People are fat or not as lean as they’d like because they eat too much food and they eat food that is bad for them.
Why? Because it tastes good.
They are attached to the tastes of salt, sugar, fat, MSG, HFCS, refined carbohydrates, and so on. This comes at the expense of their short and long-term health, physical appearance, and overall well-being.
But if you can rid yourself of the need for those tastes you’ll:
- Stay leaner
- Live longer
- Look healthier
- Have better skin
- Get sick less often
- Have better digestion
- Gain more muscle
- Feel more ‘vital’
Doesn’t that sound like a good trade? The best part is that clean, healthy and natural food can actually taste just as good as the garbage.
How to make clean and healthy food taste good
The secret to making clean and healthy food taste good is to recognize that your taste buds adapt over time to what they are given.
Once you begin to eat healthy and natural food – consistently – you will quickly realize that most restaurant food today is over-salted, over-sauced and over-seasoned. Processed foods are even worse, and fast food and junk food (literal garbage) is so extreme in terms of taste that it’s like bludgeoning your taste buds to death.
Because I eat mostly healthy and clean food, something like a plain sweet potato tastes delicious to me. If I drink a Coke, it tastes disgusting and artificial. When you eat natural and healthy foods for a while, the same thing will happen to you.
On the other hand, I know people who eat only restaurant food or take-away, candy, ice cream, and sweetened drinks. Their taste buds have adapted and now they can’t eat anything else.
I gave one of these girls a green juice made of carrot, apple and beetroot – a very sweet combination. But she still found it gross, because even the sweetest natural flavours pale in comparison to the taste of high fructose corn syrup.
This girl – and countless others like her – have gotten themselves stuck in an unfortunate trap. Their taste buds are so far gone that the only way for them to get any kind of pleasure from food is to eat something that is terrible for them.
Reset your taste buds
You can get to the point where you enjoy natural, healthy food as much as you currently enjoy eating anything else – the key is to do it gradually.
If you try to overhaul your entire diet all at once, it will be way too hard. Rather, if you’re accustomed to eating a lot of junk then slowly cut down on it. If you hardly eat any, then it will be easier for you to get to the point where you eat none at all.
Over time your taste buds will re-sensitize to natural, healthy food. Within a few months you can easily get to the point where plain foods taste good and a little bit of seasoning makes a world of difference.
I actually enjoy drinking green juice made from 100% vegetables and I can pretty happily eat plain chicken breast for an entire meal. If I put salt (just salt) on it my taste buds are like WOW this tastes amazing!
Detach from the need to get pleasure from taste altogether
To take this one step further, it’s possible to almost completely detach yourself from the need to get pleasure from taste at all.
The way to do this is the same as the above – gradually increase the amount of healthy and ‘plain’ food in your diet until it’s the majority of what you’re eating.
It helps to recognize that food is just one avenue for pleasure in life – one that most people get far too attached to and that is probably a lot less necessary than you think.
Tasting food is nice, but ultimately it’s nothing more than a few minutes of pleasant mouth-sensation. People who value this momentary pleasure over properly functioning physiology, longevity, clear thinking, high energy levels and the like have their priorities backwards.
Experiment with fasting and you’ll realize that hunger is just a feeling that comes and goes, and it’s one that doesn’t have to determine how or what you eat. You’re not going to die if you don’t eat for 16, 18 or even 24 hours – in fact you’ll probably feel pretty good. Your relationship to hunger is adaptable in the same way as your taste buds.
Brainwash yourself – try to internalize that ‘garbage’ foods literally are garbage. They are not things that should be put in a human body. Picture the process and ingredients that go into a fast food burger or a potato chip while you’re eating it, and think about how those things will interact with the organic system inside your body. It won’t taste half as good.
Now this doesn’t mean that you should never get pleasure from tasting good food. All it means is that you don’t need to get pleasure from taste – you can develop the ability to decide when you want to and when you don’t.
Ultimately you can take complete control over how you feel and act towards food and taste – first reset your taste buds and then detach from taste altogether, and you will have the freedom to eat whatever you want, anytime you want, without suffering at all.
Good luck!
Read next: How to “80/20” Your Nutrition with 5 Simple Rules