Food—Your Miracle Medicine

My Personal Story of Changing to a Healthier Diet
I tell you the following story because I know how difficult it can be to change the way you eat. I’ve lived it firsthand.  What I have learned however, is that it is not as hard as it seems, and it becomes easier and easier, and truly exciting and enjoyable, as you begin to feel better and better, with more energy, better sleep, fewer mood swings, and a host of benefits like:
• More mental clarity
• Improved memory
• More Energy
• More patience
• Less Anger and Irritability
• Fewer aches and pains
• Less Depression and Anxiety
Your life will be better. I promise! You can make the changes slowly, making one improvement at a time. Use the Make the Switch chart or order my ebook…Change Your Diet—Change Your Life to make the gradual adjustments to your new way of eating easier.

How Changing My Diet Gave Me Back My Life:
By Linda Gerdes

I will never forget what seemed, at the time, like one of the worst days of my life: I had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and told that there was nothing medicine could do for me.(note: this was before there were any medications for MS). Not being the type to sit down and accept that dire prognosis, I went to see a Naturopathic physician that a friend recommended, Dr. Lawrence Caprio. Dr. Caprio had a thriving practice in Westport, Ct. Sitting in the waiting room of his office was different than any other doctor’s office I had ever waited in. People were exchanging stories of the healing miracles they were experiencing by collaborating with Dr. Caprio in their own healing processes. This helped me feel more comfortable about seeing an “alternative” physician. It did not prepare me, however, for the news that I would have to radically change the way I ate. Dr. Caprio requested that I record every thing I ate and drank for three days before my first appointment. After looking at my food diary, Dr. Caprio looked at me calmly and said, “I don’t know if I can cure your MS, but I do know that we can slow down the degeneration, reduce the symptoms, and you will feel much better. He then told me, “You need to start eating healthier, buy higher quality foods.”

Though I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, I was reasonably sure that I was going to be asked to make some serious changes in my diet. After sharing other goals of his treatment with me, he introduced me to his wife and her staff for what turned out to be a nearly three hour introduction to this new world of whole foods. They armed me with their book on nutrtion and told me I was to find the local health food store and purchase foods like millet, tofu, bulghar, etc. (yikes!). I was told to stop eating sugar, white flour, caffeine, sodas, and other foods in order to strengthen my immune system, and regenerate my body. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a little voice crying, “Please, don’t take…and caffeine away”. But, that was exactly what they were counseling. It felt like a sudden death where all the foods I had loved and eaten in my life flashed before my eyes. I began to understand that those days and those foods were over for me, unless I chose not to heal from my MS. Fortunately, I had only to imagine the MS taking over my life, progressively deteriorating my body, mind and spirit, to begin to be more open to dietary changes. A reoccurring vision of myself disabled by this degenerative disease served to override all objections to Dr. Caprio’s prescription for nutritional therapy. 

Change Your Diet, Change Your Life
Don’t panic! Or think that you have to give up all your favorite foods. I am excited to share with you that I discovered an even better way to eat and have never looked back…only forward to learning more and more about the kinds and quality of the food I put into my body and how they affect me, my health, and those around me. As I took on an active role in educating myself about nutrition, knowledge became power and this new found power became my strength and transformed into joy–something I hadn’t felt for a long time. Making the switch to healthier eating is worth any objections against it. Once you take the plunge and begin to inform and educate yourself about how your body, mind and spirit work, and what nourishes it or deteriorates it, you will feel a new sense of empowerment about your life and the way you look, feel and act. Life will become your apple, not your master.

Today, because of my choice to change my diet, I enjoy optimal health. I hike, bike, play golf and tennis, dance, do yoga, run a business, and am an active volunteer. I have the energy and enthusiasm to live my life to the fullest.

Create Your Own Personal Health Philosophy
Making dietary changes is one of the most challenging steps to improving your health and life because of the complexity of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and memories we all have about food, as well as the addictive nature of modern day processed foods. Over the years, I have heard several people comment that people find it easier to change their religion than to change their diet! This could be because they have a strong personal philosophy when it comes to religion.
Developing your own personal philosophy about the importance and value of health and wellness can help you make these changes more easily. One way to develop your personal Health Philosophy is to answer the following questions:
1. What is my relationship with my body? My mind? My Spirit?
2. How have I been taking care of myself so far?
3. How do I want to take care of myself now?
4. What are my plans to take care of myself in the future?
5. What is my relationship with food?
6. Do I understand how food affects my body, mind and spirit?
7. Do I know what foods can do to improve my health? (Have I aquainted myself with nutrition?)
8. How might eating better help me to feel better and prevent disease?
9. How might exercising more frequently improve my health and life? What kind of exercise do I like?
10. Am I ready to start taking care of myself? If not, what do I need to do to be ready?

Visualization for Successful Dietary Changes
Use the following visualization to help you make changes in your diet. Remember, visualization is the secret of Olympic athletes.:
Close your eyes and envision yourself leaner, healthier, more vibrant with a lot of energy—or create your own vision of what your ideal goal is for changing your diet. Hold that image as your desired goal. See yourself in your mind’s eye as this leaner, healthier, more vibrant woman (or your own version) one to ten times a day (before bedtime is a good time.) This is your long-term goal.
Next, use affirmations. Create your ideal life with positive self-talk.
Create an affirmation on your own For example, “I am my perfect weight. I am healthy and have vibrant energy.”
Tip: Affirmations should be:
• Written down
• Stated in the positive and present tense
• Succinct
• Specific
• Magnetic (you love it!)

Super Foods for Overall Health
Spinach, canned pink salmon with bones, kidney beans, papaya, canned tuna, broccoli, tofu, sweet potato, tomato, sunflower seeds, whole-wheat bread, Swiss chard, nonfat yogurt, plain. cantaloupe, acorn squash, wheat germ, soy, rice, and almond milk, bok choy, bulgar wheat.