To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876

This quote is reminiscent of healthy eating; it is almost impossible to eat healthy when taste buds prefer delicious high fructose corn syrup(HFCS) products rather than bland tasting gluten-free products. Many people believe HFCS is detrimental to a healthy lifestyle and a healthy diet, yet these foods that seem forbidden are impossible to ignore; so many people choose to eat the forbidden foods regardless of the negative consequences.

A healthy diet concerns the foods you take in; yes, this may be true; but a healthy diet also means you are doing more than monitoring your eating habits. Creating a symbiotic relationship between eating habits and healthy lifestyle choices is the best opportunity to live a prolonged life. What is a healthy lifestyle choice? A healthy lifestyle choice is exercising.

After you have consumed your food, or prior to consuming your foods, going for a twenty to thirty-minute walk will help aid in the digestion of your food. Thus, you will not feel as bloated as you would if you walked over to the couch and laid down to watch the football match. These are healthy lifestyle choices, as opposed to unhealthy lifestyle choices.

Now, a complaint may be that you do not have time for that twenty to thirty-minute walk after eating dinner. Guess what? Odds are you will probably be heading to that couch to sit down; you will use the excuse that you are utterly exhausted from your long day at the office. While these are understandable reasons or excuses for not wanting to walk, they are still fallacious claims due to the fact that exercising releases endorphins in the body which stimulate and increase energy for a short period of time, up to an hour – depending on the type of exercise.

Creating that symbiotic relationship takes time. Many people were raised with poor eating habits, and yes, finding a balance between healthy lifestyle choices and eating habits is something that is not likely to be easily figured out. But if you take your time, and work on making amends between the unhealthy and the healthy eating habits, then both will eventually work together and no longer function as a symbiotic relationship. Rather, what will occur is a metamorphosis or transformation in your lifestyle. You will begin eating healthy, and it will no longer be about what is healthy and what is not healthy.

Your body will be able to tell you when you have eaten something greasy and disgusting – you may have to go to the bathroom a little more irregularly after completing this transformation of lifestyles when eating unhealthy greasy HFCS foods. Remember a healthy diet is not something that our body is physiologically wanting; it is something that is physiological needs in order to maximize its daily potential in terms of energy output and alertness.