There are a gazillion diets or a way of eating or fasting. What matters is that you are moving toward health and away from feeling bad or ill. You feel hungry, and you are foraging for something to eat. Your eye spots a bag of potato chips and an apple. Which one (if you can only choose one) do you choose versus which do you want to eat? If you are starving, and you have never imagined that your diet and your health are intimately linked, you take the chips. If you are starving, and you know that your food and drink are intimately linked to your health, you pick the apple. Know that you cannot disconnect what eat and drink from your well-being. It’s just biology.
Make it a goal to eat or drink one item less that is unhealthy and eat or drink one more thing that is healthy. Simple, right? It’s not my place to tell you which food and drink you consume. I have my bias, but what is right for you, isn’t right for another person. I bet if you “listen” to your inner voice, you will select what is spot-on for you. If you want to consult a nutrition “expert,” then you can turn to a member of a reputable certifying organization in your country. Beware that an “expert” can lead you astray. Trust your judgment!
In his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, author Robert Maurer, PhD talks about how to overcome fear and procrastination with change in his 6 Small Steps.
- ASKING SMALL QUESTIONS
- THINKING SMALL THOUGHTS
- TAKING SMALL ACTIONS
- SOLVING SMALL PROBLEMS
- BESTOWING SMALL REWARDS
- RECOGNIZING SMALL MOMENTS
He notes how to steadily build your confidence and make insurmountable-seeming goals suddenly feel doable. He describes kaizen as the underlying of his whole book.
Kaizen is used in very small steps to improve a habit or a process. Simple, but not easy. Kaizen can produce change, but slow and steady. In one story, he tells about a woman in England. At age 13, she realized that her habit of consuming four teaspoons in every cup of tea was unhealthy. She used willpower to cut out three of the four teaspoons. By conventional means, she couldn’t cut out the remaining teaspoon of sugar. Instead, she used kaizen. By slowly removing one or two grains of sugar each day, she was able to empty the teaspoon over a year. She is still taking her tea without sugar for over 50 years. It is a testimonial to the success of small steps.
When you consider, what enters your mouth is IMPORTANT! When you start to consciously notice what you eat and drink, you can decide what goes into your mouth. I am not going to prescribe a specific diet you eat and drink. That is outside this course. Just know that there are some general principles that will work.
Take the book The Pegan Diet: 21 Practical Principles for Reclaiming Your Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World by Mark Hyman, MD. He has attempted to find the best of various diets around today. He explains how to take the best aspects of the paleo, primal or low-carb diet (good fats, limited refined carbs, limited sugar) and combine them with the vegan diet (lots and lots of fresh, healthy veggies) to create a delicious way of living.
There are 4 rules I use in deciding what I am going to eat. I use them as guidelines for deciding what I am going to put in my mouth. Check them out & consider adopting one or all of them!
- Is it live food (or was just alive)?
- Does it have minimal or no added sugar?
- Where was the food grown, produced, or processed?
- Does the food contain ingredients you can understand and pronounce? (And how many different ingredients are there in the food?)
Those are the 4 parameters I use when I choose my food.
Your nutrition is important, especially you want to keep track for your macros and micro-provisions for the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals & other compounds that you need, especially if you had a stroke.
Sometimes I eat a meal that breaks all the rules. You can choose for yourself. Your health is what is at stake!
