Damage Limitation Strategies - Nutrition

My mind has the tendency to ascribe meaning, and narrative, to my daily choices/actions/words.

Properly managed, this desire to "make sense" is a powerful tool for positive change.

Nutrition has NOTHING to do with nutrition.

What we end up eating has a lot to do with appetite, habit and availability.

I've watched nutritional science change so often, and so dramatically, that it has lost its credibility with me.

Here's what I've noticed...

• Exercise is the best medicine I can give myself

• Excessive stress results in poor choices

• Prior food choices, sleep and exercise impact my neurochemistry

The above can work together in a positive, or a negative, feedback loop.

Regardless, they are always working.

Why does "Eat Huge Salads" work?

• Buying healthy food makes you a healthy person

• Preparing healthy food makes you a healthy person

• Unlike ice cream, cold cereal or beef chili with rice... I have to chew a salad - chewing slows me down (habit creation) and increases my satisfaction beyond the next meal (appetite moderation)

• A mixing bowl of salad makes subsequent poor choices physically painful (adverse consequences)

• Large amounts of fiber keep me regular and there is a emotional release from good elimination

• Salad is the food choice with the lowest number of calories per bowl

• It works because it works - while my explanations might be back fit-BS, the results are real

Whatever you eat for the next three years, you will come to believe that your choices are delicious. Don't believe me? Listen to people who think differently. We are hardwired to believe in the merits of our prior choices.

Pay attention to your mantras - what you say after you eat, what you say about food, what you say about yourself.

Choose wisely - our minds are always watching, listening, rationalizing.

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Apples!!!

Two to three apples is a quick way to get a similar effect to a salad.

Displacing a poor choice is easier than resisting one.