The vegan tongue is a muscle and requires Training
The first thing I learned when I became vegan (a short four months and -20lbs ago) was to learn how to obey my taste buds instead of allowing my mind’s stored memory of a particular food to overrule the actual taste of what I was eating. A perfect example would be when I raise that Impossible “burger” to my snake-like jaws I have to block the familiar taste memory of a real burger, which I can’t help but expect. It’s like telling someone not to think of a pink elephant.
If your mind overrules your taste buds after biting into that Impossible burger you might react like Piers Morgan did when he tried a vegan sausage roll. it tasted nothing like what his brain and by default his tongue was expecting.
He was predisposed to hate it and so will you unless you open your mind to taste what you are eating, not what your brain is comparing it to after years of ground beef burgers.
Read moreThose plant-based veggie burger patties you find in the frozen section at a grocery store with all the claims on the packaging that they taste just like the real McCoy. I don’t get the need to eat a plant-based burger to remind us of something unhealthy. In order to attain any semblance of fairness when you try those “fake” meats and “fake” chicken nuggets your mind needs to tell your tongue, “it’s plant- based stupid, don’t compare it with a meat burger!” Only that way will your tongue override your brain and allow the taste of the food you are eating to speak for itself.
So think like a vegan, open your mind to new tastes and textures instead of thinking you can duplicate the taste of beef or chicken with compressed beans or breading. What do you have to lose?
Re-boot your taste buds
A future with better and long-lasting good health awaits when you switch to plant-based, whole-foods, eliminating the bad stuff such as meat and dairy, processed foods and sugar. Everything we now know from the science has proven this stuff is not good for us. All of the foods your taste buds have been conditioned to love and crave over the years needs a re-boot. Be honest and ask yourself, what have these kinds of food done for you? For me, all it did was make me fat, hating clothes, staying home, etc. Oh, and I felt terrible too.
It’s a good thing I started feeling better after just three days of eating plant-based foods or I think I would have gone back to my old ways of consuming liberal quantities of meat and dairy every day. I don’t consider myself a quitter, but it was touch and go during the first days. Milk, butter and cheese were my staples!
Had I not seen dramatic improvement quickly, I was ready to head to the nearest fast-food joint for a double bacon burger and fries. But lo and behold things did improve, especially noticeable was a lessening of pain in my joints.
After just three days I may not have lost any real weight but inside I felt like I was on the right path. I no longer craved sweets, so I stuck with it. Now here I am four months later and I really feel great. Honest!
Fear of Success?
Why do we fail on Diets?
Because they are all unsustainable, these popular plans that advocate low carb, low fat, high protein, etc, will bring you right back to square one after shedding a few pounds. Why do we fall off the diet wagon? Is it a fear of success? Maybe we unconsciously feel a burden placed on us, pressure to lose more and more weight until we become the skinny person we always wanted to be.
It’s easy to convince yourself to continue your old ways of eating versus changing them to something lot healthier, especially if you are older like me. You can act all indignant like I did, cop the attitude “I can eat anything I want, I deserve it, all the other guys are fat anyway” which is only a lazy man’s way to excuse these bad food decisions. Instead we should be educating themselves to the health benefits of changing to a plant-based way of eating.
Don’t fear success, if losing weight is your primary goal by eating plant-based, whole-foods rest assured the weight will come off.