The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [95]
How can you empower yourself? How can you make the correct choice happen every time? Here are a few simple guidelines that will help.
The Right Reasons to Eat
Let’s once more follow the course given to us by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Eat when you are hungry, and stop eating when you are full. Many of us eat for all the wrong reasons.
Food is love. Remember that birthday cake you ate on your special day as a child? It brought you warmth and security—it may have represented your parents’ love. Many of us still associate sugary, rich desserts with love and fond childhood memories. That’s okay; in fact, food should still be associated with love. But why not try to love yourself, your family, or your friends with some of nature’s original loving food, so that by eating, you are also loving your body and making yourself healthy? How about a few rich lobster tails or fresh crab legs, some creamy avocado slices, or a bowl of fresh blackberries topped with almond slices? These foods taste great and make you feel great. Those childhood love foods (cookies, cakes, candy, ice cream, chocolates—you know the rest) are a temporary fix that all too soon will make you feel tired, drowsy, and bloated. How many times do you need to “love yourself” with these foods to know that they always let you down in the long run?
Food is a reward. Remember going out to dinner after high school graduation, your wedding, or getting that new job? You rewarded yourself by eating a great meal—and rightly so. You deserved it, and you still do. However, many of us seek that reward or gratification from our food almost daily. Reward yourself with food, and do it daily, but do it with the delicious bounty of real foods: fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. You will be rewarding not only your psyche but your body as well.
Food relieves boredom. Have you ever sat around on a Friday evening with nothing to do, knowing there is a half gallon of ice cream in the refrigerator? How about an afternoon home alone with some chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven? When you adopt the Paleo Diet, these situations will no longer be a problem. You will have a ton of food at home, but it will be fruits, veggies, lean meats, and seafood. Go ahead—get bored all you want, and please eat all you want, because your appetite will tell you when to stop. You could probably eat the entire half gallon of ice cream and the whole plate of cookies, but you will always stop eating when you’ve had your fill of lean chicken breasts, succulent tiger shrimp, or fresh tangerines. Use these foods to relieve your boredom, and you will find yourself losing weight and taking a new path toward terrific health.
One Day at a Time
If you are like almost everyone on this planet, you probably have never made it through a single day of your life without eating grains, dairy products, legumes, salt, refined sugars, fatty meats, or processed foods and drinks.
Go ahead, try it—just once!
I challenge you to eat nothing but fresh fruits, veggies, and lean meats for a single day. You will not be hungry. Eat as much and as many of these foods as you want—eat until you are full. I can assure you that you will not develop vitamin or mineral deficiencies; on the contrary, you will be luxuriously nourished.
See for yourself—see how you feel when you wake up the next morning.
Follow the Paleo Diet principles all day long for a second day. You can do it. If you get hungry or are tempted, treat yourself to a big bowl of fruit or some cold chicken breasts or any of the wonderful Paleo snacks listed in chapter 9. Monitor your energy level. Do you like waking up feeling positive and energized, looking forward to a bright new day? Do you like the way it feels not to have that midmorning or midafternoon slump? Well, this is just the beginning. Most people report these healthful benefits within days of adopting the Paleo Diet.
But the best is yet to come. Your weight will drop rapidly within the first few days,