I hope you enjoy this little sample of Forget the Fad and Eat the Food. The paperback and Kindle version are now for sale in the following countries:
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Forget the fad and Eat the Food can teach you how to combine great-tasting food with feeling fabulous. Eating is one of life's pleasures, and wouldn't you rather leave the table feeling energized and happy, rather than sluggish and depressed?
Many people bounce around from one extreme and complicated diet to the next, and forget about the simplicity of real, whole food. It may take a little while, but I really believe you can learn to love the food that will love you back! Please enjoy the excerpt of my book below. Thank you! |
Forget the Fad and Eat the Food
Say goodbye to fad diets, and learn to love the food that will love you back!
By Sally Schrempf
Copyright © 2016 Sally Schrempf
All rights reserved
Say goodbye to fad diets, and learn to love the food that will love you back!
By Sally Schrempf
Copyright © 2016 Sally Schrempf
All rights reserved
Introduction
Respect your body. Eat well. Dance forever.
—Eliza Gaynor Minden
Writing about the power of food to keep us healthy is something I’ve been dreaming about for decades. Some may call this procrastination, but I like to think of it as a really long research project, with myself as the guinea pig!
So why should you be interested in what I have to say? I don’t have a formal education in health or nutrition, and I seldom set foot in a gym, but…wait…come back! What I do have is a lifetime of eating habits that I believe have made me unusually healthy and happy.
It all began forty years ago when I was fifteen, and my skin started breaking out. Yup, it was as simple as that—I was a vain teenager who hated pimples! So I gave up candy and fried foods and sought out foods that were both nutritious and delicious. Because I love to eat, I snacked on a variety of fruits and a whole lot of nuts—I think I became a nutatarian.
Now there were some friends back then who thought I was nuts. They couldn’t understand how I could pass up all the greasy goodies they craved so much. But the funny thing was that I didn’t miss the junk food at all—I was feeling better than ever, loved what I was eating, and my skin was glowing!
Although I passionately believe that what we eat affects how we feel, please don’t take anything you read here as medical advice. If you have a health issue, see your doctor or other qualified professional. I’m just sharing what has worked so well for me over the years.
Wishing you great health and happiness!
Respect your body. Eat well. Dance forever.
—Eliza Gaynor Minden
Writing about the power of food to keep us healthy is something I’ve been dreaming about for decades. Some may call this procrastination, but I like to think of it as a really long research project, with myself as the guinea pig!
So why should you be interested in what I have to say? I don’t have a formal education in health or nutrition, and I seldom set foot in a gym, but…wait…come back! What I do have is a lifetime of eating habits that I believe have made me unusually healthy and happy.
It all began forty years ago when I was fifteen, and my skin started breaking out. Yup, it was as simple as that—I was a vain teenager who hated pimples! So I gave up candy and fried foods and sought out foods that were both nutritious and delicious. Because I love to eat, I snacked on a variety of fruits and a whole lot of nuts—I think I became a nutatarian.
Now there were some friends back then who thought I was nuts. They couldn’t understand how I could pass up all the greasy goodies they craved so much. But the funny thing was that I didn’t miss the junk food at all—I was feeling better than ever, loved what I was eating, and my skin was glowing!
Although I passionately believe that what we eat affects how we feel, please don’t take anything you read here as medical advice. If you have a health issue, see your doctor or other qualified professional. I’m just sharing what has worked so well for me over the years.
Wishing you great health and happiness!
A New Day
Motivation gets you started. Habit keeps you going.
—Jim Rohn
Nobody ends their day regretting the good nutritious food they ate, but who hasn’t gone to bed kicking themselves over their poor eating choices? Although most of us have good intentions when it comes to our diet, it can get downright confusing trying to figure it all out: what’s proclaimed a “superfood” one day can be declared off-limits the next, and many of the so-called “healthy” choices at the supermarket are just junk foods in disguise. In addition to this, we’re surrounded by fast-food restaurants and cheap fake food. Yikes! It’s no wonder people end up grabbing whatever tastes good—and to heck with the consequences.
So let’s put these obstacles aside and get motivated to eat better. It doesn’t matter what your reason for wanting to make this change is (remember, mine was just a silly little pimple) but it must be important to you. Getting acquainted with healthy food will involve a little extra planning in the beginning and going against the norm sometimes. It may not happen overnight, but with a little reprogramming of your taste buds, you really can learn to love the food that will love you back.
Love Yourself
It’s a cliché, but you have to love yourself. I have been both extremely broke and extremely comfortable (could be my next book!) but even during my leanest times, I still bought superfoods and organic produce (whenever possible) to stay healthy. When you don’t have health insurance, getting sick is not an option. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself; we owe it to the people who love us to do whatever we can to be around for as long as possible and not become a burden on them.
There may be no greater motivation than wanting to be a good example to our children. We can talk to them about staying fit and healthy, but if they see Mom and Dad sprawled on the couch, downing chips and soda, chances are they will copy this habit too. Probably the biggest fear for a child is seeing a parent with an illness or facing the thought of losing them.
If you put aside your own need for healthy food, a good night’s sleep, exercise, and peace of mind, you will be more susceptible to getting sick. One of the quickest and best stress relievers is a simple thirty-minute walk. Try doing this the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed or annoyed. You’ll come back a much happier person.
I’ve always practiced this. Love yourself. Move your body. Watch your portions.
—Richard Simmons
Create Good Food Memories
The popularity of pizza may be partly due to its association with childhood birthday parties and other fun events. In his book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (originally published March 17, 2001), Eric Schlosser writes,
The flavors of childhood foods seem to leave an indelible mark, and adults often return to them, without always knowing why. These “comfort foods” become a source of pleasure and reassurance, a fact that fast food chains work hard to promote.
With this in mind, we need to create good memories around healthy food. You never want to make eating nutritious food a bad experience for yourself or others. Instead of forcing a child to eat a specific vegetable, ask which one they would prefer. Then start out with a small amount of that vegetable, along with their favorite food. Most kids will eat broccoli or cauliflower if it’s smothered with cheese, and younger children are more open to trying foods that are colorful or cut into fun shapes.
When my two children were young, we lived in a neighborhood filled with wonderful kids. This was great for playing but not so good when it came to them avoiding junk food. After spending time at their friends’ houses, they both developed a love for ramen noodles (ugh) and came home with cases of the stuff. I tried discarding the flavor packets and creating my own seasoning mixes, but they could always tell the difference. And putting cookies from the health-food store into the Oreo packaging didn’t always fool them either! Although I wasn’t able to wean them off all junk food, they did eat a lot of healthy things too—sometimes I told them about it, but old habits die hard, and a few times it was successfully snuck in. Now that I’m a grandmother, I’m delighted to see my son and his wife taking such care over what their little son eats.
In general, my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on TV.
—Erma Bombeck
Baby Steps
Once you’ve decided that now is the time to start eating better, it’s okay to take baby steps to make this your new normal. It’s often easier to set achievable short-term goals rather than set yourself up for failure by demanding too much of yourself right out of the gate. If you haven’t eaten a vegetable in a while, vow to eat one every day, and keep adding fruits and vegetables until you reach the recommended five to nine servings a day. I know that sounds like an awful lot but remember, “eating better” just means doing better than you were before.
Research has shown if you could only change one thing about your nutrition, adding vegetables should be that one thing.
—Clyde Wilson
The best thing about this eating plan (if I say so myself!) is that you are going to be enriching what you’re eating rather than simply cutting things out. You decide what’s on the menu based on your personal preferences. Even though your focus will be on enjoying nutritious foods, you don’t have to give up the occasional treat that makes you really happy. But before you indulge, ask yourself this very important question: Is it splurge worthy? You may find that as your tastes change, something you once thought you couldn’t live without really isn’t that worthy after all—and nothing tastes as good as feeling fabulous feels!
You know, all that really matters is that the people you love are happy and healthy. Everything else is just sprinkles on the sundae.
—Paul Walker
Motivation gets you started. Habit keeps you going.
—Jim Rohn
Nobody ends their day regretting the good nutritious food they ate, but who hasn’t gone to bed kicking themselves over their poor eating choices? Although most of us have good intentions when it comes to our diet, it can get downright confusing trying to figure it all out: what’s proclaimed a “superfood” one day can be declared off-limits the next, and many of the so-called “healthy” choices at the supermarket are just junk foods in disguise. In addition to this, we’re surrounded by fast-food restaurants and cheap fake food. Yikes! It’s no wonder people end up grabbing whatever tastes good—and to heck with the consequences.
So let’s put these obstacles aside and get motivated to eat better. It doesn’t matter what your reason for wanting to make this change is (remember, mine was just a silly little pimple) but it must be important to you. Getting acquainted with healthy food will involve a little extra planning in the beginning and going against the norm sometimes. It may not happen overnight, but with a little reprogramming of your taste buds, you really can learn to love the food that will love you back.
Love Yourself
It’s a cliché, but you have to love yourself. I have been both extremely broke and extremely comfortable (could be my next book!) but even during my leanest times, I still bought superfoods and organic produce (whenever possible) to stay healthy. When you don’t have health insurance, getting sick is not an option. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself; we owe it to the people who love us to do whatever we can to be around for as long as possible and not become a burden on them.
There may be no greater motivation than wanting to be a good example to our children. We can talk to them about staying fit and healthy, but if they see Mom and Dad sprawled on the couch, downing chips and soda, chances are they will copy this habit too. Probably the biggest fear for a child is seeing a parent with an illness or facing the thought of losing them.
If you put aside your own need for healthy food, a good night’s sleep, exercise, and peace of mind, you will be more susceptible to getting sick. One of the quickest and best stress relievers is a simple thirty-minute walk. Try doing this the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed or annoyed. You’ll come back a much happier person.
I’ve always practiced this. Love yourself. Move your body. Watch your portions.
—Richard Simmons
Create Good Food Memories
The popularity of pizza may be partly due to its association with childhood birthday parties and other fun events. In his book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (originally published March 17, 2001), Eric Schlosser writes,
The flavors of childhood foods seem to leave an indelible mark, and adults often return to them, without always knowing why. These “comfort foods” become a source of pleasure and reassurance, a fact that fast food chains work hard to promote.
With this in mind, we need to create good memories around healthy food. You never want to make eating nutritious food a bad experience for yourself or others. Instead of forcing a child to eat a specific vegetable, ask which one they would prefer. Then start out with a small amount of that vegetable, along with their favorite food. Most kids will eat broccoli or cauliflower if it’s smothered with cheese, and younger children are more open to trying foods that are colorful or cut into fun shapes.
When my two children were young, we lived in a neighborhood filled with wonderful kids. This was great for playing but not so good when it came to them avoiding junk food. After spending time at their friends’ houses, they both developed a love for ramen noodles (ugh) and came home with cases of the stuff. I tried discarding the flavor packets and creating my own seasoning mixes, but they could always tell the difference. And putting cookies from the health-food store into the Oreo packaging didn’t always fool them either! Although I wasn’t able to wean them off all junk food, they did eat a lot of healthy things too—sometimes I told them about it, but old habits die hard, and a few times it was successfully snuck in. Now that I’m a grandmother, I’m delighted to see my son and his wife taking such care over what their little son eats.
In general, my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on TV.
—Erma Bombeck
Baby Steps
Once you’ve decided that now is the time to start eating better, it’s okay to take baby steps to make this your new normal. It’s often easier to set achievable short-term goals rather than set yourself up for failure by demanding too much of yourself right out of the gate. If you haven’t eaten a vegetable in a while, vow to eat one every day, and keep adding fruits and vegetables until you reach the recommended five to nine servings a day. I know that sounds like an awful lot but remember, “eating better” just means doing better than you were before.
Research has shown if you could only change one thing about your nutrition, adding vegetables should be that one thing.
—Clyde Wilson
The best thing about this eating plan (if I say so myself!) is that you are going to be enriching what you’re eating rather than simply cutting things out. You decide what’s on the menu based on your personal preferences. Even though your focus will be on enjoying nutritious foods, you don’t have to give up the occasional treat that makes you really happy. But before you indulge, ask yourself this very important question: Is it splurge worthy? You may find that as your tastes change, something you once thought you couldn’t live without really isn’t that worthy after all—and nothing tastes as good as feeling fabulous feels!
You know, all that really matters is that the people you love are happy and healthy. Everything else is just sprinkles on the sundae.
—Paul Walker
Dodgy Diets
Americans have more food to eat than any other people and more diets to keep them from eating it.
—Yogi Berra
The word “diet” can either mean what we eat on a daily basis or something we put ourselves on that restricts what we can eat—and makes us feel miserable and frustrated! The latter is not what we want to do. I’m sure we all know someone (or maybe you are that someone) who is always on a diet. What many of these people seem to have in common is a healthy dose of optimism and a boatload of determination; after all, fasting or undergoing a voluntary colon cleanse (the king of all enemas) is not for the fainthearted!
So why are so many people who aren’t lacking in willpower struggling so hard to get to a healthy weight and stay there? It may be because all that amazing energy is being hijacked by the lure of cure-all fad diets.
Changing your eating means changing your life—forever. And that’s not easy in a world where temptations beckon at every turn and a multibillion-dollar diet industry can succeed only if you fail.
—Lawrence J. Cheskin
Fads and Fantasies
Sadly, there are times when even the smartest people throw common sense out the window in their longing to be thin or cured of a disease. It often starts with the promise of a new diet, which may even include the magic words “doctor recommended.” Oh goodie, they think, this must mean a safe, well-researched eating plan. Well, not so fast. Here are a few of the diets doctors and other supposedly intelligent people have come up with.
The Master Cleanse/Lemonade Diet
Survive on a concoction of water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper for days, and you will lose weight. You may also lose muscle mass and mess up your metabolism. The Master Cleanse diet has been around since the 1940s and reached its height of popularity when celebrities like Beyoncé and Demi Moore gave it a try. Unfortunately, not only will you be missing out on essential nutrients while on this liquid diet, but also, when you return to your usual eating habits, the weight you lost will probably come back. But hey, if you have a starring role in a movie coming up and need to lose weight at warp speed, give it a go!
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