If you imagine that your body is your vehicle to move through life with, then the food you eat is the fuel that powers your vehicle.

It is important to Move Well in order to keep your engine running well. It is equally important to Eat Well in order to have the energy you need to keep your vehicle powered and ready to do the things you want to do. The foods you eat provide your body the building blocks it needs to repair injuries, replace old cells with new ones and fight disease and infection. Generally, you use food to build and maintain all of your body’s cells, tissues and organs.

Your body’s digestive system is an amazingly complex and powerful system that elegantly transforms the foods you eat into the living, breathing, healthy you every day. Recall again what you ate for your last meal and remember that your body is converting that food right now into the components of your body. It is using carbohydrates to fuel your brain and all of the inner workings of all of your cells. It is using fats to rebuild cell walls and protein to rebuild and grow muscles.

You are what you eat, right?

So are you coffee and donuts? Or are you whole grains and fruits?

Which do you think your body would prefer to use to rebuild and repair itself: candy bars and ice cream or oranges and apples?

Which do you think would be a better source of fuel for your Maserati: hamburgers and French fries or lean meats and salads?

The answers to these questions should be pretty obvious when presented this way. But most of the time, we don’t think about making food choices in terms of the energy and health it would bring us. Instead, we make food choices based on cravings and the conveniences we feel we need to indulge in at that moment. We have gotten so far away from our innate, natural eating tendencies that we are literally making ourselves sick with the foods we eat.

4 of the top 5 leading causes of death in this country are largely “diseases of the fork”. Heart Disease, Stroke, Diabetes and Cancer are all diseases that kill millions of people every year. Yet each are killers that can be easily prevented with simple, proven eating habits.

Don’t think that to eat healthy means that you have to eat boring or that you have to deprive yourself of the foods you love. Eating healthy doesn’t mean that you can never have ice cream again, or pizza again or a glass of Cabernet again. Food is also meant to be enjoyed. Why else would all of those foods taste so good!

That is why with any healthy eating program you adopt, I recommend that you never completely eliminate something you feel is unhealthy from your diet. Instead, I recommend that you concentrate on adding in lots of healthy foods so that you can enjoy more moderate amounts of the foods that you feel are unhealthy for you.

Pay close attention to that last statement. It didn’t say, “so that you can enjoy more of those unhealthy foods.” It said, “so that you can enjoy more moderate amounts of those foods.

By following the guidelines in the Eat Well section of the Being Well Lifestyles Program, you will have a diet strategy that will be so healthy for you that your occasional indulgences in the cakes, cookies or burritos won’t knock you down.

In fact, you will be able to appreciate and enjoy these foods even more. The guilt will be alleviated because you are doing so many other healthy things to buffer those few unhealthy things.

The Eat Well eating tips are simple to implement and proven to prevent life-threatening diseases. They will help to slim your waist and hips so you can possibly fit into those clothes hanging in the back of your closet that you been holding onto for years “just in case.” They will help to skyrocket your energy levels throughout the day so you are more effective, more productive and just more pleasant to be around.

*Exerpted from the Being Well Lifestyles Home Study Course by Dr. Jay Warren.

Drawing on over two decades of experience as a hands-on holistic practitioner, Dr. Jay Warren is a primary healthcare provider and licensed chiropractor in the San Diego area. He has spent tens of thousands of clinical hours helping his patients achieve their optimal health potential through holistic approaches bolstered by years of personal experimentation, education and research. Dr. Jay creates customized plans integrating exercise, nutrition and stress management strategies to overcome a myriad of health challenges. For more information, email drjay@drjaywarren.com or visit www.DrJayWarren.com.