Chapter 13: Just One Peek

"Just one bite" is a myth that you must remove from your mind:

It's just one bite that gets us started in the first place.
It's just one bite to tide us over a difficult patch or on a special occasion that defeats most of our attempts to stop.
It's just one bite that after having succeeded in breaking the addiction, sends us back into the trap. Sometimes it's just to confirm they don't need junk food anymore and one indulgence does just that.

The aftereffects of processed food will be horrible and convince the person they'll never become hooked again — but they already are. The person feels that something making them so miserable and guilty shouldn't have made them do it, yet it did.

It's the thought of 'one special treat' that often prevents people from stopping, the one after your long business trip, hard day at work, fight with the kids, or stressful incident. Get it firmly in your mind that there's no such thing as 'just one bite'. It's a chain reaction that will last the rest of your life unless broken. The myth about the odd, special occasion keeps people moping after stopping. Get into the habit of never seeing the 'no big deal' treat, it's fantasy. Whenever you think about junk food, see a lifetime of poor health and diminished energy for the privilege of destroying yourself physically and mentally — a lifetime of slavery and hopelessness. It isn't a crime if your energy levels are low, but it is when you could be healthier long-term but instead choose to sacrifice that for short term 'pleasure'.

It's okay we can't always come up with 'something else' to eat for the void; doing that isn't realistically possible in every instance for our entire lives. We can plan for most situations, but sometimes cravings just happen. Good and bad times also happen, irrespective of food choices. But get it clearly into your mind, the junk food isn't it. You're stuck with either a lifetime of misery or none at all. You wouldn't dream of taking poison just because you liked the taste, so stop punishing yourself with the occasional 'no-big-deal' treat. Ask someone with health issues, "If you had the opportunity to go back to the time before you became hooked on processed foods, would you have started eating them?" The answer is inevitably, "You've got to be joking!" Yet everyone has that choice every day of their lives, so why don't they opt for it? The answer is fear, the fear that they can't stop or that life won't be the same without it.

Stop kidding yourself! You can do it, anybody can. It's ridiculously easy but in order to make it so, there are certain fundamentals to get clear in your mind.

There's nothing to give up, only marvelous positive gains to achieve.
Never convince yourself of the odd 'no-big-deal' or 'just-one-bite' treat. It doesn't exist. There's only a lifetime of poor health and slavery.
There's nothing different about you; anyone can find it easy to stop.

Many people believe that they're confirmed food addicts or have addictive personalities. This usually happens as a result of reading excessive amounts of shocking nutrition science. There's no such thing, nobody is born with the need to eat processed foods before they became hooked. It's the hyperpalatable food that hooks you, not the nature of your character or personality. The nature of addictive processed foods makes you believe this is the case. However, it's essential to remove this belief because if you believe you're addicted, you will be, even after the physical cravings in your body are long gone. It's essential to remove all of this brainwashing.