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  • Haley Haskin
    • May 19, 2020
    • 8 min read

How I Took Charge of My Eating Habits and Kicked Junk Food's Butt

Updated: Apr 30, 2023


(Photo by Stephen Duncan)

When you think of eating a healthy diet, one of the first thoughts that probably comes to mind is something we all struggle with: willpower. Willpower is this negative idea of avoidance that denies us enjoyment and usually makes us feel like failures. It is an unsustainable standard that goes against our addictive and mischievous nature. We always want what we can’t have, and willpower is supposed to somehow combat this, however miserably. Sound about right?

Well what if I told you that sustaining a healthy lifestyle does not have to be determined by your measure of willpower? What if there could be a motivation behind healthy eating bigger than just trying to resist what you can’t have? It is my belief that a sustainable healthy lifestyle can be produced instead, by conviction.

What do you do when you are convicted about something? You root for it. You stand for it. You educate yourself on it. You develop a passion for it. You seek to understand it. It becomes interwoven in your life. You even resent things that oppose it.

Do we feel better when we focus on the things we can’t have, or when we focus on the things we can have? Do we perform better when we are obligated or when we are passionate? If willpower is a negative idea, then conviction is a positive one. Willpower merely denies us something, but conviction gives us something to work for. Which one of these is more motivating? Obviously, conviction. Conviction is moving, driving, fueling, self-starting.

But how do we cultivate this conviction? I think the best way to do that is by educating ourselves. Progress happens not when we are shamed into living a healthy life through exerting willpower. Progress happens when we are educated enough to develop a conviction and a passion that pushes us into seeking out wellness of our own accord.

Personally, I learn the best through other people’s stories. So today I want to share with you the mindset I’ve developed towards healthy eating. I want to show you through my eyes how replacing willpower with conviction has made a healthy lifestyle so much more enjoyable, sustainable, and motivated.

 

I believe my sugar and processed carb cravings have been curbed by nothing other than my nutrition education. I feel like there can either be space in my brain for toxic thinking or there can be space for productive thinking. But there can’t be room for both. Over the last three years I’ve researched health and nutrition so much, that I’ve developed a newfound “common sense” for it, which is now taking up the space in my brain that used to entertain unhealthy habits. I essentially no longer have room for bad choices, because I am too busy filling my body and brain with the things I know it needs for maximum functioning.

Bad Habits Becoming Undesirable

As my awareness of how bad for me some foods actually are has increased, I have come to my senses in multiple ways. My emotional cravings are beginning to be replaced by logical reasoning – taste logic, energy logic, and long-term wellness logic. Not only have I begun to detect the headache inducing, jaw tingling nastiness of excessive added sugars in most foods. Not only am I experiencing the uncomfortable stomach churning, bloating, and sluggishness from addictive chemicals and added preservatives. I’m also growing to understand the adverse effects unhealthy foods have on my body in the long term.

This is especially the case in the last few years, as I’ve eradicated so much harmful food from my diet, and my body is no longer accustomed to processing, well, poison. That “momentary bliss” from eating junk food is becoming less and less blissful the less I eat it.

Don’t get me wrong. Some more wholesome desserts are still super tasty and release a crap ton of dopamine. But most things made of straight up sugar, like sour candy, lemonade, soda, cotton candy, etc, all things that I used to love, taste downright nasty to me now. The less I feed my craving, the quicker I eradicate addiction, and the more I see clearly that most junk food really does not even taste that great. Junk food is also beginning to feel less enjoyable to me the more I realize how harmful it is. I can’t knowingly continue to put such blatant garbage into my body now that I have educated myself on its effects.

I'm Just Really Stubborn

Healthy eating is becoming easier and easier as my stubbornness and disgust with the junk food companies’ successful schemes grows. This is a mind over matter paradigm for me. I really get more pleasure out of eating healthy and “sticking it to the man,” than I do out of mindlessly gorging on junk because I can’t help myself. There is no power in that. But there is power in rebellion! How dare those companies try to ruin my livelihood with their crap food, just so they can get me addicted and make more money off of me? How dare they try to take advantage of us? I won’t stand for it! I will not be a part of their game! I am an enneagram type one and I seek justice!

My knowledge of the toxicity and addictive nature of junk food, combined with my fury at the big brother success of food companies’ deceitful methods, has majorly turned me off from knowingly throwing trash into my body. And I feel like if a lot more people out there knew the truth about what is in the pantry aisles at the grocery store, they might feel the same way.

Productivity and Utility

For me, healthy living has become common sense that far outweighs emotional, heat of the moment temptations. The choice between something healthy and something unhealthy is now a “duh!” moment. Now that I know just how much what I eat matters, I am ceasing to understand the utility of an unhealthy diet.

Get this: we only get one body. One! And at that, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We should take care of them as such, rejecting indulgence and gluttony, and seeking strength and discipline. But even if you aren’t spiritual, and that doesn’t motivate you, our bodies are also the vessels that carry us through life. We get out what we put in. It simply does not make healthy sense to me to expect my body to perform well but then feed it junk. If I want to have energy and live well, I should intentionally put the proper fuel into my body.

I’ve begun listening to my biology and not junk food marketing. I have become so emotionally detached from eating and those dopamine releases, that eating well is the only thing that makes sense to me. Like, yeah, I could eat cake for breakfast… Literally no one is telling me not to. And yeah, it tastes really good for the thirty seconds I’m eating it. But do I really actually want to do that to myself? What about the rest of the day when I have to deal with major sugar crashes? Do I really want to allow myself a moment of such weakness and lack of control? Does the benefit of a few seconds of dopamine really outweigh the cost?

When I say “cost,” I’m not just talking about short term body weight, blood sugar, energy levels, and daily performance. It isn’t just about fitness or the perfect body. I’m talking about long term stuff: heart health, skin clarity, sleep cycles, gut health, inflammation, joint health, mental health, immunity, stress and anxiety levels, the list goes on! Literally all of our organs and cells thrive off what we feed them. Do we want to feed them things that will lead to their failure or things that will support their long lasting? Eating well is not just about looking good. It is about having the ability to live longer, stronger, and better. It is about feeling great enough to live a life worth living.

Eventually, eating well will make you feel so good that you won’t want to throw garbage into your body and ruin that. Feeling good and capable truly does feel better than a quick dopamine release, I promise. It doesn’t make me feel sad, or like I’m missing out on life. It makes me feel like a strong independent badass. Living well isn’t a temporary release that will fade and make me crash. It is a lasting mental strength that I worked hard to achieve. Living well is the very reason I am in fact not missing out on life!

Food isn’t Evil

Don’t get me wrong in all of this. God made taste buds and food. Food itself is not inherently evil. Food is freaking delicious. It is an awesome thing that we get to enjoy. The problem is becoming gluttonous, indulgent, or enslaved to the junk food that has been made so addictive. The problem is when food becomes our idol, our fix, the one thing we look forward to in a day. Not only is it physically unhealthy. It is mentally and spiritually unhealthy. Making healthy choices is just as much a mental good practice in strength and discipline as it a physical good practice in wellness!

But it isn’t Everything Either

And also, there is so much more to life than food! I would rather have the energy to climb a mountain than eat a candy bar. I would rather extend my dancing career by a few years than eat pasta and wheat bread on a regular basis. I would rather spend thousands of dollars traveling the world than in medical bills because my diet lead to unwellness. I would rather pay off my student loans than pay for insulin because my sugar intake induced diabetes. I would rather have a mind that is able to focus well, a body that is able to do hard work, than let weakness rule my eating habits.

I am too busy checking things off my bucket list to allow room for an unhealthy lifestyle. I have too much on my agenda to spend time taking naps or at the doctor because I didn’t take care of myself right. There is too much to be achieved in my life to make time for inflammation, weak joints, a raging gut, or flaring emotions and stress. I do not have time for bad habits. I only get one body. I only get one shot. And I want to be capable, lively, and strong, for as long as I have the power to be.

You Can Do it Too!

Now see? Did you see a reference to willpower anywhere in that? I’m telling you, educating myself on why I should be eating healthy has been my most successful method at healthy living yet. Backing my desires with a reason deeper than superficial appearance has made wellness so much more valuable. Finding a passion and a purpose in healthy living has expanded my goal beyond a body image and has made following through immensely easier.

Because it isn’t just about a dress size or a number on a scale. It is about that everything that goes before that. I don’t have to step on the scale. I don’t have to measure my waist. I don’t have to pop pills for headaches and inflammation. I don’t have to battle daily fatigue, dropping energy levels, digestive issues, or mood swings. All I do is eat well, and all of that falls into place. I feel great about myself and my life. And I promise, you can too.

Now I wouldn’t rant off all these thoughts, if I wasn’t prepared to present some sort of guidelines to go along with my convictions. In coming blogs you can expect to see grocery lists, grocery shopping tips, meal ideas and recipes, tips to spice up your meals, tricks to quench sugar cravings naturally, getting rid of the munchies, debunked myths about foods that used to be considered “bad for you,” sneaky foods to watch out for that contain all sorts of hidden ingredients, the empowerment of moderation, and so much more!

 

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” – 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

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