Why Real Food, You Ask?

People often ask me if I have any rules about which foods I eat or don't eat. And the answer is no foods are off limits. What is off limits for me is fake food. This includes sugar substitute, fat substitute, and ingredients I can't pronounce. "But why shouldn't I eat fake food," people will ask me....often followed up with all the fake foods they love. "I can't live without my fat-free, sugar-free, raspberry cheesecake 100-calorie yogurt in the morning."

If you love your fat-free, sugar-free, chemical yogurt product, believe me, I'm not going to stop you from eating it. You have to eat what makes your body feel good. And what feels good to one body doesn't feel good to another one. But what I will say, and what I've always said, is that I can't guarantee that when you eat your fat-free, sugar-free foods that you'll ever be able to get quite as in tune with your fullness signals as you might if you ate real food.

And as today's story in the LA Timesproves my point. "The study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience found that the calorie-free artificial sweetener appeared to break the physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, driving the rats to overeat."

If you're someone who needs science to prove it, please take this study as a good excuse to throw out your fake food and replace it with the real stuff! Try eating mindfully and enjoy every nook and cranny, ever luscious bite of everything you eat. And I bet that before you know it (probably before you've even finished your meal), you'll start to notice how much more in tune you've become with your hunger and fullness signals....all from switching to eating real food.

Imagine that...