How To Be  Fit And Thin Eating Good Food

There is a point I'd like to write about concerning food.  I often hear clients say, "I couldn't eat like that.  I like good food." 

I'd like to look more closely at the idea of "good food."  What are people really saying when they say, "good food?"  Do they mean the food is of higher nutritional value?  That it's fresher?  Not usually.  What they're talking about is that it tastes "good."  The reason I put quotation marks around the word "good" is that I think the idea of "tastes good" still needs to be looked at more closely.

First, when clients have said this to me, I've often asked them if they'd agree that taste is a subjective opinion and a learned behavior.  They almost always agree.  I'd like to look at these ideas more closely.  A subjective opinion would be the opinion of one person or just a few people, but not necessarily the opinion of others. 

I'd like to give an example of what I mean.  I used to teach English as a second language at a Korean school.  All the students, though living in the US, were from Korea.  I learned during that time that most all Koreans love a dish called kim chi.  I'm not sure what its made of, but it's some mixture of pickled vegetables and peppers.  For most Americans kim chi is some horrible stuff.  Its smell is very strong and pungent.  No American, or anyone of another nationality I knew, was ever able to eat the stuff, but it was a most beloved meal to Koreans and often eaten at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Now, if you were to ask the average Korean if kim chi is "good," what do you think their answer would be?  Of course, an enthusiastic yes.  Ask anyone outside Korea, and the answer would almost always be a rousing no.  So in a global sense (since the Korean population is a very small portion of world population) the idea that kim chi is good would be somewhat subjective.

The reason that I've gone through this rather long, detailed explanation is to try to bring home the point that what we think of as "good" taste is often highly subjective.  Now, the interesting thing about kim chi is that one of the side effects of the dish is that its smell is so strong, that if you eat it on a regular basis, you almost always smell like kim chi.  In Korea this is a good thing.  In the US it is not, so most of the young people who are trying to fit in with the culture of the US start to wean themselves from the dish.  This is something that is rather hard for them to do. They still think that kim chi tastes really "good," but they do it anyway.  They do it because they think that quitting kim chi, although it tastes "good," is more to their advantage.

One of the differences between humans and other animals is that we have the ability to change our behavior when we understand that something is better for us in the long run.  In the case of my Korean ESL students, eating kim chi was something pleasurable for them.  It was something they had done all their lives, yet they decided to stop doing it for the long term advantage it would bring them.  They decided that it was more pleasurable to fit into the culture they had chosen to join, than to enjoy the temporary pleasure of eating kim chi.

When trainers ask you to change your diet, this is what they're asking you to do.  Usually, you've already told them you would like to be leaner, more fit.  In order to achieve this you have to change the things you eat.  They're not asking you to starve, as that would be foolish and counterproductive.  They're asking you to change what you eat.  When you realize that what tastes really "good" is subjective and can change for you, you can reach your long term goal of being fit and lean. 

So when trainers ask you to change your diet, they're asking you to do something for your own advantage.  They're not asking you to lose something.  They're not asking you to make your life somehow less.  They're asking you to make your life different, to make your life different in a way that is in line with what you really want.  If you accept the idea that what tastes good is what you think tastes good, or what you're conditioned to think tastes good,  then you realize you can change what you think tastes good to you. 

When you've accomplished that, you can begin to be lean and thin eating really "good food."