It’s no secret that food has a major impact on our health, energy, and appearance. Processed foods loaded with chemicals, refined grains, and sugar were designed to create customers. Even as adults, we still turn to old favorites out of habit and addiction. Breaking up with foods that slow you down is empowering.
It’s difficult to understand how bad processed foods really are. We can’t see health on a cellular level and it’s hard to trace what we eat to symptoms that we have. Generally, we have a 15 minute check up with a doctor once a year to review blood work. We also usually don’t react until symptoms become either a major threat to our health or make us so uncomfortable we can’t stand them anymore. Processed foods can alter the way that our body functions, taxing our organs, disrupting our hormones, and decreasing our vitality.
We truly are a beautifully integrated system that is wired to survive. Our body can handle stress, and turn food into energy. We can handle and use chemicals, refined grain, and sugar as fuel to run our body, but we will eventually pay a price for it. Symptoms present different from person to person depending on our genetic predispositions. We have spent centuries eating real nutrition provided by the earth, and just a few decades of fake sustenance. It is up to us as individuals and families to decide what our course will be.
At this point in history we should know better. Chronic diseases are at all time highs following 50 years of processed food intake. Food is not the only influencer of chronic disease, but it is one that we can control. We know that sugar and refined grains are addictive and impact our energy and hormone production. We know that chemicals, additives, and preservatives have no nutritional value yet we force our bodies to somehow process them.
We are all at different stages of our personal health care journey. Moving on from old childhood favorites is not easy to do. Empower yourself by picking an item and saying goodbye. Never again. Start with the obvious choices like soda (or diet soda) or candy. Fast food should be next on the list. Take an honest look at some of these foods and ask yourself how they serve you. Are they making you healthier or feel better in the long term? You can overcome the few minutes of surface satisfaction they provide.
Saying good bye to unhealthy food doesn’t mean depriving yourself. You are transforming your decision making, taking control of cravings and reactions, and creating a healthier foundation to live on. You can find less processed options or learn to create your own favorites. There are so many wonderful options out there for anyone who is willing to try. Good luck!