Eat to Live - Keys to Good Nutrition and Tips to Eating Healthy

"Eat to live; don't live to eat."

One of the keys to good nutrition and tips to eating healthyis to eat for the right reasons. Have you ever thought of that? Have you ever asked yourself why you eat every day? It seems, on the surface, like a simple question with an obvious answer. However, when you understand the deeper ramifications of this question, you will realize that it is really quite a profound question.

"WHY DO YOU EAT?"

Some people eat as though they were going to go out and do the hardest kind of physical labor! They sit down at the table, for example, and eat a large heavy breakfast loaded with protein, carbohydrates, fats, and sugars. And yet the truth is that they are very sedentary people who eat out of habit and conditioning. These same people often work in an office or in a store where they sit or stand around all day doing very little physical labor at all. They will usually eat a quite unhealthy snack in the morning. Around noon they will eat a heavy meal, followed a little later by an afternoon snack. After work, they come home and have the biggest meal of the day consisting of meat, potatoes, bread, dessert, and a beverage. Typically they watch TV after dinner while eating yet another fattening snack.

The person living the average, inactive and sedentary life can't possibly burn up these large amounts of food! What happens to people who eat this way? They end up being overweight or obese, they feel tired or exhausted most of the time, and they live their entire lives being sick or half-sick. They fill the doctors' offices, pharmacies, and hospitals with all the health problems brought on by their unhealthy eating habits.

This kind of daily compulsive over-eating is making millions of people exhausted, fat, and sick. This habitual over-eating is sending them to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and too many to an early grave! As the Roman philosopher, Seneca, once said, "Men do not die; they kill themselves." This tragic story is being played out all across the Western world. Millions of people are grossly overweight and sick due to unhealthy lifestyles and poor eating habits.

Not only do millions of people overeat or overfuel their bodies, but they also overfuel on the wrong kinds of food. The food that they consume is generally not nutritious and is loaded with toxins and other substances that make their bodies fatter and sicker and more tired. Because their bodies are truly malnourished from bad nutrition, they constantly feel hungry because their bodies are not getting the nutrients that they need. In addition, overeating puts a severe strain on the body's organs and the digestive tract to try to keep up with all of that food. By overeating they are stressing out the machinery of their entire body because they never give their body time to rest and repair itself. What they really need to do is to get into the habit of fasting one day a week to help their system unclog and cleanse itself.

EAT TO LIVE; DON'T LIVE TO EAT

Now, getting back to our original question: "Why do you eat?" Many people eat three large meals a day because they were told at a young age that they should. They have been conditioned to eating not only three large daily meals, but also to eating snacks throughout the day. I believe that most people eat this way out of habit and conditioning, and for the wrong reasons. A lot of times people eat because it meets some deep emotional need in their souls such as comfort, which is why we call some foods, "comfort foods." Some people overeat because they are lonely and eating food makes them feel better. Some people overeat simply because they are bored. Other people overeat because they are simply gluttens, meaning they have an unhealthy kind of "lust" for food that gives them a lot of pleasure and a physical high. All of these reasons are not good or healthy reasons to eat or to overeat.

EAT FOR NUTRITION AND ENERGY AND LIFE

I would like to suggest that the best reasons to eat (not overeat) are to feed your body the good nutrition it needs, to provide your body the energy it needs to work and live, and to give your body the life that it needs to be happy and productive. In other words, "eat to live!" Think of food as fuel for your body. You can put in good high-quality fuel that will energize your body and help you accomplish what you need to every day, or you can put in bad poor-quality fuel that will cause your body to feel tired, weak, and sickly and will prevent you from accomplishing what you need to do.

Finally, there is a time and a place to enjoy the pleasure of eating good food. God created us to enjoy great variety of foods that He put on the earth. Enjoying good healthy food is a blessing from God that we should be thankful for. However, we do need to protect our hearts from gluttony and overeating by practicing moderation in our eating habits. My advice to you is to reflect a while on why you eat, and then make some healthy changes. Start thinking differently about food and eating. Discipline your body and make it your servant, rather than your body being the master and you being the slave to its appetite. Take control of your appetite and eating habits, and learn the healthy habit of eating to live. To your health, the Naked Nutrition Knight