Change The Way You Think

Easing into a whole new lifestyle is more obtainable when its gradual. Drastic changes generally is too much change to stick with. Make one small change to your diet at a time until it becomes part of your everyday, then implement the next change.

A healthy diet as a lifestyle is easier when you can eat the same foods but upgrading the quality.

Unfortunately, most of our food is stripped of its nutrition or filled with harmful components through processing techniques. Food used to be eaten whole, fresh, in season, local, naturally organic, and not processed. But now our ingredient lists seem to be in another language. And that should bother us! It’s filled with chemicals that can harm us and stripped of the nutrition it was meant to give us.

For example, diary. Diary now has a bad wrap because most people can’t tolerate it. Why? People have been eating it for centuries, why is it an issue now? Our current pasteurization process kills all the nutrients diary has to offer. The enzyme your body needs is destroyed by this process which is why most people’s bodies cannot tolerate it. (Lactaid puts that enzyme back in so you can digest it!) Why isn’t this common knowledge?! But an easy fix for most: raw diary (unpastureized, full of nutrients & the enzyme your body needs to digest it.) Every body handles diary differently, but sometimes there isn’t a need to ditch the diary but just upgrade the quality!

Fortunately, there are now many healthier, better quality alternatives to most foods and I believe will only get better as people become more educated. I like to call these easy switches.

Diets and health trends these days tend to be focused on what you should cut out. No diary, no sugar, no gluten, no this, no that. And your left with nothing but maybe some kale. Focusing on what you can’t eat sucks all the fun out of eating. When you have too many rules, it makes it tempting to want to break them, am I right?! 

But what if we changed our focus to what we CAN eat. What instead of only thinking about what’s bad for us, we started to think about what’s good for us. If we cut too many things out of our diet, it can result in being nutrient deficient. 

In fact, most of us are nutrient deficient. Giving our bodies the nutrients it needs help our bodies to function properly. Some health issues are simply from not eating the food our bodies need. Whole, unprocessed foods are in nature preventive towards cancer, diseases and other health issues. These days, eating healthy is more important than just losing a few pounds! It’s to ensure health for the rest of your life.

Focusing on what you are able to eat leads to a change that lasts a lifestyle versus a temporary diet. Instead of being defensive, which mosts diets are, you can start being offensive in your eating habits by making choices based of what gives you nutrients. Plus its way more fun to think about what you can eat verse what you can’t!

In a fast paced, instant gratification culture, we are used to getting any food we want as quick as we want. But unfortantely we have compromised quality and health in exchange.

Good quality, healthy food takes time to prepare. Healthy, fresh, unprocessed food restaurants aren’t very common yet, (but it is getting better!) forcing us to cook if we want good quality food. And generally making things from scratch take a long time. But it’s so worth it. Good things take time.

Knowing the why behind what you should and shouldn’t eat is what motivates you to make smart health choices. Once you know the consequences of eating poorly, and the benefits of eating well, it is what you keeps you going on your health journey. When you are tempted to eat “bad” food, you remember how it can harm you and the desire decreases. The more you know, the more it manifests in how you eat.

Instead of being told what to do from the latest diet trend, you get to make your own decision based off how it affects you. Pleasure not only comes from taste but also knowing how its benefitting your health.

With a society full of “bad” food, cheating is inevitable, and helps the lifestyle change actually stick. When you are too strict things like eating out or going to other people’s houses become too much of a challenge. And sometimes you just gotta let loose and indulge.

And over time as you start eating healthier, you really don’t even want to cheat as much. The bad food isn’t as appetizing. Cheating becomes less and less of a desire, and you actually start to crave healthy foods!

It’s super beneficial to eat what is growing in season & foods grown locally. In a world we can get any food we want at any time, we don’t realize they’re can be some disadvantages to this luxury.