What you put in your mouth can be your medicine or your poison. If you’re trying to improve your diet, you may find yourself wanting foods you know aren’t good for you. For instance, do you ever find yourself sitting down to a wonderful meal, relishing every single bite, going back for seconds or thirds, and then regretting it all just thirty minutes or so later? In Western countries people do not eat because they’re hungry. They eat for emotional reasons—loneliness, celebrations, depression, boredom, bad habits, etc. Hunger is the least of reasons we eat.
When you are trying to change your dietary habits, you’ll have several struggles and most of them will be emotional, especially if you’ve grown up having access to fast food. Even family-style restaurants that offer healthy food choices have all-you-can eat buffets. This type of dining makes it easy to go back for multiple desserts and combinations of food you would not normally eat at home.
One thing you can do is to start educating yourself about nutrition. Even if you studied nutrition in school, many new things are discovered about health everyday. Read books about health. Visit web sites about wellness. In the process, you will learn about what your body needs to function, and what happens when you don’t give your body what it needs.
When you’re young, it seems you can abuse your body in many ways without negative effects, but that will not last forever. As you get older, your body will change and not be able to bounce back quickly from abuse. By abuse, I don’t mean drugs or alcohol. You’re smart enough to know the detrimental effects of doing that. I’m speaking of not eating enough vegetables and fruits, drinking water, getting enough sleep, exercise, or taking vitamins. These are things you should do on a daily basis. Not doing these thing is why many people are obese yet malnourished.
Let’s say for example, that you have a problem with chronic yeast infections. This could be directly related to your diet. If you eat too much white bread or rice for instance–or anything which gives your body large doses of extra sugar–you’re feeding the infection. Medication may temporarily clear up the problem, but unless you change your diet, the problem will return.
People who drink a lot of soda or coffee often experience a seemingly strange phenomenon: The more they drink, the thirstier they become. This is caused because the caffeine in those beverages is dehydrating you, so your body is screaming for water. Now the conundrum comes when you start drinking water. It’s not uncommon for people to start drinking three or four quarts of water each day, and constantly feel thirsty for the first several days or weeks after making this change. Don’t stop–your body is flushing itself of toxins.
When you change your dietary habits you may find yourself craving foods you know aren’t good for you. Take this as a sign that the changes you’re making in your diet are working.
