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From:	M (24.0.150.89)
Subject:	Re: Diet Question
Date:	July 2, 2009 at 12:22 pm PST

In Reply to: Re: Diet Question posted by Dee on July 2, 2009 at 6:48 am:

Dee,

You're making progress indeed. Bravo!

One thought, though, regarding change:

In some cases, less-than-total change really is more difficult. A
classic example is salt elimination. Even mainstream medical
doctors who are trying to get a patient on a no-salt diet know that
if the patient continues to eat a salty meal every day -- or even
just once per week! -- his or her taste buds will have a much
harder time adapting to unsalted food. The result? The unsalted
food never becomes pleasurable, or at least not fully. The patient
might stay on this diet for a long time, but it will always be a
struggle, will always be drudgery. Only the salty meals will be a
true pleasure to eat.

By contrast, if the patient complies with the program 100%, they
only have to struggle for a few weeks. Then, their taste buds
adapt, and something they never could have imagined happens:
the unsalted food is actually a joy to eat!

Not all types of transition are like this, but for those that are,
partial change is a lose-lose arrangement: it simply means that
you remain stuck with the disadvantages of the old way without
ever experiencing the advantages of the new way.

In other words, in some types of change, going part-way means
constant struggle with little reward; going all the way means short-
term struggle with a huge payoff.

But there's another way of looking at it yet. Rather than think in
terms of gradual versus cold turkey, I like to think in terms of
time-limited "experiments". For example:

As an experiment, I'm going to try 811 for a full month. After
that, I can ditch it forever if I want to. But for one month, I'm going
to commit to it 100%.

For a lot of people, this is the best of both worlds: psychologically,
it's not nearly as scary as true cold turkey, because you're leaving
the door wide open to go back to whatever you want to do when
the experiment is over; but at the same time, because you're
complying with the program 100% while you're doing it, you're
actually giving it a chance to show you what it can do!

No pressure here, just sharing thoughts, for what they are worth.

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