Food For Thought

You are obese. You waddle to the bathroom, then grunt and puff as you wipe from the front your poop hole, if at all. What has happened is not entirely your fault. However, you have the power to end self-torture, addiction, and glutenous rapid short-lived gratification. You just need to understand the methods eliminating your needy abyss.

The first part of thoughtful redirection away from over-indulgence is to realize that, for you and many others, food is a weapon. All day, every day, companies have been using food to reduce your power, while monetizing their bank account. They entice you with clever advertising meant to brainwash you into believing they know you better than you know yourself. In effort, they demean your ability to decide good choices. This goes for the people around you, as well.

I used to know someone very close to me who was the best cook I’ve ever known. This person’s knowledge of their power over those in that inner circle using food as a drug keeping everyone coming back for more was insidious. The deliciousness and explosion of flavor was undeniable. The memory of it forever stays indelible on your mind. It is like heroin in the way you will do or say anything to get your next fix. It is a depressed, self-hatred of disgust that keeps bringing you back for more. It is a natural occurrence for your brain to be trained to placate and appease cravings. Your body demands your constant attention feeding it the nutrients it needs to survive. However, it is more than that.

Food is your killer. Food is a form of deep needy depression. You have been self-medicating your feelings and addiction. You know the old saying though, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer? This applies directly to your association with food. Keep it close. Buy out the grocery store and stock your shelves and refrigerator with everything you love. Then, plan your days and what your one fistful is going to be according to whether you stay at home or go out. Think to yourself, "Which drug do I want from my kitchen or do I want anything in my house at all." Go ahead and write down as many meals as you can like a hamburger, hotdog, cake, veggies, or fruit. You can change your mind about which one to eat, but the whole purpose here is to be truthful to yourself that these foods are your nemesis.

Let me say now with emphasis that real MEALS of food are individual whole natural foods such as an apple, orange, pear, peach, or other fruits, vegetables (either by themselves or with another), handful of nuts, or fistful of meat or fish. Eat the single fruit or vegetable, etc. by itself. It is a complete meal!! Then, if you are still hungry, by all means, eat another or something else whole single natural organic grown food. Then, eat another if you are still hungry. And so on...It is as simple as that.

For me, I make sure I always have anything I desire in my kitchen that I think that I might like to eat. Then, if my tomatoes or potatoes go bad or other food that does not get eaten goes bad, I do not stress over it or say that I have to eat it before it gets bad. I simply throw it in the trash and go buy fresh food. Because here is the real truth. You save money by not eating what you did before, and you save your life from obesity. Who cares if you waste that drug of choice? It is okay to let it rot. Before long you will not even buy it again at the store. In this way, it is like cigarettes or any drug. You need to quit cold turkey (read my other article How to Quit Smoking Solution found on the Solutions page in the menu). You will know exactly what foods you allow yourself in a weeks' time and will gravitate to buying healthier foods the more weight you lose. You are not depriving yourself! You are merely delaying the satisfaction to when you choose to indulge. Using my thoughts to check myself I do not live for food now. I live for myself.

What we are talking about here is totally unnatural. You allow yourself and others to bombard your natural tendencies with enticements. You break down and perfunctorily comply with the immediate thought or temptation when food becomes readily available. You give in to the seeming overpowering urge to splurge. Here is a little tip no one will tell you: Eat olives, all different kinds, as a daily snack! It helps your digestion and helps you lose weight. And remember don't throw out the olive juice. It is good for you, too.

You are obese. This is not an accident. It is the systematic shoveling of food into your body. Now what do you do? If you have tried multiple diets, pills, surgery, and fat clinics and still have not conquered your addiction, it is time to take back your power. Do you smell? It could be the foods you eat coming out of your pores as it tries to rid itself of ingredients you should not be eating, anyway. From foot odor to armpits, your natural smell should not be overpowering to you or others. You should sweat without grossing out people when you walk by. Using my methods, you can begin to experiment pausing ingestion of certain foods from your diet to see if it helps you feel and smell better. Don't believe product advertisements promising to mask or eliminate your odor. These are simply to make you feel embarrassed enough to part you from your money.

First. Stop hating yourself and others. When an advertisement comes on or someone offers you food, think of it as you would any drug dealer. Say to yourself, speaking to them with a smile, “You don’t bother me.” Think of the word NO in a circle with a slash through it. Go ahead and keep your favorite foods close on your mind, in your kitchen, or nearby at your abusers’ lair.

Second. When food is offered, is it more than the size of your fist? Or is it a sugary snack or treat? Because the trick to self-empowerment is knowing what you can eat in a single day…all day. Take your hand and hold it out in a fist. THIS is the total amount of food you are allowed to eat in a solid form every day. If you get hungry, nibble on your favorite food. Do not make a complete plate of food or eat a whole candy bar or ice cream. A spoon or two will satisfy you. Some people may require two fists full or more, but the idea here is that you can make or buy your favorite foods, then eat it a little at a time. You may find out that because you do not eat large portions, your hunger has changed. If you remember your fist of food per day, your perception of your cravings has changed. You can plan to eat yummy foods that satisfy one spoonful at a time eating comfort foods you grew up with. Make it. Eat just a little of it. Refrigerate or freeze the rest for later. Then, you may have to throw it out as you realize that all that you really wanted was that very small amount anyway. It won't take long to begin to make eating choices that save you money and satisfy you at the same time. It does not matter what kind of food it is. Knowing this is power! You now have the knowledge and willpower to limit other people’s power over you. For, you see, it was never the food that had the power. It was you and other people’s knowledge of the power that you think food has that was always your failure.

Third. Drink as much water as you can but supplement it with coffee (nothing in it) and fruit juices, especially lemonade or orange juice of about a cup per day. Citrus keeps your body from getting any form of scurvy or rickets (look it up). Vitamin C is important for your body to rid itself of nasties. It will squeegee out plaques and other vein disease if you maintain a daily regimen. Remember, sweet tea tastes good, but tea dries you out from the inside out. Limit tea or sugary liquids if you can and drink pure water. I drink my tap water. It is up to local water quality standards and tastes great! I fill my double-walled thermos and carry it with me on longer trips (Read my Potable Plastics Hack). Otherwise, you can find it beside my seat in my house all day long, filled several times per day. Buying expensive water is a waste of time and money. Check your pipes with the local water or electric company to make sure they are not lead (phoning is easy). Then, go back to your kitchen sink (I call it my well) and make it a habit. Plop a few ice cubes in your thermos for cold drinks and they will stay cold for up to twelve hours. Although, I must say, I drink my water faster than that.

Please take into consideration how much exercise you get during the day. If you exercise more, you will want to eat more. If you eat very small portions like cheese and crackers or cottage cheese and peaches to satisfy your drug craving, that is okay. Go ahead and be good to yourself. Do not starve yourself. Eat very small portions when you feel that you have exercised enough that you probably worked off a lot of calories. Oh yeah, by the way, you do not have to be a runner to lose weight. And gym memberships are a waste of time, money, and effort. You do NOT have to exercise to lose weight (Read my other article Exercise in Longevity to learn more). Walking is the best exercise or just cleaning the house. Later, when you are down in weight you can take up more strenuous exercise or activities you always wanted to try or do. You now have hope for your physical future. You have the power to be who you really want to be. Knowledge is power. That is what my company, Round Robin Distribution Designs, LLC offers its clients and readers. But, as you can read here, it did not cost you a dime to learn how to stop the yo-yo cycle of dieting that never worked in the first place, did it? You just have to know how to read.

As another culprit added to the list of no-noes is monosodium glutamate or MSG. I think we need legislation totally banning it from our country. It is that bad. When I was in Canada, their food tastes different. Then, I found out that they do not put MSG in their foods. All countries should ban it. You, for now however, need to read every label! MSG makes everything taste gobbly delicious and you glut yourself because it makes you want more and more and more. Many famous restaurants, fast foods in particular and most Chinese foods, are chocked full of MSG. If you use your search engine plugging in what is monosodium glutamate made of, you will find out some of the fast-food joints you frequent, like Chick-fil-a, Popeyes, and McDonalds (McD is trying to clean it up a little though) that use MSG to keep you addicted and coming back for more. What I personally believe is that MSG, known to cause high blood pressure, is the main reason, maybe the singular biggest reason, for obesity in America. 

The other possible cause of diabetes and other horrible disease may be the artificial sweeteners found in sodas, foods, or by the packet. Just think about how long people have been using these ingredients! The best sweeteners are always the natural kind like pure cane sugar and honey. What has happened world-wide is that artificial sweetener companies have advertised and pushed their products tricking everyone into believing that they are harmless. However, I believe it was the beginning of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, cancers, and addictions to the foods and drinks that contain and hide them. Simply read labels. Do not drink diet sodas. As a matter of fact, any soda is not good at all for your body (your spirit temple). And remove all artificial ingredients from your diet. I think you can recover, but it takes diligence on your part to save yourself.

So, you may not be causing your obesity. It may be that MSG and artificial ingredients in your diet has your cravings off the chart! I knew a woman that ordered two large supreme pizza's and ate them at one sitting every time she ordered it which was almost weekly. Needless to say, she is of massive size over 450 lbs. today. Can you read? Obviously, you stuck with me reading this article, so you must be able to read a label or ask a restaurant (any) if they put MSG in their foods. Yes. You can overcome your condition by taking control of what you put past your lips. It is that simple a solution.

As an aside, my belief is that monosodium glutamate or MSG also may be the root cause of diabetes. It could be fooling your pancreas to overproduce or underproduce insulin depending on what you eat and what is in what you eat. Noone else has come up with a cause for diabetes and there has been no cure, so far. However, I believe that if you eliminate MSG and other harmful chemicals, unpronounceable ingredients, dyes, preservatives, and additives from your foods that you may repair internal and external damage. Go back to real foods, organic and in its natural state with a short shelf life. Buy cutup frozen vegetables, fresh fruits or canned, and more fish. These simple measures may help control or eliminate diabetes symptoms. Of course, it is difficult to know your symptoms have subsided if you are on an insulin regimen, but you can probably see a big enough difference to alert your doctor to decrease your medication. You never know until you try.

In extreme cases of Type I diabetes, the insulin production process may be entirely broken as the pancreas is permanently damaged by glucose confusion. The pancreas may be reacting to what it thinks is a massive amount of glucose or sugars and it may try to flush it into your intestines. Then, as your intestines are also compromised, they do not signal for the pancreas to make more insulin which decreases insulin production. I believe that it all comes down to your diet and what you put inside and on your body. I think that a mother can pass this ingredient from her body to that of her child and this may be why more children have come down with the malady. It may also be hereditary in that some people are less able to process MSG than others based on their ethnicity. At the very least, it is questionable. I think we should research MSG as possibly being linked to other maladies, as well...ADHD, Alzheimer's, ALS, MS, cancers, autism and other disorders and disease could be caused by a combination of such ingredients in our foods, drinks, and products we put on our bodies, too. Don't you think it is worth exploring? As usual, I say read your labels thoroughly, because your life depends on it!

So, what is the bottom line? Are you serious about how you feel? Are you tired of being led by the nose by companies and their advertisements? Would you like to rebuff Aunt Sarah’s apple cobbler, or can you say to yourself, “I can eat a portion of that cobbler because I am allowed my fistful of food today.” If you are planning to go to a gathering or restaurant, can you think to yourself – only to yourself – that you need to drink a couple of cups of hot coffee this morning until the gathering or restaurant so that I can have a delicious meal? I do not eat breakfast because of this. I wait to see what plans I have for the day and eat or don’t eat depending on where or what I will be doing later in the day. Going to a barbeque with all the fixings and massive amount of side dishes? Simply spoon a small bite of each food that you want onto your plate (try not to go too much over the fistful) and do not go back for seconds. Take a doggie bag with you to the gathering, if you feel the fistful is depriving you of your favorites and load it up to put it in your freezer. It works! You CAN have those foods you love, but they do not love you! Be powerful and limit WHEN you eat and how much every day (fistful).

They shove in your eyes and ears that old saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Liars. You can even fast (not eat) all day for several days and will not starve. I only do this when I know I am going to eat two fistfuls of apple cobbler. It’s my favorite. If you like crackers and cheese, you can munch a few of these in the afternoon occasionally. Or you can have a snack later in the day if you haven’t eaten much during the day. Sometimes, I eat in the afternoon before seven o’clock. If this happens, I usually eat, you guessed it, breakfast. I love me some omelet!

Finally, I’ll leave you with this thought. You are worthy. You are good-looking. You are talented. You are powerful. Take your superhuman thoughts with you wherever you go. No one has to know what you are thinking. For now, you may be obese. But inside you are a force to be reckoned with. Saying no just got a lot easier, didn’t it? The only thing you need in the near future is new clothes.

© Copyright, Food For Thought, 8/20/2022, April Graves-Minton, Love MoonEagle. All Rights Reserved.