The ONE Recreational Drug I promote
I’m a doctor and I advocate healthy lifestyle choices to overcome and prevent chronic disease. But I have a confession to make.
I ate 3 huge pieces of Domino’s cheese pizza at work last week. Like totally inhaled them. It was glorious and horrifying at the same time. (Someone put it in the breakroom and I just couldn’t resist the tempting, alluring smell…)
Why am I telling you this?
You deserve to know the truth about recreational junk food and sugar use.
Look, plenty of experts tell you that if you want to be healthy – you can never even think about looking at a Snickers bar again. Which really, really sucks.
And plenty of other experts tell you that you need to embrace moderation – except it’s really easy to go overboard when we’re trying to hold ourselves accountable.
But there’s an even better way to look at sugar and junk food. You have to start by acknowledging them for what they are: recreational drugs.
I mean, let’s just talk about sugar for a minute. We all know that sugar = bad (but delicious) news. It contributes to insulin resistance which can lead to metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
And don’t even get me started on junk food. I mean… it’s common knowledge that food scientists and marketers deliberately employ scientific and psychological sneak attacks to make junk foods more addictive and harder to resist.
We have the facts, the research, and the knowledge. But deprivation doesn’t work. And neither does moderation.
So I advocate for categorizing sugar and junk food as recreational indulgences.
Let’s be honest. We’re only human. Some people have more willpower or resilient than others but the goal of a diet that supports your health isn’t to be a superhero – it’s to become a little more conscious and make better choices each day.
For me, a life without Korean BBQ is (and it’s terrible quality toxic meat) or Mexican candy like mango chili lollipops or pulparindo spicy tamarind candy (which are all full of lead) isn’t a life worth living.
You can probably tell that I’m not a health fanatic but I’ve made healthier choices and reversed my own experience with diabetes… all by making small, daily choices that support my body’s natural state of health. Yes, I’m a doctor whose job is to help people make healthy choices but I’m still going through my own process of learning to integrate healthy choices into my own life.
So you can trust me on this one. Not just because I’m a doctor, but because I understand the struggle, too.
You are health.
Dr. Kien
PS: What’s the one food that you could never give up?
