If you find yourself at times wondering if this healthy eating stuff really works, let me say this: You might be suffering from analysis paralysis. This is something that I’ve noticed is a common thread in several of my coaching clients — a proclivity to analyze the basic diet I recommend (Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live or Eat for Health are the best sources of info on nutrition I’ve found anywhere, without question!) while at the same time not giving it time to work.

Or, in the words of another client recently, “I don’t think such-and-such works for me, but then again, I’ve never tried it either.”

I want to say that I am not mentioning these clients’ ideas in any way to undermine their thoughts. It is PERFECTLY human to think this way, and I am certainly no exception. I’ve done the same thing in my lifetime too many times to count. I have gotten better about this because I’ve gotten conscious of the pattern of shooting down something before I’ve even had a chance to see if it works. But it’s still something I have to look out for (though I’ll admit I might not ever try bungee-jumping because of my thoughts on the subject, even if it’s worth a try!). :)

Again, before I go any further, I want to say that I respect this way of thinking because it is an easy trap to fall into. It’s just a faulty one, especially when it comes to healthy eating, because most of us have never done it for even 1 solid week when we find ourselves discounting its potential.

In fact, on that note, I should say that when I first encountered Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat to Live, I thought it sounded far too good to be true, and I held off a couple months before I bought the book, held off another couple months after buying the book before actually trying this way of eating and even worse, I stopped too quickly because I didn’t make healthy eating a priority and lost another couple years before I decided to fight those skeptical instincts. (But that was back in the bad old days when I was unhappy and unhealthy!)

I could ramble on for hours about this because it matters so much to me and the action-oriented modus operandi I’ve developed since I decided to change my own life. But what I want to get at is that if you are eating a balanced diet and leading a balanced life that attends to your physical and emotional needs in which you’re paying attention to your body’s signals (hunger, fatigue, etc.), your body finds its way to its ideal state/weight/health all on its own without our having to overanalyze the path to get there. In other words, on days when you find yourself vacillating, let your body have the nourishment it needs from good, healthful foods and let your newfound health make your mind up for you. It’s far easier for your own body to change your mind than it is for you to just up and decide to do new things, after all. (If I could count the times I’ve heard someone say to me, “If only I could make my mind think differently …” I’d be in the many thousands by now.)

I don’t say this lightly — I believe that overanalysis really does lead to paralysis for many people, who end up talking themselves out of healthy eating because their minds can’t grasp the logic that their bodies already know how to do without even thinking. Our bodies know better than our brains (particularly if our brains are tanked up on the Standard American Diet [SAD] and all the negative messages about diet and health from our sad SAD world).