Starting from the beginning
I've been improving my health through diet for the last 6 years. First I simply thought about what I was eating (massive amounts of processed food because it was convenient and I didn't learn much in the ways of cooking). So I began cooking more for myself, buying more fresh produce, preparing and making soups and stews to start. I used some of the skill (if we could call it that) I attained from my previous relationship where my girlfriend and I would cook dinner together. It's funny how quickly I abandoned a lot of those habits and became lazy and complacent again about food. Only until I began to research nutrition heavily in my free time (which was a lot considering I work from home and researching was already in my job description it fit right in my wheelhouse).
Years and years later I've learned a heck of a lot since then; mainly through experimenting on myself and figuring what diet changes do to my own body. Excess sodium in processed food can dry my skin out and make me tired, gluten (cheap wheat) can and will constipate and get me bloated and the gut will stick out, dairy can get me congested, sometimes nausea (though I rarely ever experience that these days), etc...etc.
There's certain stages to extreme dieting
The extremists out there (and you can easily find them on YouTube) have stages of diet restrictions that improve health. When I say 'extremists' its not in a derogatory sense, its just in the sense that the bulk of society will see us as extremists because we're planning to eat so much different. We're willing to restrict ourselves to stay healthy, live longer and it makes us happy, so why not?
Stage 1: Lower your processed food intake
Pretty self explanatory but this includes all restaurant food as you don't know where it came from. And cooking is processing as well.
Stage 2: Replace these processed foods with more whole foods
Whole foods are living foods. Things in a bag, can or jar that can sit on the shelf for a year is dead. You put this in your body, you become more dead. Not only this, but they have the water content removed or at least counteracted with salt in the case of canned soups so it dehydrates you anyway. Think about how salt kills bacteria. There are more bacteria cells in our body than human cells so these kind of foods are killing us inside out, dead Dead DEAD.
Stage 3: You can go vegan
Cut out the animal products. This eliminates a chunk of processed food and trains yourself to be on the lookout ever vigilant of what you're eating and maintaining high levels of self control. Because I personally think processed food is as bad or worse for your health than simply animal products. But, typically animal products ARE highly processed foods.
Stage 4: Make as much of your food raw and whole as possible
Whole foods, even obese people I meet now are spouting the benefits of whole foods diets.
Stage 5: Keep your diet hydrating, eat less and practice good bathroom habits
You should be pooping every morning or at least 1 large to 3 poops a day.
Stage 6: Go liquidarian
A liquid diet gives the bowels a rest. Cleans out some of the extra gunk in there (most people have 15 to 25lbs of excess stool left in their intestines).
Why am I going liquidarian?
A. It's hard to be strict about food when random things come along, unless I tow a hard line of limits which I think liquid only could constitute a clear barrier for me.
B. It's the next evolution in dieting, and I have an extremist personality as mentioned above.
C. I have been eating a fair amount of junk in the last few months and accumulating unwanted fat on my belly I am not getting rid of even through reduced caloric intake of 500 to 1000 kCalories per day! Crazy right?
Stage 6: Breatharian
This is obviously the most extreme and controversial, believing humans can sustain life without even eating. I have proven to myself my own body has very low caloric requirements which could be the result of law of attraction (mind over matter, believing I can do it) AND cleansing my body enough to where it absorbs so efficiently compared to the average american that they're literally burning dirty fuel, which does make sense.
I think we were lied to about daily recommended levels of nutrients and calories just like we were lied to about the food pyramid and even protein as demonstrated in the recent awesome documentary What the Health .
I will cheat
[Some grapefruit I just bought today]
This is something most dieters should admit to themselves at the beginning. Know you most likely cannot be 100% strict and successful. Success does not have to be 100% never a hiccup. Just like being a vegan doesn't have to mean 100% without fail or mistakes. So, revealing that...I will be sometimes eating high water fruit I think. I may change my mind, since chomping on anything could get me thinking of chomping on other less healthy things. But most fruit has more water content than our bodies require. I see this as the most important point in food is that its hydrating or balancing and NOT dehydrating as processed or cooked food always is to some extent, there's just different degrees to it.