Traditional diets are unsustainable. This is because they drastically limit nutrients and minerals that your body needs to function properly. Most of these types of diets limit your caloric intake, so you can’t help but see weight loss, sometimes immediate and drastic.
However, you eventually end up putting all that weight back on because your body is screaming out for the healthy, natural vitamins, enzymes and nutritional goodness which you are keeping it from getting. You end up overeating after your diet period is through, and you oftentimes gain more weight than you actually lost. More importantly, your body is still not healthy.
Unlike most traditional diets, a diet rich in natural, unprocessed whole foods, fruits and vegetables is an undisputed provider of so many health benefits. Diabetes, heart problems, skin conditions, neurological disorders, multiple forms of cancer, inflammation and a long list of diseases are all combated efficiently simply by eating whole foods.
So, how do you turn a short-term whole foods diet into a long-term lifestyle that gives you a lifetime of wonderful health benefits?
The first thing you need to do is think long-term.
You have probably tried diets in the past to deliver some type of health benefit or another. If they had worked and become a lifestyle habit, you would not be reading this article. That’s because traditional diets focus on a short-term approach.
Think 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and 20 years down the road
Imagine your perfect body and mind. Envision yourself living a life where whole foods are the principal part of your diet. Visualization has been proven to increase success in reaching goals and can work with your whole food approach as well.
You should keep a food journal.
In your food journal, write down what you eat every day and how you feel. Include important health measurements such as blood pressure, how tired or energetic you feel, weight loss or gain and other health metrics that are important to you.
You will begin to see an unmistakable relationship between positive health improvements and whole food consumption. This proof may be all you need to turn your diet into a lifelong approach.
Discover your “Big Why”
Why do you want to eat whole foods? Ask yourself this question. Dig deep, and don’t stop until you have reached the root cause. You may initially answer that question by saying, “I want to lose weight.” But if we are honest with ourselves, there is usually more to it than that.
Ask yourself WHY you want to lose weight and really drill this down. For example, if you answer that it is because you hate the way you look in the mirror. Now you are getting down to underlying emotional and subconscious reasons. When you finally realize that you want to lose weight because you feel you are unattractive to the opposite sex, you are tired of being sick and tired, and you want to be able to play and interact with your kids without being tired and out of breath after only a couple of minutes, you have discovered your “Big Why” behind your whole food nutritional approach.
Any time you find yourself wanting to return to an unhealthy diet, remember your “Big Why”. This one thing can be the biggest motivator as you travel your whole foods journey.
Leave a Reply