Okay, so is there anything I can eat?

I hear this phrase from clients as we are going over nutritional information. We start talking about food - what needs to be eliminated, what needs to be added - and the process can be overwhelming. Or when I spotlight a product on my Facebook fanpage and give you the "real" dish on a particular food. Or when I take a class through Publix in my Healthy Shopping 101 class and teach them how to read food labels. People get discouraged. What they thought was healthy is not. And so they ask me the inevitable question:

"Okay, so is there anything I can eat?"

And they ask this with despair, by the way. Nothing fun about being deprived of your favorite foods. But, is deprivation the only way? Do you have to give up everything you enjoy eating to lose weight?

Tough question. It's really a matter of focus and goals, education and inspiration, and just plain "how bad do you want it?".

• If you educate yourself on the nutrition of foods, you start to realize what is in the packaged and fast foods. 
• If you focus on your goals, including nutrition, you start to prioritize what is really important in your food life. 
• If you really want to lose weight and have tried for years and haven't been able to, and if you have cried about your weight, then you might want it bad enough to make the hard changes. 

Because there will be hard changes. If you want to lose the weight.

You may have to give up ice cream. You may have to give up chocolate. I did. I had to give up "trigger" foods that just negatively affected my body. Was it worth it? Yes, absolutely. Was it hard? Yes, absolutely. But it's possible. And now, I can go back and have those foods - once in a while, not daily - and it's not a problem now.

The hard part is finding your food addictions, facing your food addictions which involves asking what is this food replacing that I am not getting in my life, and then dealing with it.

Yes, there is food you can eat. Healthy, nutritious, beautiful food. You don't have to deprive yourself. You need to educate yourself. And I'm here to help you...