Part 2: DEPROGRAMMING

     As children, we all have fond memories of a loving mother or grandmother filling the house with the aroma of baking cookies, cakes and pies.  Just the thought of watching her sweat in that kitchen as she sang along with the dusties gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.  Many of us are comforted by the thought of grandma/mommas cooking. Soul food is known as such because it supposedly comforts the very soul of the person eating it; While this may be true, but what is it doing to the body?   These foods are packed with unhealthy amouts of saturated fats, sodium, and cholesterol.
     Now, out of habit, we feed these same foods to our families.  Passing down grandma's peach cobbler recipe or auntie's "Oh so candied" yams is the only connection that some of us (African Americans) have to our past.  Wars have been planned around it, victory's have been celebrated with it, and families are brought together because of it; Food is a very powerful resource.  We cannot survive without it and we are dying because of it.  Some of us have turned to food as a therapeutic resource.  We must DEPROGRAM our minds so that we may live long and healthy lives.
     We eat food so that we may have energy to complete our daily tasks.  Each meal has a job. Breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day because after the nighttime fast (while sleeping), this is the first meal. Because it is the source of energy that gets your day started, breakfast should be packed with essential vitamins and nutrients.  What we Americans eat for a typical breakfast has more sugar and cholesterol than what is needed.  When we find ourselves spending more time in the snack isle of the grocery store, we must stop and say to ourselves " I am eating to live, not living to eat!".  We will have to constantly remind ourselves of this very statement until it is embedded into our subconscious thinking.   Be mindful of foods containing empty calories (foods that are high in calories and low in nutritional value).   These foods(and some drinks) are strictly for comfort. Foods like: Potato chips, doughnuts, candy, soda (pop),etc. The foods in this category offer very little (if any) nutritional value.  Although these types of foods are very flavorful,  we must program our bodies to crave healthier foods.  I know this may sound like nonsense but it works.  After about 2 months of of looking at (otherwise delicious) pastries and other snacks as if they were disgusting, I eventually started choosing carrot sticks over candy bars. I created an image in my head of  the body that I had and the body that I wanted (and still working toward). I begin seeing doughnuts and cookies like little pieces of fat to be placed where every my body felt it wanted to place it.  We must look at certain foods like a drug, when given in mass doses can be addictive and eventually deadly.  The goal is not to cut these foods out of your diet completely, as this will lead to binging.  The goal is to occasionally enjoy small servings of food with empty calories.   This way your body will not react every time it is in the presence of said foods.  When we deny ourselves of things (be it food or anything else for that matter) we begin to crave them even more than before.  This is why diets do not work. Most diets give you a list of things that you can not have, which in turn, you crave more of and results in you cheating.  You  may wonder how and when should you allow yourselves these foods?  The answer will depend upon how much is allowed in YOUR calorie intake  after you have subtracted the amounts of calories allotted for your meals.
Which leads us to Part 3:  Calorie Intake (What's your number?)