Detatchment and Reattachment to Food

I’ve conducted a small mini-experiment for the last week or so, while working on my resolution for 2009 to slowly migrate to a macrobiotic diet. It wasn’t really a planned experiment, but once I took notice I decided to try it out.

When I got my juicer, I really went full-force into trying different combinations of fruits and vegetables (ESPECIALLY vegetables since I have a hard time eating them), and to really find ways to put more vegetables into my diet. I hate those V8 Fusion drinks because they carry so much sugar and other crap, I decided I could do better on my own.

So I started making mixes of cucumbers and celery and apples and ginger, another mix with carrots and apples and ginger, even some of just fruit like apples and blueberries and ginger (soooo good). I started to notice that one of these big juices was actually enough to make me not hungry. I didn’t feel full, which was a bit of a struggle because usually people eat to feel full, and it takes a lot of work to re-program your brain to understand that you should eat to not feel stuffed. I am still working on that.

Anyway, so I started getting all of these vegetables and fruits into my system, and I was really feeling great. My body was reacting very positively, and I was energized and inspired to keep going. I still ate something bad now and then, but nowhere near the capacity before.

Then when I had my parties with the taco dips and cheeses and sodas. I noticed after allowing my body to detox so much with the veggie and fruit juices, that when I started eating these other things, I could actually feel my body getting weaker, more tired, and actually feeling pain in the stomach area. Sometimes it was very noticeable, distracting pain. My body was reacting in bad ways. Not surprising, I expected it.

So I alternated my food intake for a few days, just to really understand the transitions my body was going through when eating good food versus bad food, and it started to become really clear.

What I find the most confusing, however, is even knowing that my body reacts in such bad and painful ways while eating this bad stuff, I found it difficult to mentally detach myself from those foods. I was still craving them, sometimes absently, to the point that I wouldn’t notice until after I had already eaten them.

It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying the fruit and veggies, in fact I was enjoying them very much. But for some reason my mind was telling me that I wanted these other things instead.

So how do you mentally detach from these food cravings that hurt you, and then reattach yourself mentally to these new foods that help you? I have already been doing a fairly decent job at this for the last several years. I stopped drinking sodas for the most part (maybe 1 a month), I don’t go out for fast food at all anymore, my craving for red meat dwindled to almost nothing, etc.

I think part of the process will be educating myself more on what some of these good foods are, and experimenting with various recipes. A lot of them are so new to me, that I’ve never heard of them. Others seem like they would be difficult to find because they are not considered an everyday staple.

Another process is cost. It takes a lot of money to restock your kitchen with new, healthy ingredients as opposed to the old staples we’re used to. Because this is a cost issue, it has to be done gradually….a few new items each grocery trip. And I don’t like wasting stuff we already have, so I have to gradually phase them out as well.

The biggest hurdle for me personally though, is trying to get my father on board with new eating habits. No matter how many times I tell him not to buy me chips or icecream, occasionally he does anyway thinking it’s a good “treat” for me. It’s really not. He knows I get mad at him everytime he does this, but I think it’s finally starting to sink in. However he’ll still buy things for himself, so that will affect our cost expenditure as well.

I guess this will just be a slow, but very well worth it effort. It will also be a mental struggle, but I think the rewards for this change will cleanse all of the old cravings in the end.