How to Delight in Your Food, Friends and Family This Holiday Season

The "Season of Goodwill to All... Uh Oh..." Paradox

We've all heard the ideal: "Holidays should be a time of good cheer, feeling great reconnecting with family and loved ones..." Yet for many of us these can be some of the toughest times of the year. If you're beginning or well along the path of being raw then by now you've most likely discovered two things:

1. How amazing you can feel and how much happier your body can be when you eat well and...
2. How, in a world that hasn't made the discoveries you have, that such a simple things as improving what you eat can leave you feeling isolated, frustrated and deprived.

Many people just give up in one way or another. Some give up on feeling great eating decadent (literally coming from the word decay) food that leaves them feeling physically sick and guilty for eating it. Worse still, others give up on connecting with friends and loved ones by getting stuck in inflexibility (usually called 'willpower' or 'discipline'!). They (or was that you?) mutter such things as "Why won't they see the light and change, dang it..." (and sometimes stronger words!).

Ironically the frustration attached to both can do just as much damage as eating badly in the first place, and you can guarantee that if it takes a lot of effort to improve your health and you're not getting results (because of the reasons above) then it's only a matter of time before your hearts not in it, you don't feel successful and you eventually just stop. Great Health. Zero willpower.

Fortunately, we don't have this problem. Is this because we give up and binge on junk over the holidays? Nope. Is it because we were dogged enough that we finally managed to lecture all our friends and family into eating a 100% organic, properly combined, homegrown, vegan, raw food diet? Not by a long shot! (Even the thought of trying to enforce this makes me chuckle!) We don't have this problem because we discovered a very powerful secret (and yes we're going to give you the secret right here for absolutely nothing :-).

"Great tasting food is more powerful than all the 'willpower' in the world."

You've seen this when you've tried lecturing friends and family about eating better. They don't enjoy it, and so they don't continue with it. Dang! Failure! Now their health will suffer even though you 'know' better... Curse them, making them feel worse and repeat the cycle. Slowly you become the wicked witch (or Warlock) of the west, both to them and you.

Hopefully you've also seen this work for good. You gave them something healthy, in a way that they actually enjoyed (%100 lecture free!) and they kept enjoying it, even later on. Woo hoo! Successs! Now you've helped them on a path to happiness, health and being a better role model for their family, friends and community.

So how to go about making food that they love? Well, that subject's a bit large for this article, but here's a few ideas:

• People fall in love with tastes, textures, colours and smells rather than specific foods. As long as the parts they love (eg texture and sweetness) are similar they'll love the food, even if some aspects (eg colour) are different.
• Laugh enough over any meal and strangely enough everyone remembers it fondly.
• Inspiration and enthusiasm are catchy!... as long as you give them space to decide for themselves.
• Experiment! The more variety of recipes you try the better you can judge what people will love, what works and what's outright delicious.

At this point I really should mention that Sheryl and Nomi Shannon have just put together a great eBook full of around 60 recipe ideas specifically designed to be shared over holiday celebrations with friends. They're offering all kinds of discounts and bonuses for the next 48 hours or so over at RawFoodCelebrations.com. I admit I'm biased here, but personally I think it looks great and everyone I know agrees.

Whatever you do though, remember that the holidays are the time for reconnecting, sharing and enjoying each others company. Master that one and any food you try is bound to be a hit.

May Your Holidays be Wild,

Piers