It has been over 25 years, since I have been taking push-ups five days a week. I have strong arms, but it was not an overnight miracle. It's not like that I did push-ups for a few weeks or months and stopped it altogether. It had to be one of my habits to do push-ups, if I wanted to maintain the result I got. Same is the case of eating healthy food. Eating healthy food once a while, won't make you healthy. It has be your habit to eat healthy food to keep up nutritional health. When people read or view anything on healthy food habits or nutrition, they excitedly jump over the trend of healthy eating. These reading will surely give you a detailed list of the food that makes you healthy, but you don't learn how to make it a habit to eat healthy. So, people tend to pull back their hands to the old unhealthy food, after a period of time.
How is habit defined? According to Webster's dictionary a habit is "a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance."Do you think applying this definition into our life will lead us to take only good food to get a wonderful health?
Unsound eating habits
Development of unsound eating habit doesn't happen overnight. It starts developing as a habit for many people from childhood itself. Therefore, it becomes very difficult to change this habit as people have been following it for many years and is a part of their lifestyle.
Why do we need to eat?
We eat food for two main reasons. First reason is to provide fuel to our body and the second one is for delight. Alas, most of the food which provides us delight, does not provide health. People usually go for food, according to how it looks, tastes and smells. Read these three sentences: "That pie sure looks good! That pie sure smells good! That pie sure tastes good!" All the three sentences have food and delight. Nevertheless, the food that produces delight (the pie) doesn't surely give you health from another viewpoint. So, we have to be smart enough in selecting our food and should not plainly go with our senses.
You can eat healthy and enjoy at the same time
It is usually believed that healthy eating is boring and tasteless. According to me, this feeling comes because people get to see innumerable commercial ads for foods with high calories, fats or sugar and see only a few on fruits, vegetables, grains and beans. But we don't have a nutrition education class, so as to make people aware that healthy eating can be delightful and tasteful.
My life became healthier with my healthy eating habits
In 1998, my wife at last talked to me about going to a doctor for a checkup. But I was not sick; however she said it is good to take an annual checkup. I am grateful to God that I listened to her.
In life, I have been very active. In a week, I cover 18 miles running. Therefore, I was not expecting the bad news the doctor gave me when I went to him. I had borderline diabetes. Not treating diabetes can be highly dangerous. In United States, Diabetes is one the most common reason of death. Diabetes, a pancreas disease, stops the body to produce insulin that regulates the blood sugar level.
Doctor did not feel a need to put me on medication, but he suggested me to take up some reading on healthy eating. This was the beginning to my healthy lifestyle that tremendously changed my health condition altogether. Today, I am very healthy and I can confidently say that. I feel great, I can sleep well, people say I look much younger than my age, I weigh healthy, I don't take any medicines, I have normal blood pressure, normal blood sugar, normal cholesterol level, I have good immunity, the list does not end.
Good health makes us feel really great and I am thankful to God. But, I don't believe that it's because of chance, I have become healthy. I believe the reason behind my health is because I took responsibility of my health. This responsibility includes making healthy eating a habit. There are certain laws for our physical bodies which are ruled by proper nutrition. Eating unhealthy food regularly is disobeying the body laws, that makes you sick.
Read the rest here: Eating Healthy; a Pragmatic Approach
