I want you to understand when you were born, you were little bitty. I don't know. Your mom will tell you. Five, six, seven, eight, nine pounds, something like that. Now you weigh considerably more. Let's say, I'm guessing, let's say you're 115, 120 pounds, something like that. That's a difference of over 110 pounds from when you were born. That 110 pounds did not come out of thin air. You didn't photosynthesize it. It's not sunlight. That 100 plus pounds is from what you ate. Those were the building blocks to build who you are today.

Moving forward, you need to understand and ask yourself regularly when you see your food on the plate, "Do I want to build my body out of what's on that plate? Do I want to build my body out of steak and vegetables, or do I want to build my body out of mac and cheese and some crackers? Do I want to build my body out of McDonald's or Wendy's or Taco Bell, or do I want to build my body out of chicken and vegetables?" Those are questions we all have to answer every meal, every day.

Now, do I expect you to be perfect? Absolutely not. No. And at your age, you can afford some latitude. You can screw up here and there, and you're going to do fine with it because you're young and you're in this building, healing mode. You don't have all the baggage that older people like me have, so I have to be more careful than you likely have to be. But it's a good habit to get into to look at the food on your plate and say, "Is this feeding me? Is this building me? Is this what I want to add to my body?" So keep that in mind. Whole food versus processed food. Very important. Real building blocks versus chemicals. Think of it that way.