We know. You don't feeeeeel like exercising. Who does? Those crazy happy people, that's who. Trick your psyche into feeling better by using the brain cocktail tryptophan to amp up your mood. Typtophan is a naturally occurring amino acid that is released inside your noggin. It triggers seratonin, which makes you feel good. Think of the high that you get from some really good chocolate...that's seratonin doing its thing.

Tryptophan is triggered when you eat certain foods. A common myth is that tryptophan is the reason that everyone goes into that warm sleepy phase after Thanksgiving dinner, because turkey has a ton of it, you spike and then you crash. However, that is just a myth. Really, gorging on any big meal that has a bunch of insulin-releasing carbs is going to cause you to fall asleep in front of the TV. In fact, if you time small meals throughout the day, you'll always have a steady dose of tryptophan, thus giving you more energy and making you feel consistently awesome. 

So you feel great and are pumped full of energy to do great things like kick your own ass on the eliptical machine. After the jump, foods that contain a bunch of the T-juice.

Foods with lots of tryptophan:

• Chocolate (we put that on the top of the list because, well, duh)
• Bananas
• Turkey and other poultry
• Garbanzo beans
• Bread
• Seeds such as sunflower, pumpkin or sesame
• Eggs
• Red meat
• Cottage Cheese and yogurt
• Peanuts
• Oats
• Dates