You are the one who can make the choice as to how healthy you want to be. A patient at one of our clinics years ago, who had suffered from a form of arthritis for about eight years, dramatically altered his eating pattern to what Dr. Morter recommended. He entered his new dietary program quite skeptically. After all, even the authorities on arthritis denied that food has anything to do with this painful, debilitating disease. Their attitude was that food has little bearing on arthritis and that the best diet plan is to eat balanced meals. “Balanced” includes the four basic food groups we have grown up with.

This fellow followed his “new” way of eating from then on. Nothing would induce him to return to his pain-producing former way of eating. He was diligent and conscientious in following his program, and improvement in his case was obvious within a week. Yet he met with an amazing response from friends and acquaintances who observed his progress. “You look so much better,” many remarked.  I have arthritis in my hands/knees/shoulders. What did you do? After he had given them a thumbnail sketch of his diet program, almost every one of these “arthritis sufferers” retorted that they couldn’t “give up” cheese or meat or some other favorite. His reply to their protestations was, “Then you don’t hurt bad enough yet.”

You may “hurt bad enough,” or you may be tired of being tired.  Or you may just be ready to live the rest of your life feeling better than you do now. If you decide to eat for better health, whatever your reason, it’s your reason. Sickness is not a natural by-product of life.  And you don’t have to be sick in order to want to feel better. If you want to feel better, you have the tools available to you. It’s all up to you. You don’t have to develop cancer or an auto-immune disorder to become motivated to eat a better diet.

You choose how you respond to the temptation of eating favorite foods that affect you unfavorably. You can choose to eat them and pay the price of your reaction; you can decline to eat them by going with the current trend of claiming a “sensitivity” to those foods; or you can improve your dietary habits in general so that your overall invisible health improves. If you select the last choice, your body will be able to handle your daily diet without adverse reactions, and it will cope with occasional flings with barely a symptomatic ripple.

No matter what your decision, make it and be comfortable with it.  You can always change later if you choose to. The most important thing is that you don’t feel guilty about the things you eat. You are better off eating things that are “bad” for you and feeling good about it than eating things that are “good” for you and feeling bad about it. You do more damage to your body by the way you think than by eating the wrong kinds of food.