Breaking Bad

As we ease into this detox, I am going to ask you right here, right now to make one permanent change.  It is a change that can forever alter your course on the road to health. If you do nothing else but change this one itty-bitty thing you will see huge results.  Are you ready???   Here it goes…the change to change all changes is this:

Stop calling food "bad." 

As in, "Oooh, I was bad last night.  I had two cupcakes."  As in, "Let's be bad!   Let's get chicken wings."  As in, you are stare at your menu for a small eternity, send the waiter away multiple times and finally after you survey everyone else at the table to find out what they are going to order, you resolutely declare,"Screw it!  I'm gonna be bad!"

Oh, you are?  You are going to be bad?  Are you going to have unprotected sex with the busboy and then stab me with your steak knife???  No??  You're ordering onion rings??  Ok, then.  You are not being bad.  You are just ordering onion rings.

The minute we assign a moral quality to food we are in trouble for two reasons: 

1. Upon labeling a food "bad", your inner preacher's daughter will immediately find said food irresistible in a "your-not-from-around-here-are-you-take-me-out-on-your-motorcycle-and-show-me-the-ways-of-boys-from-the-city" kind of way.  Those foods will all of a sudden have a false appeal simply because they are considered more "fun." 
2. Words have power.  When you call a food that you eat "bad", you are subconsciously labeling yourself "bad" as well.

There are foods that are better for your body than others.  There are foods that are better for the planet than others.  There are foods that give health and there are those that take it all away.  However, the decision to eat positive, life giving food has to come from a grounded love of how that food makes you feel.  We can not shame ourselves into eating in a healthy way.  We must choose vigor because it feels gloriously, indulgently, wonderfully pleasurable to do so.  Anything else is simply an attempt to shackle yourself in a prison of health.  All things shackled, even if shackled with the best of intentions, will eventually try to break free.  Give yourself freedom to begin with and trust that you will choose health, not because you are supposed to, but because it is your luxurious gift to do so.  Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it???

-♥ J :)