More and more of my friends are avoiding gluten, or some other category of food that does toxic things to their bodies. The more I listened to their stories, the more I began to wonder if this was more than just the latest fad.
Could eliminating specific foods make me feel better?
So I began my journey to healthier eating. It has taken a year of trial and error to identify certain foods that have a toxic effect on my body. They won’t kill me, but when I avoid them I feel better.
The concept of life-toxins
I realized this concept of watching what I eat can apply to other areas of life. Just as our bodies are affected by a multitude of diet and other factors, so our emotional, spiritual, and intellectual well-being are all affected by a complex collection of inputs. Just as watching what I eat affects my body, so watching what life-toxins I consume affects the health of my whole being.
What inputs are we absorbing in our lives that are toxic in some way? Might we enjoy a healthier life if we limited our consumption of certain life-toxins?
The lessons I learned in my journey to a healthier diet can be applied to making wise choices about what to consume or not consume in other areas of life.
Tips for avoiding life-toxins
- Don’t expect quick results. If we have been consuming toxins regularly, their effect is widespread. It will take time for the bad stuff to dissipate. It will take time for the healthier stuff to make an impact. In fact, we may feel worse before we begin to feel better. Fighting the toxins in our life is a long-term war, not a once-and-done skirmish.
- Keep a record. I have never been any good at keeping a journal, but I would never have been able to narrow down which foods cause problems without actually keeping a record of what I ate and what symptoms I observed. (Since I hate journals, I created a form to record the pertinent information, and tweaked the form over the months until it was keeping track of the right things.) The point is, we need to learn to pay attention to the key indicators over a long period (see point #1), and we need to record the data so we can look back in order to identify long-term trends.
- A life-toxin may not be inherently bad. Peanuts are not toxic to me, but they are life-threatening to many others. Likewise, books or movies that are toxic to me may be fine for you. We are all smart enough to avoid the obvious toxins. The difficult part is to determine what otherwise-harmless substances or activities are toxic to me: my body, my mind, my life situation.
- Health is a better motivator than guilt. If we are convinced that a certain food causes us to feel lousy, it is much easier to avoid it. “I should skip that cupcake because it will make me fat” is easy to ignore. (Too abstract, no immediate consequence.) “I shouldn’t eat that cupcake because I don’t want a killer headache” is a much stronger motivator. (Ten seconds of cupcake bliss vs. all day agony. No thanks.) Once we discover which things cause us pain, we can link the consequences to the toxin, which helps us fight temptation.
- Don’t fixate. Once we have discovered that something may be bad for us, it is all too easy to make avoiding it our primary focus in life. (Taken too far, avoiding the toxin can itself become toxic to us.) Instead of insisting on a 100% toxin-free existence, focus on creating healthier habits of consumption. Forgive yourself for lapses and aim for an overall trend of improvement.
- Don’t force others into your mold. My life-toxins are not necessarily your life-toxins. We can share what we have learned, and share why it matters, but we shouldn’t force others to follow our Enlightened Path to Optimum Health. Even if others are affected by the same toxins as we are, they might find a different path to avoiding them and living healthier.
What toxic junk might be accumulating in your life? What small step can you take this week on your journey toward a toxin-free life?
