FOOD FOR THOUGHT (too much)

This will just be a rant...I have things to say and questions to ask.

When an entire aisle at the grocery store is just for cereal or soda, it makes you wonder what kind of world were living in. Check this - 52 percent of Americans think doing their taxes is easier than figuring out what to eat to be healthy. And 76 percent of Americans surveyed find it maddening to sort through conflicting and ever-changing advice about nutrition.  OK, I get that. Eggs are bad for you. No, eggs are good for you. Dairy helps your bones. No wait, it clogs your arteries. Carbs make you fat or was it the basis of a healthy diet? Oh don't ask about fat...Some fat—bad; some fat—good. Eep! 

Are you kiding me?  Taxes suck but to compare picking out your food to it begs the question? What is wrong with us? Why are we so disconnected from our food? Why are we so spoiled?! First world problems indeed! Of course part of the problem is that we have so many food choices. Choosing becomes overwhelming, and "decision fatigue" even saps your willpower for other tasks, recent research suggests. More research for yah. A study, using rats (I know we aren't rats but it's still intriguing) discovered that too many choices and varieties of food on the dinner table might help make us fat.

The scientists wanted to know if the rats would regulate their own diets for optimum health, so they put three bowls in their cages - one filled with a carbohydrate like corn, another with a protein food, and a third with an oil or fat. The rats did just fine

Then the researchers added some choices to see what happened. Instead of one kind of carbohydrate, they now gave the rats two. They added another protein food, and another fat.

Within a few weeks, some of the rats had eaten themselves to death. They were compelled to eat some of everything on their plate, so to speak, and their internal appetite controls stopped working. Wild rats, of course, would never find themselves facing this problem of too much food, with too much variety. However, this unnatural laboratory experiment plays out on many human dinner tables, every single day.

But I think, the issue becomes an ISSUE when you find yourself on a quest for salvation through perfect eating. Don't become a food perfectionists keep the choices simple. Real food, outside aisle eating and cook. Hard to throw in a pinch of Azodicarbonamide or Benzoyl Peroxide when you don't even know what that is.

Unless you require a special food program because of illness or a medical condition, there is no need to put yourself on a diet with an expiration date. (It should be a lifestyle.) Instead of being overwhelmed by too many choices, too much information, and the need to be perfect, you could try allowing yourself to live:

Choose some foods that you were in the mood for and not berate yourself that you were “giving in” to cravings.  Or, aim for “good-enough” food choices and healthy portion sizes. Perhaps, realize that you won’t be able to eat in a perfectly healthy way all the time and let the guilt go! It's really not as complicated as "they" want you to believe.  Afterall, multi-billion dollar industries such as the Fitness Industry, are out to make money, so the cure all plan just isn't going to happen.

Be smart and be kind to yourself.  Your body never did anything to you! So stop starving it.  Beating it up or saying mean things about it.