How long do you actually enjoy eating a meal or dish? Really think about this for a moment. How long can you savor a dish? For me, it’s probably 10-15 minutes, tops. And that’s if I’m eating very slowly.

Now, you typically eat three meals a day. That’s 45 minutes of gratification and savoring.

Forty-five minutes.

The rest of your day is spent doing other things. Walking, sitting, working, reading, cooking, etc. The rest of the day, you aren’t eating. You are doing the stuff in-between meals that we call, “Life.” I had to make a conscious decision in September 2015 that I valued that time in-between the meals more than I valued the meals themselves. It’s not that I wanted to eat bland food; I didn’t. But I didn’t want to sacrifice my in-between meals time for very short-term and short-lived gratification. Said another way, it seemed ridiculous to me that I would feel tired and be so overweight and unfit all the time just so I can enjoy eating pizza, bread, or pasta for very small parts of my day.

As good as those foods are, they aren’t worth the bad I felt the rest of the time.

And therein lies the crux of the matter for me. Such a little bit of pleasure isn’t worth the huge amount of pain, no matter how good the food is.

Think about what is more important to you: what you eat, or how you feel the entire rest of your day.