Living to Eat and Eating to Live

I used to live to eat.  My diet was based on what tasted best to me.  The only problem is that my taste buds had been hijacked by sweets and other less than nutritious dishes that are now difficult for me to classify as “food”.  I am not a picky eater and like many vegetables, fruit, lean protein, and other healthy options but none of it ever appealed to me when I was hooked on pizza, fast food, and sweets.

I know now that eating refined sugar, white flour, and other refined foods actually caused me to crave the same over and over.  Day after day and hour by hour.  This occurs because these “foods” have been stripped of all nutritional value and act more like addictive drugs in a person’s system.

Since I’ve eliminated these foods from my diet I have been free to think about how I would like to eat to live.  I consider the life giving properties of just about everything I put in my mouth and a lot of so called health food is tasting better to me every day.

I never really saw how intertwined my life was with food until I changed the way I ate.  Seemingly every activity was performed with a snack or soda and the only fun outings I seemed to venture on revolved around or heavily incorporated eating.  Sometimes I get a bit ancy and anxious trying to fill the void and with good reason.  I’ve been living this way for the better part of thirty years.

I also find that whenever I am at school or in public places, it seems the norm to see people gorging themselves on junk food and soda pop.  The more reading and research I do on how the way we eat leads to disease, the more I am shocked that nobody seems to know or care.  While it is common knowledge that junk food in excess is bad for you, nobody seems to be aware how refined sugar and other unnutritious foods can be responsible for cancer among a whole host of other problems.

I had my gall bladder removed when I was 18 years old and weighed almost 400 pounds.  I do not recall any doctor ever telling me that the reason I had produced so many painful gall stones could be due to my poor diet and the sugar it contained.

Eat to live is a relatively new concept for me, but it is one that I can wrap my brain around.  It makes a lot of sense to me now, but you may have to break free from the grasp of a powerful addiction to see things my way.