Healthy Food: Choice or Fear?

You don't need to be a food expert and still you definitely can tell, more or less precisely, which food you can call healthy and which you can call unhealthy, or junk. There are many people who are choosing their food, to certain extend, according to this information, who are trying to avoid fast-food, alcohol or even wheat completely and are exceptionally proud of themself when they eat two tomatoes next to their lunch, thinking how much they've just done for their body and their health. However, have you ever tried thinking more about why we're behaving like this? Why are we listening to the people, sometimes informally referred to as nutriterrorist, who are basically commanding us, telling us what we should eat, what we shouldn't eat, how much we should eat, when to eat etc.? Isn't it solely because we're scared, afraid of our health, worried that we can develop some disease? Have you ever thought about what damage can actually do the burger from McDonald's you'd love to eat but you're avoiding because it's not good for your health?

Psychological vs. Physical Health

Imagine a little child who is having her favorite toy she's playing with every day. Suddenly, you would take that toy and wouldn't let the child play with it, while still keeping the toy in such a place that the child could see it. Guess what will be the child's reaction. Crying, shouting, begging, all for getting her favorite toy back. Well, maybe you can tell the child that if she played with the toy, the bad dwarf would come and kidnapped her. Or any other nonsense, just to make the child scare to play with her favorite toy. If you're lucky, the crying and begging will stop and the child will be silently walking past her favorite toy, having in mind the bad dwarf. Everything seems like problem solved but answer honestly the following question: Do you think the child is really happy now?

This story is a little metaphor to healthy food. Specifically, the toy is junk food, the child is you, the strict parents are food experts and the bad dwarf, of course, represents the human diseases. You don't eat junk food because you believe in the dwarf, or the diseases respectively, and you're scared of them, trying to avoid them, thus you make up your mind and avoid junk food at all. But a similar question arises as for the child, are you really happy about what you're eating?

As you're struggling on eating only vegetable, avoiding fast-food, fats, sugars, wheat or whatever else you read is not good for you, you're restraining yourself from the tasty food you'd like to eat and putting yourself under pressure that you need to keep eating healthy. Any time you would take a piece of junk food or drink a glass of alcohol would be a huge failure for you, something like a sin. All these create stress which constitute to depresses, angriness and other negative manifestations of bad psychological health. That's why it could be said you are exchanging your psychological health in pursuit of as good physical health as possible, albeit with unsure result.

Eat Whatever You Like, But Not Too Often

Does it mean you should ignore all food experts' advice, doctor's warnings and completely give up on healthy food, eating only the junk food you like? No. Not really. The problem is all those warnings and advice are not only false alarms, there's some truth in them - if you'll drink a lot of alcohol every day, eat junk food from breakfast to the dinner and never take any vegetable or fruit into your mouth, you will end up badly. And it can come pretty early.

According to me, the best way is somewhere in the middle, the golden mean. Maybe more to the side of the healthy food. But not in the extreme. Let the junk food be your occasional pleasure! Don't give up the alcohol entirely, constantly refusing to drink with others, just limit it. Limit is as much as you feel comfortable with. After all, a glass of whiskey once a month definitely can't kill you and so it won't have an extreme effect on your health. One visit to McDonald's per month can raise your blood sugar temporarily but it's a bit difficult to imagine you could become obese or develop a diabetes from that one burger.

What's more, there's a great advantage to this style of behavior. Not only you don't need to give up anything but also every time you drink or eat the junk food, it's like a feast for you. You can use it to celebrate important days or as a motivation, to reward you for something useful you do even if it requires a hard effort. Paint the living room and enjoy a meal at McDonald's!

To conclude it, do not give up anything, just limit it. Take your favorite junk food as a pleasure. When not eating it every day, you'll enjoy it even more.

Stay free of any something-free diets!