How to Start Eating Right? — Yondi Lee

There is no single diet that suits everyone. So what is the right diet for you?

The diet that suits you best is one that gives you the greatest amount of energy, health, and mental clarity. To find out for yourself, you have to EXPERIMENT.

Firstly, try to go as NATURAL as possible – avoid highly refined or processed foods as much as you can. Why go natural? What is wrong with refined foods?

Let’s start from the time the food enters our mouth. Long time ago, people eat slowly, maybe because they had more time to eat, but mainly because it took time to chew the food. Unrefined, unprocessed grains are tough to chew. Wild vegetables are more fibrous and tough to chew. Wild animals’ meat is also tough to chew. These ancient foods were packed with nutrients and they were also scarce. Because food was tough to chew and scarce, people did not eat too quickly, or in big quantities.

Now, let’s look at modern day man. One wakes up, spread bleached, chemically treated vegetable oil on puffy soft bread, swallows them after chewing a few times, then gulps down fruit juice made from recombined juice concentrate and sugar, preserved with food conditioners.

Modern foods require so little chewing that the digestive system does not have adequate signals to do its work. Smelling and chewing actually start a chain reaction that kick-starts your digestion. When you gulp things down in a hurry, it is no wonder that your stomach cannot cope well because it has not been warned to start working.

Next, why choose natural and wholesome foods? Food processing and refining require removal of many nutrients and addition of chemicals. Hence, highly refined foods that we buy off supermarket shelves and which come in containers and pretty boxes often contain little nutrients and lots of additives. The manufacturers sometimes add vitamins back to the food, but these are artificially added and the quality of nutrients is dubious.

In contrast, natural foods contain more nutrients and fewer chemicals and additives. The organic ones are even better because you can really cut out intake of pesticides and other chemicals.

Tips for Buying Natural Buy foods that you recognize, foods that are in their original form Avoid foods in plastic bags or boxes that have long lists of ingredients Avoid foods with ingredients of codes and numbers (these are additives) Avoid instant foods – noodles, frozen dinners Fresh vegetables are better than frozen ones, which are better than canned ones Eat more local vegetables & fruits – these tend to be fresher than imported ones

So what type of diet will suit you? You can read all the health and nutrition books in the world but you still won’t find the right diet for yourself if you don’t TRY. Experiment is the key! Try different ways of eating. Give it about a month. With any dietary changes, there are bound to be some reactions in the body, including bowel habits or sensations. Symptoms that resemble detoxification reactions are possible – headaches, mood changes, fatigue.

Pay attention and listen to your body, take note of your experience, especially in terms of energy, mental clarity and sense of wellbeing.

Define the diet – be specific. If you want to be a vegetarian, are you eating frozen and canned vegetables or fresh ones? Do you eat French fries or real potato? There are countless ways to eat and most people have the habit of eating the same foods often or eat only a small range of foods. For example, are the fruits you eat consist of only banana, apples and oranges?

Be specific about what you include in your diet. A vegetarian who eats canned or processed foods is on a very different diet from one who eats only fresh, unprocessed foods.

Do you consume any drugs like caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, etc? Simply giving up alcohol can lead to a significant change in your body’s biochemistry. Remove artificially flavoured foods can make another significant change. And it is not just what you eat or don’t eat, but also the way the food is prepared that can make a big difference. Some people thrive on a vegetarian diet, others feel run-down. Given the same diet, two individuals can react differently. Think and feel for yourself.

There’s so much marketing and money involved in food advertisement. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers or magazines. Use your common sense. Ask yourself questions. Does it make sense to drink another species’ baby-milk after you have been weaned, especially that of a species that has four stomachs and weighs almost 10x as much as you, and one that has been injected with growth hormone?

Changing your diet always seems daunting at first, but it has to start with re-wiring your brain, changing your thinking. Once you start to employ your own thinking and logic, and experiment with foods, it will become a whole lot simpler. After a while, your new diet just becomes a habit and you get into the routine.

Good luck and if you have questions or need help with your diet, contact me at yondi@ascensionhealing.sg

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