One of our members recently told me a story about a chili dog. Which reminded me of my life-long temptation with potato chips. Which taught me an incredible lesson about why people fall off their diet.

So, a quick story:

A few months ago, I was talking with one of our members who was ready to graduate from our program. She was doing great! She’d stuck to the plan we’d created together and she’d completely turned around her health. As we were talking, she mentioned that after she was at the point where she could begin adding different items back into her diet, she was at a barbecue where they were serving chili dogs.

She tried one.

Nine months before that day, she would’ve eaten it and felt normal… or, she would’ve felt terrible (she now knew) but she always felt terrible so there wasn’t much of a difference no matter what she ate back then.

On this day, though, she could feel it instantly. The chili dog was not good. It didn’t taste good. And, moreover, she didn’t feel good after eating it.

And she told me, as we talked, that it was amazing that once her system had been reset, once she’d eliminated all the terrible food she’d eaten her whole life, and gone full-in on a plant-based diet, her body could tell instinctively when it was fed something that wasn’t giving her the nutrition she needed

Overcoming the Misconception

I think this is an amazing example of what people who haven’t gone through a detox or thorough dietary transition don’t understand. The idea of giving up soda, hamburgers, or potato chips (once my kryptonite, as I’ve mentioned before) sounds impossible from the outside. Won’t you have constant cravings? Won’t you think about nothing else, every minute of every day?

The truth of it, though, is that yes, it’s hard at the beginning. But as you get in touch with your body, learn the “why” behind your cravings, and face them directly, eventually, your body, as you feed it what it needs, will learn what works for you—and what doesn’t.

And, more than that, you’ll learn to listen for the signals it’s sending you.

If you begin building the habits that provide the foundation for so much of our health—awareness, consideration, transformation (which you can read more about here)—your body will tell you what it needs. It will tell you when you feel great and will communicate when something is wrong.

You, as we’ve said before, are your own best doctor. And when you feed it what it needs and respond naturally to its signals, the cravings for the junk you used to eat—the garbage that’s slowly killing you—eventually disappear.

Good News, Good News

So, there’s a double heaping helping of good news here.

The first is that if you fall off your diet, it’s not the end of the world. It just means that it’s time to hit the reset button again (with, for example, a detox) and get your body, mind, and soul realigned.

The other bit of good news is this: If you’re doing something wrong, your body will be sure to let you know!

The post Why Your Cravings Don’t Have to Define You Anymore appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 13, 2016

When most people hear the words “eliminate” and “diet” together, they think of deprivation. They think about giving up all the foods they currently eat. They picture a grey wasteland of bland foodstuffs and unfed cravings.

They think of misery.

What an elimination diet actually entails, though, is far less severe.

And the benefits of doing one are nothing short of miraculous.

How it Works

Given your current habits and symptoms of illness, a good nutrition coach is going to be able to look at all the evidence and pinpoint certain things that are causing havoc in your system. Dairy, gluten, soy, peanuts, corn tomatoes and other nightshade vegetables—all of these are common system triggers.

But we’d never go after all of them all at once.

Instead, it’s a systematic, scientific and gradual process.

After determining some of the types of foods that could be causing you problems, we choose one and eliminate it.

If it’s dairy, then obviously we eliminate milk, cheese, etc.

Instead of taking it out altogether and leaving you curled up in the fetal position with fever-dreams about never tasting a milkshake ever again, we supplement all things dairy with nutritious, delicious substitutions.

And even if that still sounds terrible, here’s the thing:

Once we pinpoint the triggering food (or foods) and they’ve been out of your system for a few weeks, it’s amazing how much better you will feel.

It’s a biological truth: Take out the stuff that’s causing the problem and the body automatically starts working at a far more optimized level. By which I mean: You will feel better.

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Knowing How You Feel

And that’s where things start getting fun. After the cravings are gone (which don’t last that long, maybe a week or two at most) and you start to understand how it actually feels to not feel terrible all the time, that triggering food won’t appeal to you anymore.

We have this sense in this culture that cravings are some natural feeling. That they will persist no matter how long you stay away from the particular object of those cravings.

But it just doesn’t work that way. The cravings go away and new, better habits take their place. Cravings are simply another word for “habits.” Your body doesn’t like to change the way it operates and when you force it towards new directions, initially it baulks. But that doesn’t last.

The Other Side

Most of our elimination diets at the Wellness Training Institute last for six weeks or so. At that point, we can start putting some of the potentially problem-causing foods back into the rotation. You try them again, see how your body reacts, and then the decision becomes easy.

If you aren’t sensitive to it and your body is fine eating, say, tomatoes, then awesome! Eat tomatoes.

But if your body rejects that potential trigger again, then you’ll know it. You’ll also know how poorly it makes you feel.

At that point it’s your decision: Eat it and feel terrible, or don’t eat it and feel great.

Because, now that you’ve gone through the elimination diet, you know what it feels like to feel great.

After that, it’s just a choice. And I’ve met very few people who, once they understand how it feels to ACTUALLY FEEL GREAT, ever choose to go back to their old, miserable lives.

The post Feeling it Out: The Power of the Elimination Diet appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.