How to Form Better Eating Habits for Weight Loss

I’m fortunate enough to live less than 3 blocks from the Farmer’s Market, and this morning I went to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables for dinner tonight and I always like to spend time talking to the people who work there. They are mostly farmers and you can get great information from them like, when to come in and get the really good stuff, when they’re next shipment of the juiciest tomatoes are coming in, how to stop killing every plant you bring into your home, etc. I’ve never really experienced bad product from them, and they’re just plain old great people. I frequent this place quite a bit, and if I’m busy doing something, then I send my boys. The boys love the stuff we get there and it disappears faster than “regular” produce from the grocery store.

You gotta love that Farmer’s Market, they have local produce and because it doesn’t have to be shipped very far it is so fantastic. It’s not very much fun though when they close down until Spring. We only have weeks left until they close down for the season. It is really hard to go back to “grocery store shopping” once they shut down. Unless I drive out 20 minutes or more, it is difficult to find good local produce. Even then, I still don’t get that same great flavor every single time like I do with them. I spend at least a third of my grocery budget there when they are “in season”.

Most people have a general idea of what they’re supposed to be eating, but few find importance in the quality of food they’re putting into their bodies. It baffles me at times. If you’ve ever been to a Whole Foods, you see that they have the vegetables divided into categories, but then they further divide it into subcategories: conventional section, and organic section. When the budget permits, I always try to go with the organic because it tastes fresher. When I hear people say they can’t taste the difference, then I know they’ve got a palette that has given them the inability to be able to taste the difference. They’re the people who put salt on their food before they even taste it. Then, after they taste it, they add more salt! Your palette then becomes tainted because you’re really not tasting the food anymore, but the seasoning. Most people need better quality food so that the need for things such as much salt, cheese, butter, sour cream, and the like dissipates.

At that same Farmer’s Market a while back, I met a man while I was picking through the assortment of beans: green beans, peas, yellow beans, fava beans, all very fresh. Yum! I always like to try new things, even though most times I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with it once I get home. I encourage my boys to do the same. Lucky for me, I love to cook and tend to be adventurous with my eating. It seems to have rubbed off on my boys.

There was one particular bean though, I was not too familiar with that this gentleman was picking through and I began to eyeball them with curiosity. I asked him what he was going to do with the beans and he replied that he was going to “Make me some good ‘ol fashioned thick soup.” I asked him what he was going to put into it and as I was asking him the question I noticed that there was that bacon with all that fat in it that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, or at least I hope not because it was there sitting right next to the beans we were picking through.

He said he was going to peel the beans, cook them down, add him some bacon to flavorize (is this even a word?) it and add some of his special spices, put it on top of some rice and enjoy. It actually sounded good to me, my parents are from the south and his recipe sounded awfully close to what we refer to as gumbo.

I then just picked up a raw bean and took a bite. He looked horrified. I asked him if he ever considered eating them raw. His response was, “Well now why would I ever want to do that? They taste so much better the way I make them.” He looked into my hand basket and saw I had TONS of tomatoes. “How you gon’ eat those?” I told him I just cut them up in a bowl and eat them like watermelon. (They’re so good! I have not ever met another tomato I would ever do this with.) I get another perplexed look from the gentleman. “Ever try fried green tomatoes?” I told him I couldn’t tell him the last time I ate anything fried. People within earshot of our conversation started shouting from all over the market about different ways to fry various assortments of vegetables. I just remember thinking, “Why on God’s green earth would I want to fry a vegetable?”

He then starts to fade into his long list of ailments starting with diabetes, high blood pressure etc. I basically felt like I made the man feel guilty with my hand basket.

I think after you begin to try new and different ways to experience food in your life, you just may find that you enjoy different tastes. When I teach a 14-week seminar on understanding fat loss people are always amazed at how they can change their palettes. When you become accustomed to a certain way of experiencing a food and you don’t venture outside of that then that essentially becomes your relationship with that particular food. When you try it differently, you may need some time adjusting, but you may just start to find yourself enjoying the same food differently and in a healthier way. If you improve the quality of your food, this can make a tremendous difference in the frequency you eat healthy fare. Try the same food made in a healthier way more than once and see if you don’t start to crave it in the healthier way. In fact it may take re-introduction of the food up to five times before you develop a taste for it.

For instance, I love, love, love yams, or sweet potatoes. I don’t feel I had even began to appreciate them until I baked them and ate it with nothing on it. I was amazed at how sweet it was naturally, without anything on it. Now, when you think of yams, or sweet potatoes, especially this time of year, how is it that you usually think of it? As candied yams with marshmallows, nuts and brown sugar? Sweet potato pie? Now around Thanksgiving when I have to eat the “candied” ones, it makes my teeth hurt, it just seems overly sweet, like I’m eating a forkful of brown sugar with sugar on top. Try something different! You may just be in for a pleasant surprise you’ll find yourself going back to!