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In 2012, I needed to eliminate gluten and dairy from my diet for health reasons.

I needed it, so I chose it. It wasn't life or death in the strictest sense of the word - my autoimmune disease diagnosis didn't require me to make any dietary changes - but after trying for a while, I realized that the diet did work on my condition.

But food is controversial. People who omit something from their diet are suspicious. Some people point to studies they've read that actually show that diet has no effect. Others condescendingly say that gluten-free is "just a fad."

The biggest friction? Giving up certain foods drains the joy of life. Since I can keep eating gluten or dairy and basically, basically, pretty much get through life, then: How can I give up bread? Cheese? Ice cream?

But before we go too far, this isn't actually an article about food or food choices.

This is an article about how and why we make choices that harm our lives, even when other options are available to us.

This is an article about why it's hard to change, and how to rethink our approach to change.

Violence against the self

Initially, gluten-free and dairy-free was a choice I made because I felt I had no choice - I totally freaked out that I, a runner and Brussels sprout lover, was sick.

Aren't runners supposed to be the fittest people in the world? Aren't people who really like kale and quinoa healthy nuts?

How did these people get sick?

I'm here to tell you that they do get sick. In fact, I was sick back in 2008, but the results of a blood draw at that time were not read properly and I was not diagnosed. Four more years passed, and I was exhausted, in pain, with colds several times a year that chilled my body even when wrapped in a sweater.

For reasons I didn't understand, at the end of 2012, things got completely out of hand, I was so tired that my running was killing me, and I started to gain weight rapidly - 15 pounds in just a few months.

I shared this to establish the context for why I made such drastic eating decisions.

Here's the thing - after getting diagnosed and changing my diet, I "cheated" at first. I'll add a little gluten here, a little dairy there.

What happened? I feel worse. Usually, I feel sick almost immediately. One time I ate real pizza, which is the ultimate gluten dairy combination, I contracted a sinusitis within 24 hours.

So here's the question:

Why do I make these choices? Why, when I know what makes me feel better and have access to better options, do I sometimes "cheat" and choose something that is not good for me?

Why don't we collectively do what we know is best for us?

That's the million-dollar question.

I think I have a million-dollar answer: When we choose things that are not in our best interest, we are committing a form of violence against ourselves. We act where it hurts or is underdeveloped.

And more importantly: we all do it.

Everyone is doing it

When we procrastinate, even when we have time?

When we argue with someone, even if a small voice suddenly comes up to remind us, we swear that we will never argue the same issue again?

When we put food in our mouths, even though we know it won't make us feel good, even though we have other options?

When we fill our lives to the brim, even when we clearly see that doing so will not make us happy?

These are all small needle wounds that add up. Every day, we make choices that add up again and again and begin to weave the fabric of our lives.

Why are we doing this? I think we come from a place that hurts (something hurts and I need it to make me feel better) or something inside that is underdeveloped (I don't have the skills yet to know what it feels like to choose something different).

Most of us can relate to the first - the wound - and there is a collective disdain for the second - the lack of skill.

"Oh, come on," someone would say. "It comes down to laziness. People who do things they know they shouldn't do are just lazy about making better choices."

Maybe you've even criticized yourself internally in this way.

But really -- know how to make choices, and then know how to make choices (intentional emphasis added). I've been working with one-on-one clients for eight years, and the truth is most of us think we know how to choose, but we don't.

Sure -- logically, yes, we know how to choose. We know the "how". We know what we "should" do.

However, physically -- in the body? When we walk around, when we do what we do, do we feel our presence? Most of the time, we don't know how to choose. We lack the skills to examine our feelings to determine what we really need.

"Feelings are facts" is a popular self-help adage that has been heavily criticized because it is interpreted literally.

I don't think it's a literal statement. I think its purpose is to express that we will choose choice B even when all logic and reason seems to suggest that we "should" make choice A. The "fact" of how we feel is powerful.

The chosen skill set

Making choices that fit our lives requires the skills to make choices.

Maybe all these years, you've been thinking, "Oh, I made a choice! Simple."

No, it's not that simple.

The skill set includes the following:

Really know what you really want (really!) .

Feel like you should have what you want (if you don't feel like you deserve it, you won't go after it).

Trust that you can make your choices safely (which can be challenging if you come from a family that mocks or criticizes your choices).

Trust your ability to deal with the consequences of your choices (if someone is afraid of the consequences, they probably won't make any choices at all).

What skills are we really talking about here?

Know how to deal with the sensory states that arise when we make challenging or unfamiliar choices.

It's not that we don't know

We don't procrastinate because we don't "know" we shouldn't -- we do it because something in our bodies makes procrastination a more attractive option. In that moment, procrastination does "feel" better.

We don't argue with someone because we haven't yet realized that arguments are usually ineffective -- we do it because of some feeling present in the body that makes the argument, the venting of anger, the final sentence, "She won't stop talking to me like that!" "Rather than" putting up with "it... It's so fascinating.

We put the food into the body, the food is not even real food, or we know, won't make us feel good, not because we don't know better, but really, because we feel bad - and we want to feel better, at the moment, rather than after twenty minutes later, after an hour or diagnosis.

So what does it all boil down to?

If you're constantly struggling to make a choice, or to make the choice to stick with, or to make the better choice among a range of available options, you have to stop thinking logically.

You have to start thinking about your feelings.

How do I feel now?

How am I likely to feel twenty minutes or an hour after making this choice?

What did I know in the past about how this choice made me feel?

What alternative can I make, and would I choose it at this moment?

These are very important questions, and you can't ask them logically. You have to close your eyes -- well, I know, I know -- and feel what you feel.

In terms of any life changes you want to implement - start meditating, stop fighting with your partner about the same things, don't procrastinate on starting the novel you want to write - these are all questions you need to raise again, again and again.

The lasting effects of change

Nearly a year after my diagnosis and subsequent dietary change, how am I doing? Good gravy. That's how plain it is. I eat what I eat, you know? What felt like a big deal after the diagnosis now feels, in large part, like a shrug.

How can you get to that place by choice -- a place they won't find so difficult or dramatic?

It comes down to checking your physical response so often that something clicks in place and you realize:

"When I made choice X, I felt bad. Therefore, I will not succeed."

When people ask me how to give up milkshakes or fresh oven-baked bread, I barely respond.

It seems to me that "giving up" these things is a small price to pay for waking up energetic in the morning and saving fertility to have children instead of having a body with inflamed joints.

In my mind, it's clear to me that I'm the winner in this equation.

It's not easy to make choices, especially if you don't actually know how to make them, because the skills of how to choose have not yet been developed.

The good news is that you can analyze what skill sets you need so that you can find ways to make lasting and meaningful choices that are consistent with what you really want out of life.