triggers that may set off an emotional eating episode. Once you know your triggers, work out a plan for avoiding them and coping with them differently. For example, if you’re feeling frustrated or sad, don’t eat cake. Go for a walk instead to release the same soothing endorphins that eating the cake would have – the result will be an extended high without the subsequent blood sugar crash.

4.Fix nutrient deficiencies. If your diet contains a lot of junk foods, fast food and highly processed foods, then it is likely to be low in important nutrients. Getting adequate amounts of specific nutrients in your diet can clinically improve your mood.

Research has repeatedly shown that eating a diet rich in omega 3 fatty acids can help fight depression. Omega 3s are found in fatty fish like salmon, sardines, tuna, herring, striped bass, black cod, and to a lesser degree in some plant foods like walnuts, flax seeds, chia seeds, and fortified eggs. Try to include these foods in your regular diet and consider a high-quality omega 3 supplement, too.

Also include foods rich in folate, such as beans, bananas, cantaloupe, asparagus, broccoli and spinach, since research indicates that folate is important for regulating chemical reactions in the brain that affect mood.

For women who suffer from PMS, including foods rich in calcium and magnesium and sources of vitamin D can improve mood swings and other emotional symptoms. Calcium and magnesium are found together in dark leafy green vegetables, like kale, swiss chard, spinach, collard, beet, turnip, dandelion and mustard greens, as well as almonds. The best sources of vitamin D are supplements and/or a few minutes of sun exposure daily.

It is possible to improve your mood by altering what you eat. Of course, your diet is not always going to be the solution to your bad mood if it is not a part of the cause, but it may be more involved than you think. Keep in mind that if your mood is negative, then you will be less likely to make healthful food choices. Try to motivate yourself to eat regularly, minimize caffeine and refined carbohydrates, break emotional eating cycles and eat a nutrient-dense diet. The benefits couldn’t be anything but happy.