It is important to read these blog posts in order, so if you have been referred to this post by someone who cares about you, please also read the first post. It will enhance your results.
[To achieve the greatest benefit, please ensure you have a piece of paper and a pen available.]
Have you heard of Jamie Oliver's 'Food Revolution'? He is a man with a serious passion to help people and his approach is remarkably simple, yet extremely powerful.
His passion is helping people through educating them on WHY healthy food choices are important. He traveled, on his own expense from England, where he is a successful chef, to an area of the Mid-West, USA, that is affected with extremely high rates of obesity in children. The profiled family was absolutely lovely. A mom and her 3 elementary-age children. Mom was caring, warm and you could tell that she loved her children very much. Sadly, all of them were extremely overweight. The children, understandably, expressed sadness, frustration and even worse. The ridicule they endured at school is something the mom wished she could keep her children safe from. They kids were curious and, for good reason, had motivation to not be fat and unhealthy. They just didn’t know how as what they learned was from their mom, who was passing on what she had learned from her mom. Everyone had been doing the best they could with what they had – it just wasn’t going in the right direction. Maybe you can relate?
The first thing Jamie asked her to do was create a list of the food they eat in one day; breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. [Quick Exercise - Make a quick list of what you eat during a typical week (workday) / weekend day. 5 basic items for each day]
Their list was pretty typical; cereal, waffles, sausages, chicken fingers, pizza, fish & chips, garlic toast, burgers, hotdogs, soda, juice, pizza pops and burritos. What's on YOUR list? Pretty regular stuff, right?
Jamie then went to the store and got 7 days worth of food for the family. When it was piled on the kitchen table, the family was brought in to see their pile. As you can well imagine, it was an overflowing brown, blah mess. He then looked at the mom, touched her arm, looked into her eyes and softly said, "Did you realize that this is the fuel you are putting through your family each week?" She started to cry. And so did I...
Now imagine your two lists. Let's create your pile. Take your weekday list x 5, and your weekend list x 2. Put 3 meals per day (plus any snacks) on your own kitchen table. Close your eyes now and picture your pile. Be honest with yourself. What does your weekly pile look like? Is it bright, colourful and exciting? Is it brown and blah looking? Now, imagine me standing beside you, touching your arm, and let's be real my friend, "This is the fuel that you are putting through your body each week, x 52 weeks per year."
What does your pile look like for the next 30 years? What does the pile look like for your family? Include the snacks... Imagine and SEE YOUR own pile.
WOW. Please take a second and have a few deep breaths.
Now, would you agree that this is a simple, yet powerful display and visual explanation of why you and other people in your life carry excessive weight or feel less than awesome on a regular basis? Could it possibly also be why you or someone you know has become depressed and experienced deteriorating health? The quality of your health & happiness is directly related to the contents of your pile. YOUR pile is YOUR pile. It's made up of YOUR own stuff. No one is putting things in YOUR pile. The person who creates YOUR pile is sitting in YOUR chair.
So, let's talk about how to create your perfect pile. You may have heard this before, “How you do anything is how you do everything”, meaning that a burger isn't going to hurt you; neither are waffles or some fish & chips. However, if that is what makes up your lifestyle diet and that's repeated on a consistent basis, you will, a little at a time over the years, become the result of a lifestyle that's made up of burgers, waffles and fish & chips.
So let me ask you this; #1) Have you ever wished to be healthy and fit? #2) Have you ever felt like you have done all the right stuff and still struggle to be the best version of yourself?
The good news is that whatever has brought you to where you stand right now doesn't exist anymore. You might think it does because you have a memory of it. It feels very real, and it has been very important because it has taught you many lessons. More good news - the success of TODAY does not depend on your history being repeated. Tomorrow does not require anything you've tried before that doesn't work. Anything that didn't work simply doesn't need to be included. You have, my friend, before you a fresh opportunity to create the best version of yourself, and you can start RIGHT NOW if that works for YOU.
Are you ready to get started?
Now it would be easy for me to just tell you what to eat, right? Well, at first, but how long would that last? Perhaps a few days or even a week before what was happening becomes again the norm. Change is difficult, so let's focus on the process of evolution. Let's evolve you, step-by-step, day-by-day, week-by-week into the best possible version of YOURSELF.
Every second of every hour of each day, there are systems in your body working on cell generation. Cell generation happens all the time, not just 3 times per day as we've been conditioned to understand. Therefore, what you are using as fuel for your body is important all the time.
Some say the human body regenerates every 7-10 years which is a fantastic thought because it means we actually become a whole new person over and over and over again. Others argue that claim is not true because some cells (very, very few) have a super slow regeneration rate after age 25. Some actually die off and never regenerate. I say, let's not argue semantics. There's a lot going on. Let's talk about that and let the rest of the details work themselves out. Your skin, and largest organ, becomes new or generates on a cycle of about 28 days. Your skin also acts as a mirror for what's going on inside your body. Imperfections are symptoms of an imbalance or blockage within your body and your body’s way of telling you that something is not working properly and needs some assistance.
Bottom line is that your body is producing cells each hour of every day and whether they are RE-generating or DE-generating depends on the available building blocks they have to use during the process. If the quality of the input is good, then the outcome is good. If it's not, well then...
So, the first step in creating our perfect pile is being AWARE about what is going into our current pile. Let's establish the starting point. Please, if you're so inclined, moment to moment as you are going through your day, adding to your pile, ask yourself this simple question, "Is what I'm putting in my mouth for the purpose of ‘nourishing my body’ or ‘entertaining my taste buds’?" Now, go ahead and eat it.
That's it. Just categorize. The first step of evolving into the most awesome version of yourself is to start the process of becoming aware of what's going on and establishing a starting point. This part of the process is only becoming aware.
I'm so proud of you for making a commitment to be mindful of WHY you are putting WHAT you are putting in your mouth. If it's helpful, go ahead and start a short journal and make notes about what you eat. You can even send me a private message with your list if you would like me to help you monitor your progress. During this time, you're simply becoming aware of what's going on, and then later on we can discuss what's going on. If you have any questions, I'm here to help!
Congratulations for allowing yourself to consider what is going on. It's the most important step of the process. You are now officially on your way! =)
If I imagine how much fluid I drink in a day that also impacts the image. There is a lot of fluid in contrast to that solid food. That makes for its own interesting twist here as I tend to have a mostly liquid diet.
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In a way, my food issues are fairly easy to trace. When I was 2.5, I fell out of a truck and lost 4 teeth, two fell out and two were pulled out. This meant that it took me much longer to eat than others and thus I didn't eat much for these years. I was thin as a rail and would be teased for being a Vampire since I was missing the upper incisor teeth. Thus, when my adult teeth did come, I made up for lost time. I ballooned so much that I had to have surgery before taking physical education in high school. Not a great start but it is where I begin in this tale of mine.
The flip side to this in terms of nourishing the body is to consider the exercise and sleep that is also done as part of living in the world.
You're right JB - fluid is extremely important. I might even do a separate post about Hydration to talk about it. So thanks! Your body needs lots of water to help flush out toxins. A good rule of thumb is to consume in ounces half your weight in pounds. =)
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