I have a very unhealthy diet. I admit that I live off of sugars, caffeine, fried food, and frozen dinners. I really want to stop this. my weight is getting out of control, i have lost energy and just feel like crap.

But I am not sure HOW to stop. I crave sugar all the time. I could life off of soda and sweet tea. Is there something I can do to get these things out of my system where maybe i will not crave them. just detox for junk food!?

Also, I am not much of a salad eater. I honestly do not feel like I am full unless i eat something "bad" for me. I dont know why. If i try a salad for lunch, i will be heading to a drive through in a couple of hours because I am soooo hungry!

How do I get myself on the right track? And what are things i need to eat/dont need to eat.

thanks for any help. I have just been living off of these things since I was a kid, and I just dont know any different!

It's good that you're wanting to make healthier changes in your eating habits. I advise you to take it slowly, in little steps. You have to be mindful of what you're putting into your body, and the positive or negative effects some foods may have on your system.

To make it simple, try to increase your daily water intake, and give up the soda. Regular or diet, it's definitely bad news. I drink lots of seltzer water, and sometimes mix it with small amounts of juice for flavor. I don't drink anything with added sugar, salt or caffeine.

I recommend to try and avoid any fried foods and processed foods. Take note of the high salt content in those frozen or ready prepared meals, that's why they taste so good, yet are so bad for you. It's good if you make a conscious effort to cook your meals at home. Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead of vegetable oil for frying.

It's good if you slowly back yourself off of white sugar. Substitute honey or stevia instead.

I'm not an expert by any means, and I'm still working on my own healthy eating, but now I do know right from wrong, and can make my own choices. I'm still considered overweight, but I'm walking daily and am more aware of portion control with those things I'm not willing to give up.

Once you start to break old bad habits and replace them with healthier ones, you'll feel better both physically and mentally.

__________________

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~Immanual Kant~

You can get at the healthfood store this little packets of vitamins that you can mix in your soda water called Emergen C. They have different flavors. Getting off the sodas first is essential and a good place to start. Look to stevia, xylitol and honey for sweetening.

You likely are very vitamin depleated. Start with a good B vitamin from Jarrow. A vitamin c 1,000 mg a day and vitamin D3. You will find lots of posts here on how important vitamin d and c are. A good place to purchase vitamins is at www.iherb.com but for vitamin D go to www.vitalady.com the vitalady brand is the same as the biotec but a little less expensive..

Decide that you want to learn how to cook. You might want to commit to making your own dinner a few times a week and trash those tv dinners. a good hearty meal but with only stemed or raw veggies and brown rice with a nice dressing that has wholesome oils like olive oil or grapeseed oil

Then also commit to walking. Take a walk a few times a week

__________________
"The nurse should be cheerful, orderly, punctual, patient, full of faith, - receptive to Truth and Love" Mary Baker Eddy
Visit www.HealthSalon.org

thanks guys!
I walk an hour every single day unless the weather is horrible. i have to because my dogs are so active. i consider myself very active. i just have a horrible diet. this morning i hate a banana and a few baby cut carrots. so i am off to a good start. and water to drink, not coffee!!!

I would add that somewhere along the line that you allow yourself to enjoy
salads of various kinds. For example, for me, I just Have to eat slaw with
seafood of any kind. You mentioned on another thread, Red Lobster.
There are soooo many things one can add to a basic lettuce or spinach salad.
Tomato, cucumber, mushrooms, green or other onions, green or other kinds
of beans, fruits such as berries including cranberries, pear, peach, nectarine,
apple, papaya, etc. Ground flax seeds, nuts, garlic.
You can also add pieces of chicken, beef, pork roast, tuna or other fish.
As you can see you actually can make a meal out of a salad.
For a dressing you can easily make your own of XXVirgin Olive Oil, vinegar of
your choice - balsamic, apple cider,
Once you get in the habit of salads, you can let your imagination go Wild!
I wish you success and the best of luck!

__________________
May you always have..Love to Share, Health to Spare, and Friends that Care!

Sorry to hear that your diet is so horrible that you hated a banana and baby carrots this morning!
I have a cup of coffee every morning with creamer and no sugar. There are some benefits to drinking coffee, as long as you don't do it all day long. You can do a forum search on coffee and read some info, and follow some links.

The really unhealthy thing is when caffeine is added to other things, like soft drinks. The amounts of sugar and caffeine in those are outrageous!

__________________

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~Immanual Kant~

Change takes time. just being aware of what you eat will slowly change your habits.

So not get discouraged if you are not perfect. Start by being aware of what you are eating, and classify it in your mind as either food or crap. Eventually you will not like putting crap into your body.

I do not eat perfectly, but I do eat much better than I have in the past by being aware.

Dan

Good on you for waking up to wanting to change. As you have already been advised, take it one step at a time. And do keep up the water drinking. The company I am with has some great meal replacement shakes and snack bars that are low Glycemic and really help with managing weight.
Otherwise as already advised - do keep adding raw fruit and salads into your diet. Eating small portions of good quality protein such as eggs and fish will also help you. Plus I would strongly recommend that you go onto high quality supplements - antioxidants, mutlitminetals, omega-3 and calcium/magnesium to help with your body's cellular health.
Good luck!
Helen antiagingboomer.com

There is only one way that I know of and that is to add whole foods to the diet. Try adding juicing or blended healthy drinks such as green vegetables with the fruit you like. This at first will be more fruit than greens, so the taste is sweet.

This will cut down on the junk, and your taste will change. What you have now is an addiction to the food you eat.

Most processed food is addictive, that is how they get people to come back for more. They know that this food has enough salt and sugar to change your taste buds. That way natural foods taste bland.

Sugar highs and lows are a problem on the standard diet. This is also what makes changing harder. The whole food approach is a safe method and leads to change. There is plenty of room in that type diet to find a good choice of foods.

What you can do is do a lot of research on the web, because when you learn about food it becomes harder to keep the same diet. Learning about the raw food diet, paleo diet, and the health and wellness professionals will make you look at your diet in a more informed way.

There is something to slow and steady wins the race. The main thing is that you start, and you seem to really want to.

Rucusluvr I'll tell you why you crave sugar - it's because you have a fungal infection in your gut. I'll bet you took a lot of antibiotics 8 to 10 years ago.
What you did was kill off the friendly bacteria in your gut that digest food for you. Antibiotics kill all bacteria good and bad. I'll also bet you never took any probiotics after otherwise you would not have the craving for sweets now. Yeast has overgrown your gut because it was not held at bay by the friendly bacteria.
Yeast requires sugar to feed on and live and it will cause the cravings.
You need to go on an antifungal diet to kill off the yeast and you also need to repopulate the gut by taking a lot of good probiotics.

What is considered an anti-fungal diet?

An antifungal diet called Phase 1 by Doug Kaufman on Know the Cause TV show and also available on the internet.
Fungi can parasitize man. A parasite is an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment. Some parasites form symbiotic relationships with other species wherein both species live comfortably with the other. In human-fungal symbiotic relationships, according to researchers, fungi are always the dominant partners. Soon, a person infected with fungus begins craving foods that satisfy the fungus more than the person. Fungus must have sugar in order to thrive. Grains supply not only sugar, but additionally since many grains we Americans eat are impregnated with fungus, grain becomes a double-edged sword. Just as some foods we eat perpetuate fungal growth and proliferation, other foods actually contain potent antifungal properties. Here is a list of foods that are OK to eat while experimenting with the Phase One Diet:

� Grass fed beef, chicken, fish
� Eggs
� Nuts, except pistachios and peanuts
� Vegetables, but no corn, potatoes or mushrooms
� Carrot juices w/other veggies, water, herbal teas
� Green apples, berries, grapefruit, lemon, lime, avocados
� Plain yogurt, real butter

If you are going to go on the phase 1 diet you will notice a difference in a few days but you should be on the diet for a minimum of 1 month.
You might find it tough to do but the end result is worth it. Remember no cheating!! If you consume any sugar, grains, pasta, bread or any other carb you will have to start your month over again. The idea is to starve the fungus so if you feed it any carb you will be throwing it a lifeline. And take a good probiotic to repopulate your gut.

Doug Kaufman who's website is know the cause has a vast knowledge of fungus. He advocates a whole food diet. It doesn't include much fruit in the diet. It is very low on sugar natural or otherwise.

It is a low carb diet, and is strict on phase one. He knows about herbs and their use in killing fungus. One of the people that has appeared on his show is Mark Sisson. Mark's Daily Apple is a good blog for those on a low carb diet. It is the primal blueprint, and is the best of the paleo diet blogs.

The recipes are really easy and good. What it still comes down to is changing a poor diet to a better one. Green drinks and vegetables are probiotics, and they have a place on a no yeast diet.

The best way is not to fight it, but build up your health with good nutrition. If you go to Arnold's way a raw food show on You Tube, you will find people who got rid of fungus on a raw food diet. There is no one way, and it is not as simple as it sounds. Finding the right diet is finding the one that works for you.

Well actually green drinks and vegetables are not probiotics. They are rich in vitamins and enzymes but no probiotics. Probiotics are friendly bacteria and can be found in some yogurts. However the best probiotics are in capsules you buy at a health food store or online.

The raw food diet when followed the right way will supply some probiotics. But, I should have stated this is not the greens from the grocery store.

Many raw food nutrition experts suggest that you don't wash your organically homegrown veggies before you eat them. The soil that clings to them is full of microbes that can supply b12. The earth was our primary source of probiotics. So in the tue sense greens and vegetables do not supply probiotics. In a real sense that was where man was able to get a supply of probiotics.

Nature supplies us with what we need. When you make green drinks out of raw vegetables without washing or soaking you do get some soil organisms. There are a whole array of green drink powders that have been made to be probiotics. Soil probiotics are very good for humans. Nature didn't supply us with capsules or health food stores.

It is true from the type of commercial produce we get at the store, washing is a good idea. We are afraid of everything now, except processed foods with chemical additives, preservatives, coloring, and flavoring.