- Introduction
- Beyond breakfast, lunch or dinner.
- Don’t starve yourself
- Size does not matter
- Eat fruit you love
- Find delicious fruit
- Eat dense fruit when really hungry
- Sandwiches? Pasta?
- What about vegetables?
- Salad eaters starve
- Get your (SEA) salt fix
- Working with Fruit
- Plan ahead
- Forgoing Family Traditions
- Specialty Fruits
Introduction
I recommend eating as much fruit as possible. Fruit offers all the nutrients we need and it’s delicious. It is incredibly satisfying to simply eat sweet watermelon, oranges, bananas, dates, and many other fruits. Fruit hydrates our bodies and offers immediate energy. Fruit’s natural sugar is combined with fiber we need. There’s no need for dessert when you eat fruit.
By eating mostly fruit, you will have more consistent energy, since blood doesn’t rush to your stomach to digest complex substances in the typical diet. You will have less congestion (mucus) throughout your body, not just in the sinuses – your head. Overall, with more energy and less congestion, you’ll likely be in a better mood. It might be news to you that the body often considers cooked and processed foods to be foreign so the body generates mucus to deal with the invader. After eating a bakery item, see if you feel congested?
Note, some people must limit their intake of any sugar, even natural sugar, due to health problems. Try fruits with less relative sugar, such as papaya, and fruit that is less ripe, such as green bananas. You may need to recover from a disease by eating vegetables and migrate to a fruit-focused food approach later. One more note, by reading this content, you are indemnifying the author. Your actions are your responsibility. Your body is your own. You are an adult.
Here are my recommendations on how to thrive on a fruit diet, based on how I live my life. Note that I still eat bread, burritos, and other cooked meals. I simply eat as much fruit as possible, and that’s usually bananas, dates, and whatever is in season.
Beyond breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Because fruit has fewer calories than cooked food, one must eat throughout the day, not just during the three conventional meals. Sure, you can still have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but you must eat every hour. If you focus on only the three traditional meal times, you will get hungry and uncomfortable, and you will reach for a bag of (dry) chips. To remain satisfied, eat throughout the day.
Are seven meals a day a lot? Well, you don’t have to cook meals of fruit. Preparing four bananas takes 10 seconds. Eating time: five minutes. Clean-up: five seconds. You don’t need to wash dishes or cooking pans. Eating seven or eight fruit meals during the day will likely take less time, including prep and clean-up, than eating three conventional cooked meals. I sometimes think of abandoning the lunch break and just eating for 10 minutes every hour.
Don’t starve yourself
Simply put: when hungry, eat. Even if it’s not “dinner time.” You can still modify your eating so you have a larger appetite at the conventional meal times. Nonetheless, if you eat a bowl of watermelon at 5:00 p.m., you’ll still be hungry for the family dinner time at 6:00 p.m.
Another reason people starve is they think eating two bananas was enough when hungry. I can eat seven bananas at once. I can eat four nectarines. Three apples. I eat until I’m full. Then when I’m hungry 60 or 90 minutes later, I eat another five bananas.
Don’t let the time dictate when you eat. If you are hungry, eat.
Size does not matter
A big bowl of fruit has far fewer calories than a big bowl of pasta. You must eat much more food than you would eat on a conventional diet of cooked and dry food. You might eat a bowl of watermelon, feel full, then need another bowl of watermelon 45 minutes later. Whatever you do, don’t avoid the second bowl of fruit. Just keep eating, and thriving.
Fruit is mostly water so eating fruit is very much like drinking water, though with more calories and nutrients. In contrast, cooked and dry food is dense, because cooking evaporates the water. Dried foods such as chips and bread have virtually no water.
Eat fruit you love
You have permission to eat the fruit you love. Lots of it. If you love pineapple, then eat two or three per day. If you love papaya, eat five per day. This what other species do. They like something, and they eat a lot of it.
Variety may be the spice of life in some categories, but not for breathing, drinking, and eating. Focus on a few fruits you love, and enjoy eating a lot of them. Someone once told me that she loved eating papaya and also that she was struggling to eat a healthy, delicious diet. For some reason, she wouldn’t just eat papaya throughout the day.
Find delicious fruit
The strawberries I bought at a farmer’s market looked like strawberries but didn’t taste like anything. At some supermarkets, the only way to taste the flavor of a perfect orange, is to buy orange-flavored candy. To thrive on fruit, you need to find a store that sells fruit that tastes like fruit. At that store, you need to buy the fruit that tastes like fruit. You may have to buy organic versions of some fruit. You may have to find a new grocery store. Regardless, you need to find fruit that is delicious. So delicious that you want to naturally eat it more than you want unhealthy food.
Eat dense fruit when really hungry
Dates, bananas, honeydew melons, and pineapples provide a lot of calories and, to me, can feel more filling than eating apples, for example. Drinking a banana and date smoothie is also an easy way to fill up.
Sandwiches? Pasta?
And sometimes, I need to instead eat an avocado sandwich. Or you might need to eat pasta to fill up. Yesterday, I had cooked lentils over rice. If you must eat something besides fruit, try to make it healthy and delicious, so you don’t crave something delicious but unhealthy.
What about vegetables?
I don’t promote vegetables primarily because they are bland. People won’t eat bland food even if it’s healthy. If you do eat vegetables, be sure to load on the spices, sauces, sea salt, and pepper. Don’t try to switch from eating burgers to unseasoned steamed broccoli. In a match-up between kale and potato chips, the chips might win. But chips can’t beat a good orange.
Salad eaters starve
A salad with leafy greens and vegetables is an appetizer. A huge salad of leafy greens is still an appetizer. Leafy greens have many nutrients and provide wonderful hydration but few calories. I expect many people feel hungry on a healthy diet because they eat leafy green salads. They might eat a huge custom modern salad for lunch and still not feel full and even if they do, they will need another huge salad in about 40 minutes.
I have a joke as well. Why do salads come with bread? Because that’s the only thing that will fill you up. I love salads but only as an appetizer or snack.
I also think a leafy green salad doesn’t satisfy one’s sweet tooth. It provides the salt fix with a tangy dressing, but not the sweet kick we need. If you have a salad, be sure to add some fruit.
Get your (SEA) salt fix
Put sea salt on many things you eat so you don’t want salty, unhealthy chips or french fries. No one eats chips without salt or french fries without salt. People crave the salt, not necessarily the chips or fries (though the fat is tasty as well, unfortunately). Sea salt is vital to the human body. I put salt on healthy food. I put it on papaya and also on fruit that is not yet ripe or just bland for some reason. Many people like salted watermelon. Salt is vital yet seductive. Add it to healthy food so you don’t crave the unhealthy salty food.
Working with Fruit
At some jobs, it’s difficult to eat fruit throughout the day. You need to arrive at 9 a.m. and you won’t get a real break until noon. I might veer away from fruit and instead eat an avocado sandwich or oatmeal before work. I might bring a banana, date, and peanut butter smoothie, in a thermos. I might buy some cut fruit at a convenience store on the way to work.
At work, I would have dates on my desk or in my bag. I keep dark chocolate bars as backup calories. Plan ahead.
Plan ahead
Fruit takes time to ripen whereas a bag of chips is always ready. If you wanted to eat one pineapple per day, you would need to have about four in your home at one time. Each would be at a different ripeness level. In YouTube videos by people who eat lots of fruit, you will see piles of fruit on their kitchen counters. Some is ripe and some is ripening.
If fruit is ripe and you don’t want to eat it, then cut it up, put it in a container, and place it in the refrigerator. With ripe apples and citrus fruit, such as limes, I will place them in the refrigerator to tyr to slow down or stop the ripening.
If fruit is not yet ripe, I place the fruit in a closed brown paper bag or a plastic bag on a counter. I find that melons and pineapples will continue to ripen (or soften) after I cut them. If I cut up a cantaloupe and realize it’s not ripe, I place the cut fruit in a container and eat it the next day or the day after.
Frozen food is always ready. Processed food is always ready. These are easy to eat, but are not necessarily heathy. With some effort and practice, you’ll have ripe fruit at all times.
Plan what you will eat for the next five or six hours. Do you have enough bananas at the ripeness you prefer (green or yellow or spreckled)? Are the mangoes soft yet? Do you have frozen fruit as an alternative? If you have a plan, you won’t need to grab a bag of chips.
You also need to make more trips to the grocery store. Four shopping bags of fruit will last a lot less time than four bags of pasta, tomato sauce and bread. Try to visit the store every two to three days.
In a way, you need to farm your fruit. The unripe fruit are your “seeds” and the ripe fruit is what you reap. You are constantly buying more “seeds” (fruit) and reaping more ripe fruit.
Forgoing Family Traditions
Families cherish the food they enjoy together. Giving up the unhealthy foods can mean giving up family traditions. You attend a family meal on a holiday, and you’re not eating most of the items. There are ways to make unhealthy foods a bit healthier. You can focus on the traditional foods that might be semi-healthy. You can work with your family to develop new entrees that are healthy.
Fruit is usually a part of any family meal, yet it is a minor part. Work with your family to make it the main part. For families hailing from South and Central America, they can put big bowls of papaya and mango on the table. For families from the American South, they can make watermelon part of the dinner entrees.
Soon I think everyone will realize that it is family that is the main ingredient of a family celebration. Food may bring us together but it’s not the reason we get together. By focusing on fruit, and less on unhealthy traditional foods, your family will be healthier and that means everyone gets to have more years together.
Some traditional foods we like simply because we have eaten them our whole lives. As stated above, the body will acclimate to whatever is available. While it may seem like you are giving up a delicious, traditional food, you may only be giving up a traditional food that is not technically delicious. Ask someone outside your cultural group if they find it tasty. After a few holiday seasons without an unhealthy traditional food, you may find that you don’t even want it anymore. Plus you have new, healthy food traditions you follow at that point.
Specialty Fruits
Specialty grocers often carry, wait-for-it, specialty fruits, such as jackfruit. Have you had jackfruit? It’s delicious. I would bet it inspired the flavor and name of an old gum called Juicy Fruit. It’s worth traveling to a specialty grocer to get jackfruit and many other specialty items.
The cost of specialty items may be lower at specialty stores because they sell more of these fruits. Less goes bad so they can sell at a better price. Take it from me; I was a produce clerk. We would toss (compost) persimmons and jackfruit because customers didn’t buy them. That was really our fault for not teaching our customers about these fruits. I just know that jackfruit doesn’t go to waste at a specialty store because the customers know that it tastes amazing! It smells amazing as well.
