During the time that my diet has been changing, I have become aware of an
interesting transition. I have gradually been letting go of the idea that
it is important to have three ‘balanced’  meals each day, and instead have
become used to letting my body decide when I need to eat, and what. When I
first changed to eating only fruit in the mornings, I was having quite
large quantities - about 1 - 1.5 kg altogether, spread over 2 meals,
whereas now it is less than half of that. I now find that I can get up in
the morning and, after a drink of water, simply get on with the day’s
activities, without any need to focus on food. A few hours later, when
hunger sets in, I have something to eat. I find that I have lots of energy
during the morning, and yet I sometimes find that I do not need to eat at
all until about midday.

When I was telling a friend about this recently, he commented, "Ah, so
you’ve put yourself on demand feeding!" How true, and how logical. It seems
strange now that it should ever have been any different. We have finally
learned that this is the best thing for our babies, and yet somehow it
doesn’t  seem to apply to the rest of us. Children are still told, when
they say that they are not hungry in the morning, that they must have
breakfast before going to school - that they will not be able to learn
properly otherwise. ... But having said all this, I do still sometimes eat
for reasons other than hunger, but these occasions are becoming rarer.

A note on fruit - I am amazed to read that there are people who have been
able to live on a fruitarian diet for a period of some years. On a few
occasions, I have tried to eat only fruit for several days in a row, in
order to allow my body to do some serious cleansing. However, I found that
I simply could not continue for more than 1 1/2 to 2 days at a time, as I
would start to feel quite strange. My head would begin to feel very odd (in
a way that is difficult to describe, but perhaps ‘lightheaded’ is somewhere
near the mark), and my heart (or something in that region) would feel as if
it was gradually turning into a tight ball. I had initially thought that
perhaps a fruitarian diet would be the ideal to aim for in the long run,
but that idea soon lost its appeal when I experienced the above symptoms,
which I have not noticed at other times. I assume that they have something
to do with the body’s sodium/potassium balance being upset when only fruit
is consumed.

To finish off, just a little bit of philosophising on changing one’s
dietary habits. In my experience, a very small amount of intellectual
decision-making can, over a period of time, lead to very large changes in
the body’s responses. I think that it is sufficient to be aware of the
behavioural changes that are seen as desirable, but without feeling the
need to adhere to them rigidly (except, of course, in cases where there is
an urgent medical reason for a drastic change of diet). It seems to me that
gentle guidelines, applied with some degree of flexibility, are sufficient
to steer the body in the right direction. Simply giving it some opportunity
to make positive changes can lead to quite dramatic results overall, with
food preferences changing almost imperceptibly over time.


Regards and greetings from Australia,

Barbara Sheppard