Diet for the Best in Life

Posted by Angela on May 30th, 2007 filed in Healthy Eating

Changing your perspective on what a diet is doing to your body removes you from judging the diet as restrictive. “Diet” may seem like a four letter word these days when you compare it to the advertising of seductive foods that are so bad for you. Food should be fun, otherwise your body feels the diet is punishing or limiting the body. Punishing the body creates stress and stress creates all the body chemistry that retains fat, fluid and toxins.

Eating healthy is best seen as consuming the type of energy you wish to create. If you want to be a Homer Simpson, then stick to the donut diet, (and he’s still a great guy at heart underneath all the layers). If you want a life and fitness level that’s consistently available for the length of a lifetime, then you want to practice consistent habits that remind you of prolonging life. That doesn’t mean you miss out on “treats” but it does mean you stay away from them long enough to appreciate them. In the “old days” deserts were never an everyday “food”, they were reserved for the Sunday meal or festivals. And in some climates, even fruit was eaten as a treat, as they were not readily available or only seasonal.

When you eat for convenience - in order to get the kids to school, get to work on time, get your work done or because its there - your sending the body the message that any old thing will do, so your body will end up being any old shape. You’re also teaching young people that convenience is more important than quality of life, they in turn have less respect and understanding for their bodies and for the natural processes that sustain and create life. Convenience and processed foods deaden your ability to savor the true taste of organic and natural foods and dampen the digestion by clogging it up with foods that can’t be broken down. Start associating these processed foods as taking your body on a downward spiral and literally clogging up your tubes – then maybe you’ll look at mac and cheese differently!

To appreciate and love the taste of real healthy food, the first step is to clean out your digestion so it can start afresh with a new perspective of foods that are good for you and your digestion. You will also need to get in touch with that part of you that truly wants to be healthy, the part that says “no” to continually putting up with second best or whatever is available. Your thinking will be “what will nourish my insides”, not “what will fill the hole”.

The art of a healthy diet becomes understanding YOUR body and how it reacts to different food and supplements while also recognizing that this process changes over a lifetime. Your body composition and digestion is a combination of genetics and the eating habits you have used your entire life. Your age will also determine what type of fuel you need to keep the body running. After eating a certain food for years, you may suddenly wake up one day and not touch it again for years. This is an example of how the body requires certain specific nutrients for a time and different foods at others. No ONE diet will be perfect for you for the rest of your life but it can be for the best in life.