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TAKE A LOOK at why you eat. Are you one of a small minority of people who eat just to stay alive but have no real interest either in the taste or the health effects of foods? Is your prime interest in diet from an eating-to-stay-thin point of view? Or do you find yourself worrying most of the time about what and how much you eat so you don't get fat? Another motivation when it comes to food is the Dionysian one - choosing foods entirely because they titillate your palate. This is perhaps the most common of all reasons for making dietary choices. Are you a Dionysian eater? Or perhaps, more concerned about health, you are one of a growing number of people who eat to avoid disease? They worry about eating eggs or butter because of the cholesterol these foods contain. These people continually readjust their eating habits to fall in line with the latest medical report on heart disease or cancer. Are you a 'disease-avoider'?
Of course all of us are to some extent influenced by most of those food-motivations at one time or another. But to play the ultrahealth game well, all of the above reasons for choosing foods (including those of the disease-avoiders) need to become subservient to one simple goal: eating for performance and energy. The ultrahealth eater chooses foods both because they look and taste delightful and because they are part of a whole life-enhancing, energy-creating experience. In short, you eat because it makes you feel- and, as a corollary, look - great.
For most people this means making a few changes. And changing your eating habits is almost always a slow process, one in which you take three steps forwards only to follow them with two more backwards. But this kind of slow change tends to be far more permanent than throwing over everything you are used to in favour of whole new habits just like that.
The eating goal for ultrahealth is eventually to come to like, want and delight in the foods which will do you the most good anyway - not because medical research shows that rats living on them stay healthier. You come to prefer them because they work best for your body and mind and because, instead of robbing your body of vitality as many foods can, they energize you, help to keep you calm in the face of stress, and encourage your body to function in optimal ways, all at the same time. Such is the power of the ultrahealth way of eating. It is a nutritional lifestyle which focuses on the peaks and chooses your eating habits from there. And it demands two things: first, an examination of your own nutritional ways of living now, and secondly, the gradual development of a new nutritional lifestyle which works specifically for you. After a while this new lifestyle becomes second nature. Then you can forget the notions of how much heart disease will be caused in ten years if you do or do not eat that extra egg. Eat so you can bring about optimal energy and functioning in your body and clarity in your mind, and diseaseprevention will take care of itself. Look for positive returns from your diet now and you won't have to worry about the future.
Basically you need three diet skills in the ultrahealth game:
1. A real desire to kick the junk-food habit.
2. A fundamental knowledge of nutrition to the degree that you know what kind of foods are health-enhancing and what kind tend to be health-deteriorating.
3. A desire to refocus your food preferences in favour of the former.
4. Making ultrahealth changes in diet are simply not that difficult provided you act on what you learn. Knowledge without action will get you nowhere.