Stable, Consistent, and Peaceful.   Those are words Joel Osteen uses in a sermon about how to react in tough, difficult circumstances.  Those are also words that apply to eating for health, no matter what’s going on in your life.

Eating well, for your health and your weight, is a day after day, week after week, month after month, endeavor.  Eating well for 3 days, or 5 days or 2 weeks, means pretty much nothing. It’s just not “Big Picture” enough.    It’s the ACCUMULATION of  Daily Habits that make or break our body.  That whole 80/20 thing?  What exactly is 80/20?  Do you use some sort of math formula to figure that one out?   Are you “pretty good” , except for when you’re not?   Being “pretty good some of the time” might work if you’re real young and fairly fit; but if you’re a little older, and only moderately active?  Or inactive? Then you probably won’t reverse auto-immune conditions, heal your skin, feel stable, fix your blood sugar, or lose much weight.  Sorry.   It’s serious consistency that really makes us healthy: mentally and physically, and spiritually.

Here we are again – it’s all mental! Fix your mind on being Stable, Consistent, and Peaceful No Matter The Circumstances!  On vacation?  Eat well.  Traveling?  Eat well.  At a party?  Eat well.  Busy week?  Eat well.  Long day?  Eat well.  Stressful event?  Eat well.  Weekend?  Eat well.

Get in the HABIT of having healthy foods in your house.  Break the HABIT of keeping snacky, junky, munchie, trigger foods in your house.  NO ONE NEEDS crackers, chips, ice cream, or desserts on a regular basis, or ever.  Not you, not your spouse, and NOT YOUR KIDS.  If they’re hungry, access if they’re eating enough at meals, or if they need another actual MEAL mid-morning or mid-afternoon.  Leftovers?  A sandwich?  Fruit and nut butter?  Nuts or cheese?  A big glass of whole milk?  Real Whole Foods that keeps blood sugar stable and triggers satiety hormones;  just the opposite of pretzels, crackers, or sweets.

On the other hand, if YOU’RE hungry between meals, why?  Did you really not eat enough (fat and protein), or are your brain chemicals used to their “fixes”.  It’s one or the other, because you should be able to go hours without eating.  People all over the world have done it forever. If however, you’ve TRAINED yourself to eat all day long, you’ve got some physiological and psychological habits to break. 

Eating well – EVERY DAY – is EASY when you get off the Diet Roller Coaster.  Fill your plates with plenty of healthy fats, proteins, and vegetables.  As long as you’re skimping, trying to eat lite, counting calories and fat grams, food will be an obsession.  Eating well consistently – weekends, parties, vacations, will be IMPOSSIBLE.  The sense of deprivation will get you every time.  Think about your past patterns and the results they’ve yielded.  Eat Real Whole Foods, and their is NO sense of deprivation.  Your body and mind are satisfied.  Get rid of the False Notion that Real Traditional Fats will make you gain weight.  Delete the “healthy whole grains” spiel.   Try something different – just for a while, try and see the difference in how you look and feel.

If feels really good to NOT be obsessed with food.  It feels really good to NOT self-castigate for food binges or a bloated stomach.  It feels really good to NOT be obsessed with the scale because there’s no “bad eating days”.  It feels good to be normal.  It feels great to eat Real Whole Foods.