By Rod Rotondi
Those of us who have grown up on a contemporary Western diet have food addictions galore. I know I do. Fortunately, my three-year-old daughter does not. She has never eaten foods like refined flour and sugar, highly 
processed food, meat or dairy, all of which create negative addictions. We are helping our daughter create a healthy and positive relationship with food.
But most of us were brought up with a less-than-optimal diet and an emotional attachment to food. We often have deep-seated and mostly unconscious feelings of giving ourselves a treat when we choose to eat many foods that we now know are far from optimal.
The vast majority of us must begin by recognizing that we are food addicts — and not getting down on ourselves because of it. It simply is what it is, and now it is up to us to decide what to do about it.
Many people who learn about the incredible benefits of raw and living foods try to use willpower to overcome their food addictions. While this will work for a while, usually willpower alone doesn’t work in the long run. Instead, it’s best to take the opportunity to become aware of our beliefs and attitudes about food, educate ourselves, and be loving and gentle with ourselves as we evolve toward a healthier relationship with food.
I will give you an example. There have been times I’ve really felt like having a piece of traditional pizza. This is not terribly surprising considering that I grew up in an Italian American family, that my dad makes incredible pizza, and that he also taught me how to make it at a young age. Consequently I have had an emotional attachment to pizza. So how do I handle the hankering?
When I first feel the desire for a slice, I usually think back to when I was giving up smoking many years ago. The trick was not to ask myself “Do I want to smoke a cigarette?” but to ask “Do I want to live life as a smoker?” A single cigarette is not going to significantly harm me. However, living life as a smoker would seriously compromise my health, as well as having many other negative effects on my life. And life as a smoker always begins with the next cigarette.
So, with food addictions I try to do the same thing, changing “Do I want to eat a piece of pizza?” to “Do I want to live life as a pizza eater?” While asking the second question, I envision a very round version of me eating pizza (as I mentioned, my last name, Rotondi, means “the round ones” in Italian). I really don’t want to be round. I like being slim, light and energized. So this thought often helps me get past the pizza hankering.
However, sometimes the hankering comes back — again and again. What to do? Use willpower to suppress my desire for pizza? If a desire for a specific food comes up repeatedly, I will go out and eat a small portion of that food. However, I will do it consciously. I will tune in to how my body feels before I eat the pizza, and then focus on how the pizza smells, looks and tastes. I will also be conscious of how I feel five minutes after I eat it, and thirty minutes, and an hour later. Usually what happens is that the first bite is okay but mildly unsatisfying. The second bite is really not a treat at all, and I realize that what I am eating tastes a bit like cardboard (keep in mind that when you eat a raw-food diet for any length of time, your taste buds change and cooked foods don’t taste the same anymore). Then after five minutes I feel a heaviness in my stomach. After half an hour, I feel lethargic and already wish I hadn’t eaten the pizza.
The point is that if we try to suppress all our cravings, in the end we get wound so tight that the spring may break and we might run out and eat three large pepperoni pizzas with extra cheese! It’s better to get out of judgment mode and work on evolving our relationship with food. The more we exercise our body consciousness and really listen to our bodies, the more we will replace old food habits, thought patterns, and addictions.
By the way, if you have any other addictions in your life, moving to a raw-food diet can often help in kicking them as well. Once we can control the food we put in our mouths, everything else becomes easier.
Rod Rotondi is the founder of the Leaf Organics retail product line and Leaf Cuisine restaurants. He caters events and lives in Los Angeles.
Excerpted from Raw Food for Real People ©2010 by Rod Rotondi. Printed with permission from New World Library.
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