Perhaps twenty years ago I became addicted to reading food packaging labels. I guess it is really not an addiction but I am seriously devoted to knowing what I am eating. One of the first things I noticed was how many calories were in salad dressing. I have been active and healthy my whole life but I find during times of stress and business my weight will rise. I strive to keep my weight under the 25 BMI marker, and counting calories is something that woks for me. For such a small quantity, salad dressing seemed like something I could live with less.
I began to reduce my intake of salad dressing by measuring how much I was putting on my food. Within a short time I began making a conscious choice to eat salad without any dressing. Once, I remember wondering why I even started to put it on salad. I guess iit was always available and I just did what everybody else was doing.
What happened over the years since I began to avoid dressing is just a small example of what happens when you make a choice. First, I began to really enjoy salad without any dressing. Plain and simple I love salad just plain. For me, dressing covers up the flavors of the fresh vegetables. Second, I have come to eat fruits and veggies of all kinds raw and without oils and dressings. All these fruits and vegetables are great for my health and I truly love my eating choices. Friends ask me why I deny myself and I respond honestly that there is no denial going on. This is how I love to eat. Sometimes they just stare at me.
Why am I writing about this? Because we all sometimes forget that we have a great deal of choice in our lives. We hold the power to choose what we want to eat and what we don’t want to eat. And sometimes the things we add or take away turn out to be the things we prefer.
Is there anything wrong with salad dressing, or bacon or red meat? I don’t have a problem with any of those, I just simply made a choice to not eat those on any regular basis. Do I eat dressing, bacon and red meat? Yes, but I eat so little of those three that you might think I do not.
Why do I make this choice? Because salad dressing has a lot of empty calories, bacon is heavy in fat and nitrates and red meat is heavy, makes me sleepy and some research shows it may be related to heart disease. So I choose not to eat them. In the case of red meat sometimes I crave a good cheeseburger so I’ll eat one. One every two or three months probably isn;t going to do me great harm. Bacon used to be a standard in my house but over the past few years I have just lost interest in it.
So, I am not telling you what to eat. I try, not always successfully, to avoid giving advice. I simply want to show what has worked for me. What has worked wonders for me is to make a positive choice and do my best to stick with it. Maybe my example will be something that works for you.