A Better Way to Better Nutrition

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"In the early days of dating my husband, we engaged in all sorts of question-asking to get to know one another better. As we walked along our university"s campus holding hands and gazing into each other"s eyes, I will never know what prompted my twenty-year-old brain to ask him what fruits and vegetables he liked to eat. No matter how strange the question, I will forever remember his reply.

Puzzled, he sheepishly answered, "Oranges, lemons, and limes." Thankfully the darkness of the evening concealed my stunned reaction, as I was in disbelief that a person I considered marrying would only reply with three fruits, two of which were inedible to eat on their own. I nodded back and forth all the while thinking, "How will this relationship ever work?" The moment I returned back to my dorm room, I phoned my mother to relay this disheartening information.

Along with not preferring fruit, the only vegetables he mentioned either had the preceding word "fried" or the words "with butter" after. Luckily, this wasn"t a deal breaker in our relationship as I knew my healthy ways would win out someday. Twenty-five years later, if you ever sit next to my husband at a meal, you will be delighted to see fresh vegetables and all sorts of healthy concoctions filling his plate. This has now become his preferred routinebut it did not happen overnight.

In the world of health and fitness, one would like to believe the extreme transformational stories, where a person abandons their daily consumption of processed foods all at once in exchange for a healthy diet of whole foods, and then lives happily ever after. However, after many years in the industry of dietary change, I tend to look upon these stories in the same way that I once did when I read Cinderella as a child they are romantic, make-believe, and don"t really happen in real life.

Without a doubt the most common mistake I have seen people make in the area of nutrition is trying to change too many things in their diet at once. When faced with the dilemma to get healthier, for some reason most of us gravitate toward radical elimination. However, it rarely works in the long run.

The Drastic Change Approach
In the beginning we decide that we don"t like the way we feel or look, so we commit to making dietary changes. We want to achieve our goals faster, and it only makes sense that we should change things drastically cut out all alcohol, sugar, processed food, and fatty foods (at the same time). For the first week we are euphoric as we adhere strictly to our exciting new way of eating. We whisper to ourselves, "This time is different than the others; I am going to change. I can do it."

We tell people that we have more energy as we get out of bed with a spring in our step. For the next two to three weeks we start to feel better, see the scale move in the preferred direction, and feel proud of ourselves that we are honoring our commitment to change. However, in the back of our mind we really miss some of our favorite foods and wonder when our cravings will subside as those rigid diet plans promised.

Then one day around the fourth week, maybe sooner, we realize that we will never again be able to eat a brownie on a weekday with this newfound way of eating. And we begin to hate life. The scale stops moving downward at a quick speed despite our heroic efforts, and each week of regimented eating starts to feel like we are walking uphill wearing a heavy backpack in one-hundred degree heat.

Where we once sat and mused about the beauty and meaning of life, now we find ourselves thinking multiple times a day (let"s be honest: multiple times an hour) about cake, chips, and peanut butter. We might even fantasize about eating spoonfuls of butter on its own (my own experience). We stare at others who are able to enjoy a slice of cake without remorse, much like Brad Pitt glaring across the dinner table at Rachel in the Thanksgiving "Friends" episode. We try to convince ourselves that we don"t really crave the sugar, it"s just something deeper that we are yearning for in life, but all the while, we really want the cake.

And then it becomes just too much. We give up."

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