Step 7: Change your diet

I already wrote on Just Like NY about healthy eating habits, about how I changed my diet and how it helped me to go through my days differently. All this doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally sin – I’m not an angel, unfortunately, so it does happen that I eat something (like ice cream every few weeks) that I shouldn’t. But in general, 90% of the time, I eat “clean”. What that means, I already described on my website.

Why is it so important? In order to change something in your life, your brain has to correspond with your body and body has to respond to it. Body can’t respond to it if it’s too weak. And it will be too weak if you eat bad food. Your body needs fuel and the only fuel that it needs is healthy food. It’s not alcohol, it’s not processed food, it’s not pizza and soda that it needs. You have to understand that certain type of foods you see in the stores (well, actually most of them) are not eatable and just harm your body. One of the guys I know noticed a funny paradox: if there’s a dedicated shelf for ”Healthy food”, what does that say about the rest of the products in that store? You have to finally understand that whatever you eat influences your body. Make sure that 70% things that you see on your plate is a “living food”, which means something that wasn’t processed. Bread, pasta, mashed potatoes, sodas, chips – they’re not living food. You can eat them once in a while, but don’t make it as a base of your diet, because you’ll start visiting your doctor pretty often. Did you know that most food allergies are in fact the result of bad eating? It’s not “the condition” you have: it just means that you’ve been eating poorly and your body is simply saying: “enough”.

Healthy eating is more important than you think. It realigns your life, the way you think, the way you interact with people. What you eat shapes your behavior, how you act and react to certain situations. It’s crucial: it’s the most important part of your life and that’s why it’s really difficult for me to understand why people put it aside so often and choose to treat their body like a garbage bag. Sure: have coke, pizza, ice cream, pancakes, chicken with gravy, a hot dog – but have it once a month, not a few times a week. Not to mention alcohol. I know people who say that they eat healthily and then I hear that they have a few drinks a few times a week. Really? With one sip of alcohol, you ruin all your healthy eating affords. Who are you trying to trick? Your friends, your family, or yourself? Not your body obviously, because your body will know that you’re feeding it a crap again, that’s for sure. The choice, as always, is yours. Look at your body as the most precious gift you got and treat it this way. It will pay you back.