As I’ve studied health, nutrition, and the human body over the past sixteen+ years, I believe the most important information I could pass onto others is this - A vast majority of the diseases and conditions that people deal with today could be avoided entirely if our diets went back to foods in their simplest form, from nature.
In other words, we are choosing our ill health by what we put in our bodies! It sounds simplistic, I know. Marketers and the food industry have done a dang good job at making unhealthy food look good and taste good. Unfortunately we’re the ones suffering.
In the early days of my studies I came across this quote from Stephen R. Covey’s website in his health training.
“Health is a choice. I think given the option most of us would choose good health over poor health. Yet it is widely accepted that more than ⅔ of all illnesses and conditions are caused by lifestyle choices that people make. So are people actually choosing day after day to contract diseases that will rob them of their longevity and their quality of life? Perhaps not on purpose. But they have not yet accepted the connection between their choices, their health, and ultimately their life. When we begin to think of health as a verb, something that we do not just have happen to us, a PARADIGM shift occurs, that allows us to begin to see our health as something we are responsible for, and can and should influence. But it doesn’t end there. For most, adopting healthy behaviors requires great changing and change can be hard. John Hopkins University reports that even after instructing bypass surgery patients that lifestyle changes can halt the course of their disease before it kills them 90% STILL DO NOT CHANGE their behaviors. That is because what keeps us from being healthy has little to do with health. People report biggest health challenges as time, work, family, energy, discipline, desire, habits and many other things that have very little to do with physiology, anatomy, or medicine in general.” (emphasis added)
“Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well.” Marcus Valerius Martial
What are your biggest hurdles for choosing healthier options? Do we need to wait until we're at the cliff where our health choices will kill us before we finally decide to change our habits?
