Category: Health/Wellness Publisher: Open Clearing Press
ISBN-10: 1465734303
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 60
Copyright: July 2011
ISBN-13: 9781465734303
Take control of your diet 10 minutes at a time.
Eating healthy doesn't have to be hard! The Kaizen Plan for Healthy Eating starts with the foods you're already eating and shows you how to make small, simple adjustments to your diet in just a few minutes a day.
The 26 steps of this program include mental techniques for building willpower and staying motivated, behavioral techniques that make eating healthy easier, and lots of ways to eat healthy without sacrificing flavor.
Includes:
* The simple technique that makes the food you're already eating more nutritious, and can reduce how many calories you eat by up to 10%
* Tricks for sneaking more fruits and vegetables into your diet
* How to train your taste buds to like healthy foods
* Suggestions for treating your vegephobia
* How your cell phone can make you a healthier eater
No radical changes, no throwing away half the food in your cupboards, no sugar withdrawal. You'll create a flexible, personalized plan that gently eases you into better eating habits.
Excerpt
Healthy eating did not come easy to me. I was raised in an authoritarian household, where I was expected to do what I was told immediately. At mealtimes, that meant if I complained about something on my plate, if I refused to eat something, or I ate too slowly, I would be force-fed.
As you might guess, I became an expert at swallowing foods as quickly as possible without chewing them, to avoid tasting them, and at smushing the food around my plate to make it look like I'd eaten more than I had. I would fake illness before dinner to avoid eating foods I particularly despised, and occasionally would hide food in my napkin so I could throw it away after I'd left the table.
I didn't like my mother's cooking, either: it was bland and mushy and it had weird flavors in it. Since asking what was in a dish fell into the category of "complaining," I often found myself picking through the mystery dish du jour, trying to identify ingredients.
Only last year did my mother casually reveal to me she'd lost her sense of smell after a terrible flu during pregnancy and the only flavor she could taste was salt. Wow, did that explain everything! But of course, I didn't know that at the time...back then, I thought she just hated me.
Can't get worse, you're thinking?
Sure it could. When I was in junior high, my father decided we weren't eating healthy enough, and put our family on the Pritikin diet. If you're not familiar with that one, here are the high points: no salt, no sugar, no fat. I was a teenager for whom hamburgers, pizza, and peanut M&Ms were off-limits.
By the time I was a freshman in high school, I equated "healthy eating" with "pure torture."
Worse, as a result of the no-fat requirement, I wasn't getting any of the essential fatty acids that are so necessary for brain development. I began to suffer mood swings and anxiety that wouldn't go away. I craved nuts as much as I craved junk food.
As you might guess, as soon as I was in college and in charge of what went in my mouth, my food choices swung to the other extreme. After years of craving oils, I indulged, but not in healthy oils. In onion rings and deep-fried shrimp and greasy pizza. Sugary cereals and sandwiches and potato chips were staples. The closest I got to eating healthy food was Chinese takeout. And I ate as many peanut M&Ms as I wanted. I was finally free: I had escaped the tyranny of "healthy eating."
After graduation, my diet got even worse. Half the time I didn't even manage to have a bowl of sugary cereal for breakfast--I'd pick up a brownie and a cup of Dr. Pepper on the way to work. Lunch would be fast food and dinner would be the cereal I never got around to eating for breakfast.
In retrospect, I'm shocked that I even survived that period of my life. Between my diet, my stressful temp job, and my habit of getting about five hours sleep a night, the fact that I managed to work full-time and write on the side is a miracle.
Then I fell in love with a vegetarian. It was wonderful and awful at the same time. Every time he'd offer me some healthy food or try to cook for me, I'd feel like I was a kid again being forced to eat, and I'd get defensive and upset. Thankfully, he was wise enough not to push harder. He did get me to eat a little bit better, but not much.
Then came the straw that broke the camel's back. I developed fibromyalgia. I didn't know what it was at the time--for six years I went to doctors who told me I didn't really feel as terrible as I said I did, and if I would just get more sleep and more exercise, I'd be fine.
I got more sleep. As my symptoms got worse, I reached a point where I slept for 14 hours each night and still felt exhausted. I tried to exercise too, but I could barely walk a few blocks before I'd be so sore and shaky I had to sit down and rest.
For those of you who've never had fibromyalgia, it feels like having a bad flu virus--that lasts for years instead of 24 hours.
When I finally was diagnosed correctly, I was so relieved I almost passed out. The doctor prescribed antidepressants and painkillers.
"How long before I'm cured?" I asked.
"There is no cure for fibromyalgia," the doctor replied. "You'll be taking antidepressants and painkillers for the rest of your life."
I couldn't accept that.
With the loving help of that vegetarian (who I'd since married), I read everything I could about fibromyalgia. At the time, the medical establishment knew very little about it, so a lot of my research fell into the alternative medicine category. Most of the suggested therapies for fibromyalgia were nutritional.
I had no choice. I had to start eating healthy.
It was a slow process. I was lucky my husband was not only supportive, but extremely knowledgeable about what constitutes a healthy diet. He cooked for me, he cajoled me into trying strange new vegetables, and he managed not to laugh when sometimes I literally had to plug my nose to get the healthy food down.
Somewhere along the line, I discovered there were a couple of "healthy" foods I actually liked if they were cooked the right way. The more recipes I tried from different cuisines around the world, the more vegetables I wanted to eat. I gave up some of my junk food. The stuff I kept, I ate less of. I started looking forward to meals instead of dreading them. The nutritional supplements I'd been taking to combat my symptoms seemed to be more effective than they had in the past.
After four more years of slowly improving my diet, I reached a point where I didn't have any symptoms at all.
I won't lie to you, it wasn't an easy process. I backslid, I attempted radical dietary changes that lasted less than a week, I went cold turkey on the junk food. I tried cleanses and detox diets and New Year's resolutions to become a vegetarian.
What eventually worked was the approach I'm describing in this book: small changes that fit my lifestyle, introduced gradually so I didn't feel overwhelmed. I hadn't heard the word "kaizen" back then, but I wish I had. If someone had given me this strategy at the start, I would have recovered from fibromyalgia much more quickly and with much less stress. You don't have to struggle like I did. You can do it the easy way.
My journey isn't over--I'm still fine-tuning my diet, and there are "superfoods" I still can't bring myself to eat. Yet. But I've gone from someone who starts the day with brownies and Dr. Pepper to being someone who looks forward to eating fresh veggies from the garden in my backyard.
