How do deal with food cravings when following a diet


When you attempt to follow a healthy diet, it's perfectly normal at first to have desires or cravings for processed foods and to feel tempted by those foods. Sometimes, for one reason or another, you may decide to say "What the hell!" and indulge.

First, it should be said that what matters most is exactly what you do on a daily basis and not what you do rarely or occasionally. So, small dietary deviations once in a while are not as harmful because they would be if they were habitual. Another side of the coin is that these small but repeated cheats can sabotage all the benefits you are looking to receive from your diet.

Whenever you eat a diet composed mostly of fruits and vegetables without spices or salt, so when you eat those foods with genuine hunger, you eventually purify your body and become more sensitive to any poor food choice. The body reacts to any unhealthy food, much like a child's body.

The worst thing is the surprise of discovering that the old foods you accustomed to love - those that seem so innocent still - might have such a dramatic effect on you. You'd like to have the ability to eat them occasionally and be fine... oh, you'd like so much to be able to! Let me use my own experience for example.

In most people's minds, a cooked vegan meal is a rather healthy meal. Most folks would eat that and feel fine. That may be the healthiest thing they ate all week! However for someone whose system continues to be cleansed out by a pure diet of vegetables and fruit, things aren't exactly the same.

If I ate such a meal, let's say, composed of split pea soup, a vegan pizza and soy frozen treats, it would definitely affect me in the most negative way. I might have a hard time falling asleep and my sleep could be disturbed by weird dreams. I'd become dehydrated all the salt in those "healthy" vegan foods.

However the worst thing is that I'd have this type of hard time getting back on track again. For a week I would feel kind of ill, but not really fall ill- only a sort of slight a sore throat and aching in the muscles. A small depression could even set in and I'd have the hardest time dealing with feel like myself again. What a setback for just just a little dietary indiscretion!

I know from experience what happens when I decide to eat something I normally do not eat, having been there more than the usual few times. But I additionally know that this experience is typical to all those that have experienced living on a natural diet of fruits and vegetables.

When we start a pure diet of vegetables and fruit, the process described by Shelton is done in reverse. The body rejects accumulated toxins and reverts to a more pure state that has little tolerance for poisons. That is the reason why you can now react so strongly to the foods you accustomed to eat without a second thought.

It's a rather interesting experience to see how bad particular foods can make you feel once you've eaten an easy diet of mostly fruits and vegetables for a while. I've noticed how particular foods make you drowsy, others just stimulate you and later make you feel depressed, others make you feel irritated, and others make you feel almost drugged.

A friend of mine isn't a habitual coffee drinker. Recently, he had four coffees in one evening. Although he felt great initially, because of stimulation, the following day he fell right into a sort of depression that lasted a good two days!

This backsliding is probably necessary to understand where you want to go. But what really hurts in the long term are the small cheats that end up occurring on a rather regular basis. Let me explain. If you go out one night and have a pizza after having been on the clean diet for any while, you will feel it. I guarantee that you will not feel encouraged to repeat the knowledge the next day. But if instead you have a muffin here and there, drink some tea once in a while, add some soy sauce to your salads, etc., you might not feel horrible, but all of those little things begin to add up and one day you wonder the reason why you don't feel so great anymore, without realizing what's actually happened.

Life should be fun, and maintaining a healthy diet shouldn't be a big struggle. At some point, you have to accept the road that you have chosen and be pleased with it. What's the point of eating healthy if you feel deprived and you're constantly going back and forth and trying to find your balance again each time?

Attempting to eat raw using force of willpower alone will ultimately fail. On one side you are attempting to make yourself eat in a way that you think is good for you, but on the other part you are fighting it, because on that level you do not want to do it. This inner struggle, in spite of the finest willpower in the world, is going to make you fail.

The key is to come to accept on the deeper level this diet choice you have made, instead of understand it on a purely intellectual level. I usually tell people that they shouldn't make an effort to eat a particular diet, like a raw food diet, since they think it's the best for his or her bodies. Instead, they ought to write down their reasons they are doing it. The reasons range from: having more energy, improved complexion, waking up feeling energetic, feeling more attached to nature, feeling more peaceful inside, radiating health, living healthfully, etc.

One thing that took me a long time to understand is that your diet must harmonize with your other behaviors; otherwise it is doomed to fail. There is a saying that goes, "You cannot change one thing without changing everything." Allow me to explain.

A diet of animal foods and alcohol is compatible with a number of lifestyles, but incompatible with a few others. The same holds for a vegan diet, or a raw-food diet. A raw plant-based weight loss program is a radical change. It'll call for more radical changes in every part of your life.

If you are not ready for it and were just looking for a quick fix, you will have to face some major hurdles along the way, because your diet choice won't harmonize with your other manners of being. A fruit-based diet is a high-energy diet. It isn't compatible with a sedentary lifestyle. It's not compatible with certain low-energy activities, friendships, and even jobs.

So one way to make the diet work, indirectly, is to focus on other areas of your life. Instead of focusing on the diet, you can concentrate on becoming more active, or inviting new, more positive friendships. By harmonizing those areas of life, it will become simpler to make the diet work almost effortlessly.

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This article was sent to us by: Amanda Jenkins at 02222011

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