Getting healthy is not about measuring, weighing, or counting all of the grams, calories, carbs or proteins of the same unhealthy foods that have made you look and feel unhealthy. And getting healthy is not about letting other people analyze the wrong stuff for you either, so you can hopefully ingest it, but a little bit less of it.
Nope.
Getting healthy is starting fresh, thinking differently, and taking in new ideas without fear.
It’s a a bit like breaking up with the guy (or the girl) you’ve known deep inside for a long, long time is just not good for you. (No matter how it sparkles, if it’s not gold, it’s not gold.) No matter how great your favorite unhealthy food tastes, it will never make you feel as good as the feeling of strength, energy and vivaciousness that healthy exercise and fresh, wholesome foods can make you feel. Why don’t we do it more readily? I think it’s just habit.
Our parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, and society in general have passed down exercise and nutrition habits and traditions to us. Some of them are okay; some of them are insane and will eventually kill us. (I’m thinking about lazy-backed, deep-fried sentimentality on a platter; you know what I mean.)
Additionally, some of our relatives and society have neglected to pass down certain healthy traditions that we actually do need– maybe they neglected to teach us because they never discovered the best stuff for themselves.
It’s up to us to break the chain. Learn what the good, healthy lifestyles are, and then teach those to our kids –and to ourselves.
If, for example, your family only ate white flour bread, you probably balk at 100% whole grain bread. It may even give you digestive problems in large amounts, because your body’s not used to it.
But after you study the incredible robbery of nutrition and life that white flour (taken to the exclusive extreme) can inflict, you will not want it any more. You will want to want the good stuff.
If, for example, you have never even tasted (like many white-bread Americans have not) a simple mango, or a rutabaga, or kale, or collard, or wheat germ, or red-cabbage-vinegar-salad, or hot cauliflower casserole, garlic wheat pitas, or poppy seed lentil loaf— then you will not likely give them for your kids.
We have to get out of our boxes, mentally and traditionally, to explore better ideas, and to pass healthier lifestyles to our posterity.
One good way is to get on the bandwagon of some other people’s email lists. Many wonderful resources are free, and exist not solely for the purpose of making money from your health ignorance, but may even offer free advice, recipes, medical tips and shortcuts. I sign up for them all the time: check out the wonderful ideas available on www.WebMD.com , www.MayoClinic.com , https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/ , www.GreenSmoothieGirl.com , www.FlyLady.com , www.SavingDinner.com, http://crossfit.com/ and http://www.fatmanunleashed.com/ .
If you sign up to receive their daily or weekly tips and reminders, you will be diligently programming your mind to think in healthier ways. You’ll first tolerate, and then learn to love those healthy lifestyles that actually love you back, rather than biting you back.
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