4 Ways to Find Peace in a Simple Diet

Posted on August 9, 2010 by admin

For the last few months, my girlfriend and I have been living a primarily vegetarian diet. For many of you, I am sure you think we are probably crazy. However, flipping your diet on its head doesn’t have to be painful.

Peace in Food

The food we have come accustomed to eating is killing us. You don’t need me to rant and rave like I have in the past though. You can probably figure it out via the growing waistlines everywhere you go. The crazy thing is that eating healthy doesn’t mean deprivation from please. Rather eating healthy can be a peaceful act.

Food doesn’t have to be a battle. The right food you put into your body creates results that are phenomenal.  The more at peace you are with what you put in your body, the likelier you are to succeed at any and every goal set in front of you.

With that said, being at peace with crap food is not the same as being at peace with proper dietary decisions.

Diet Not Dieting

For the common TMP reader, you know that I hate diets. Dieting isn’t useful. They don’t promote a long, fulfilled life of providing appropriate energy. They just make people emotionally and physically screwed.

Diets are antithetical to improving one’s life. Diets are not a reflection of your entire lifetime of eating. They only make a short period of your life appear as though one is healthy.

However, I do love a fitting diet. I try to live as closely to a diet that is healthy and maintained over the long haul.

I do not diet. I implement a diet. Major difference there.

4 Ways to Find Peace in a Simple Diet

The following are just a few of my ideas on ways to start living healthier. I strongly suggest analyzing your own diet and asking yourself if you really want/need to change it. These ways are each just examples that you can implement with the mindset of a lifetime of proper eating. These suggestions will not work if you are just “trying to lose weight”.

1. Eat Something that Came Directly from the Ground During Every Meal or Snack. I am not perfect in my diet. However, I try to eat foods that are natural. In this examples case, that means eating fruits and veggies that have yet to be processed. It will help your digestion out even if you implement with a few processed materials.

2. Eat Food You Know the Name of. I do my best to know what my food is made of 80-90% of the time. Again, I am not perfect, but the fewer 25-letter foods I eat, usually the better.

3. Eat with an Open Mind. I swear, on this primarily vegetarian diet I am on, I have eaten some strange food. Is it all good? Hell no, but I am still trying it. Keep an open mind to new ideas and new foods. Just because you didn’t like something before, doesn’t mean you still wouldn’t.

4. Eat like a Cow…that isn’t Being Fed Grain. Try to eat green. Vegetable and grass diets produce the longest living human beings in Asia. Green, fresh foods are an amazing source of all of your necessary nutritional sources. Plus you can almost never go hungry or over-eat when you are eating a primarily green diet.

Hopefully, these few ways to be at peace with your life diet will make your life a little easier. Share your thoughts in the comments below….

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  • Some rules I like to add to that mix:

    1) Eat every 2-3 hours. I've played around with fasting before, not my preferred method of weight management, it's particularly uncomfortable in a lot of cases.

    2) Ingest complete, lean protein each time you eat. Even as vegetarians, this is important. I'm not a vegetarian for the record, so I find this rule a little easier than most vegetarians I've worked with, it's still important though. Eggs are often a vegetarians best friend if you eat them still. There are a variety of protein powders, and things like quinoa, nuts, seeds, and hemp have a lot of protein in them still.
  • I've followed a vegan lowfat wholefoods (well, most of the time :-) program for about 15 years now.

    I have a post at

    http://minimalistmum.blogspot....

    and my next post is going to be a week's worth of family-friendly vegan (but flexible) dinners.
  • David, I also started to eat vegetarian some weeks ago. Now I feel much full of energy and really better than I felt before.

    Still I am not able to eliminate all the meat (I still eat fish and some chicken from time to time) and still I don't eat most of my meals organic foods. But overall I realize that eating organic and vegetarian makes you feel much better, and I am not starving as I thought initially I will :)
  • I think mindful eating is the key. And it's also the part of simpler living that I find the most difficult. I don't yet have my life organized where mindfulness related to eating fits in. For me, 2010 is the year of decluttering, but I've been considering making 2011 the year to get fit.

    I've started already, though. My stomach and back have both been having problems, so my body is calling out for some changes. I've been eating less and exercising, but I'm not eating "right" or exercising thoroughly.

    Nice post. I retweeted.

    Gip
  • "the fewer 25-letter foods I eat, usually the better"

    This would be an interesting experiment :)
  • Okay David... you've been reading my mind. This system or style of eating makes perfect sense to me, too. I have been on a mission to eat better for some years now and have found that when I eat simply, I feel peaceful. Funny, but so true. And surprise surprise... I'm losing weight.

    I shop for foods I like and that are good for me without really keeping a recipe in mind. I buy lots of veggies, fruits, nuts, whole grains (like raw oatmeal), dried beans and peas, fish, some chicken... you know the routine. This morning I made quinoa and threw in some diced tomatoes, avocados, a little olive oil, salt and pepper and was in heaven.

    I tried going on diets (South Beach, etc.) and got frustrated with the complexity of them. It's just so much easier (for me anyway) to buy good food that's good for me and just throw it together the way I want. Who needs 20 ingredient recipes?

    Yes, I feel more peaceful when I eat in this relaxed way. My pantry shelves contain very few processed foods (a few cans of black beans, diced tomatoes, etc. for emergencies). Being clutter free in my pantry, refrigerator, and in my eating style really does give me a sense of peace.

    I'm so glad you wrote this post. I really couldn't say what I was feeling about cooking simply. You said it best. It really is peaceful. Thanks.
  • Cool post, David. I am also a vegetarian and try to eat local organic foods most of the time. I agree, there is a sense of peace to eating mindfully. Knowing where my food comes from gives me extra satisfaction while eating. Thanks for this perspective.
  • "eating mindfully"
    I like that.
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