We Become What We Eat
Most of the Time
I paraphrased my title from a quote by Earl Nightingale, “We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.”
Actually, those two statements are interconnected, and this is the strangest secret. A lot of people, even those who are on a diet, do not think about the real reasons why, they want to lose weight and often they gain it back. Many eat without thinking of what is going into their mouth, whether it’s eating for comfort or hunger.
In my view, and what I practice, food is a fuel for our bodies and we have to think what kind of person we would like to be, and to choose it wisely. For instance, I think that if you want to lose weight, rather than counting calories, visualize yourself instead as a slim and healthy person. Act as one, live your life accordingly, exercise regularly, walk a lot, limit your intake of alcohol and of course find the right person to ask for professional advice. Your body’s intelligence will help you develop eating habits that correspond with how you think about yourself most of the time. And thankfully there is always help available from various sources. I decided to write about this subject after reading an article which originally appeared in Fast Company Magazine on 08-06-2017 titled, “What Happened When I Ate The Best Brain Food For A Week”, where the author, Anisa Purbasari Harton described her experience of consuming food with the appropriate name MIND Diet, which was short for Mediterranean Inversion for Neurodegenerative Delay. It was developed over the course of nine years. Researchers studied eating patterns of 960 adults, trying to find out how what we consume can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Being 28 years young, Ms. Harton was not concerned about Alzheimers; however, since the diet was designed to optimize cognitive function, she thought it might help her brain. She decided to try it for a week to see what happens. You need to read the article to find out about her experience; meanwhile, I can share some of mine with you.
We lived in Israel when I was 28. One day, my wife Elfa suggested that we should follow a vegetarian diet. At the beginning it was challenging, since while I was growing up in Riga, Latvia, I ate a lot of meat (my father managed a meat store). However, I was considering myself vegetarian, and only ate vegetable based food, and gradually my body and more importantly my brain adjusted. Later on, when we moved to San Francisco, we went to a nutritionist who advised us to add fish to our diet and so we began to follow a pescatarian diet. And again, our bodies and minds adjusted. Our experiment started forty-five years ago and we are still following this diet today. As a result, I am a healthy, energetic individual, who plans to keep serving others for many years to come. I believe, what I eat and my lifestyle will allow me to live until I am one hundred-and-twenty. And then I will make new plans.
P.S. Since this story is about what we choose to eat, I decided to share with you four images of vegetables with my artistic interpretation.
Enjoy and Share with a Friend!
