Dr. Peter J. Weiss

USA TODAY founder Al Neuharth endorses “More Health Less Care.”

An inter­est­ing thing has hap­pened to me over the last cou­ple of weeks  — I seem to have lost my crav­ing for sweets and junk food.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I still like sweets, but the “gotta have it” aspect seems to have dis­ap­peared.  And I have no desire for chips or other snack foods either.

Where did the desire go?  I’m not exactly sure.  I didn’t sud­denly have any detectable “lib­er­a­tion” expe­ri­ence, I just noticed one day that I was eat­ing dif­fer­ently and it didn’t seem all that hard.  With a lit­tle reflec­tion, I per­ceived the absence of the crav­ings.  Here’s what I think hap­pened.

Over the last few months, my per­cep­tions and thoughts about food have been shift­ing.  You’ve been read­ing about my activ­i­ties and shift­ing think­ing here — the videos, the books, and the Gary Null health sup­port group.

Grad­u­ally I’ve come to view most highly processed foods as “toxic” or “poi­so­nous” to me.  At the same time I have been inter­ested in find­ing the health­i­est foods pos­si­ble and exper­i­ment­ing with juic­ing, more fruits and veg­eta­bles, and less meat.

(That could be a good title for the next book:  “More Plants, Less Meat”)

No doubt this has been good for my over­all nutri­tion.  I think that my chang­ing per­cep­tions, devel­op­ment of new health­ier meals and snacks, and bet­ter over­all nutri­tion have com­bined in me to add up to the end of sugar crav­ings.  After all, crav­ings often exist to sat­isfy some need.  If my body is now nutri­tion­ally replete, it needn’t crave any­thing.

Of course some food crav­ings are emo­tional in nature.  We feel bad and eat “com­fort food” to feel bet­ter.

I’ve expe­ri­enced those too, but I con­tinue to work on my emo­tional bal­ance and I’m a lot less stressed out than I used to be.  Per­haps I’ve made some improve­ment here in the last sev­eral months as well.

I don’t want to declare vic­tory or claim that I now have the per­fect diet.  Once you get com­pla­cent about any­thing, you tend to slide.  And our envi­ron­ment is not con­ducive to the new path I’ve embarked on.  But for now, I will cel­e­brate this happy devel­op­ment!

What about you?  Per­haps you have strug­gled with eat­ing healthy.  It may be encour­ag­ing to know that there’s light at the end of the tun­nel.

Stick with it, shift your think­ing, develop new habits, and work on your emo­tions.  It will get eas­ier.