We have been doing a lot of food intolerance testing over the past year (if you haven’t had yours tested yet, I HIGHLY recommend doing so) and I am always surprised that everyone responds in the same ways to their tests. They will look at certain foods and say, “I knew that was going to be a problem.” and look at others and say, “How am I supposed to avoid that? I can’t do that?”.
No matter how many times I have heard this, it always seems to catch me by surprise. The funniest part about it is everyone finds one food group harder than another to avoid. One person may find dairy an impossible challenge and gluten/wheat as easy and the next person might be the exact opposite.
As we follow up with these people a month later, we see that they are doing much better in avoiding the things that they have issues with, and they in-turn feel much better. What changed in that time?
Perception.
As many of you know, I have had a lot of trouble with food intolerances. About a year ago, we decided to figure out what my intolerances were, to make sure that the test was something that we wanted to offer you. I never guessed we would find what we did. Among my intolerances were wheat/gluten, eggs, dairy (with the exception of yogurt), nuts (with the exception of almonds), oats, brown rice… the list goes on.
I’m not going to lie; the first month of avoiding everything was very tough. When I saw the health benefits that came about after making the changes though, I quickly decided it was well worth the effort. After a year of doing it, it is second nature.
What I’m trying to say is, yes, it can be difficult to avoid foods that you have eaten your whole life. That’s the story of life though. Is it easy to put on your workout clothes, drive through freezing temperatures to the gym and workout? Some of you may say yes, but I guarantee it wasn’t always like that.
The point here is change is always tough. The more rooted in your habits have become, the tougher the changes. You have to look at what your goals are though. Are you going to accomplish those if you have an autoimmune disease? How about cancer? Heart disease? Neurological degeneration (Parkinson’s/Alzheimer’s)? You may not be headed to this extreme of an issue, but you also may be headed there. The only way you are going to know is time. I’m not a gambling man. I prefer to take action to avoid bad situations.
Health isn’t easy. Take a look around America. If it were easy we wouldn’t be one of the countries with the highest chronic disease rates. Don’t focus on what’s hard, but rather what’s important. As stated in one of my favorite quotes, “The hard road often becomes easy. The easy road often becomes hard.” Choose your path wisely.