Dieting is a national past time. So is feasting. And people see-saw back and forth between the two.

It’s not a fun way to live, nor a healthy one.

This instability of staying on a given path reminds us of the paths drug addicts take who are trying to get clean and sober and fluctuate between sobriety and their next high.

We have to get to a point, where we realize that certain foods do not belong in the body anymore than drugs do. We are not convinced of this and thus we view a diet as something we do temporarily and count the days until we can go back to eating what we want.

The trick is to learn to view problem foods as well, a problem. Something not to be consumed ever just like cocaine is not to be consumed.

We don’t “diet”; we eat healthy. And we commit to eating healthy every single day of our lives because we want to be healthy every single day of our lives.

We need to learn to love healthy foods and to not see junk foods or animal foods as “food”. With such a beautiful array of colors, tastes and shapes and sizes, the scope of fruits and vegetables to choose from is truly staggering and wonderful.

Think about this logically: would you just work hard at your job only some of the time in order to become successful and goof off and call in sick the rest of the time and expect to get a promotion and move ahead?

Would you expect to get good grades in school by studying for some of the tests but just wing it for other tests?

Would you expect to get good results in your garden by watering some of the time or just for a month and then ignore it at other times?

Why is it that we view eating healthy foods as an option and eating junk foods as a “right” and a “luxury”? Who sold you a bill of goods convincing you that eating junk foods was a way to “reward” yourself? Reward yourself with what? Disease? Cellulite? A fat belly? Medical bills that can bankrupt you?

The food industry has done its job well in conditioning people to equate their foods with love and good times and to have you equate healthy foods with deprivation and punishment.

The trick to living well is to live well. And by this I mean to LOVE what you are eating.

We simply have not learned YET how to make healthy foods divinely appetizing. But you can see by the above photos that eating this way is far from lacking in taste.

We have a natural sweet tooth and fruit appeals to everyone. Vegetables add that savory component when we want something that is not sweet. The colors of vegetables and their tastes are equally stunning.

We can  learn to give our bodies what they want and need and not to stuff stress with food-substances that numb our psyches. I love the principles in the chart below. Study these and learn to live by them. Get back in touch with your body’s energy levels and signals it gives you. Listen to your digestion, sleep quality and skin quality after you’ve eaten certain foods. These will tell you if what you’ve put into your body agrees with you or not.

You don’t ever hear about people being “addicted” to vegetables or fruit. Sure, we may have our favorites that we joke about being addicted to, but we don’t truly overdose on them like people do with cake, chocolate or pizza.

Gluten and dairy are “addictive” due to the opiates that are in them that have a calming effect on the mind due to diminished blood flow to the brain that these cause. However, they also cause severe bloating in some people that leads to extreme intestinal distress not to mention other problems.

So if you bring a salad or fruit with you to work and someone asks you if you are on a diet, tell them that this is the way that you eat all the time and that you love healthy foods.

View pizza as cardboard with glue on it and hamburgers as silly putty with Styrofoam buns.

Candy bars are sticks of butter flavored with sugar and cocoa.

Our “mentality” needs to be re-conditioned to see the reality of these foods for what they are.

They are not food. Not that belongs inside of YOUR body.

Fruit does a body good and is the best food to eat.

Photo above courtesy of With Raw Intentions