Today’s guest post is by Gregory Anne Cox, author of Your Genes Do Not Determine the Size of Your Jeans
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” ~ Chinese Proverb
Change is hard. So we hear over and over and we can all find proof of this from our own lives.
What if it wasn’t or didn’t have to be?
Dr. Sue Morter, one of my long time go to experts who bridges science and spirit like no one else, says, “Life is hard right up until the moment it isn’t.”
Ponderable that.
It might feel hard to change eating habits because we love our food, we celebrate with food, we comfort with food, and so on. Is it really hard though? What if the choices were taken away?
Would we starve ourselves rather than learn to live on something else?
At midlife we have lots of life under our muffin tops and many of us have found freedom in doing life more by our design. That said, we also want to be comfortable. This can put us in a position where we let ourselves off in the health and wellness arena because we believe that changing our habits is hard.
The plain truth is, if we want longevity despite the fact that sometimes it will feel hard, there’s hard and then there’s hard.
For instance, learning what to eat to keep blood sugar levels even — the foundation of disease prevention and healthy weight maintenance — is easy.
Books, programs, and websites are available to teach you. My book Your Genes Do Not Determine The Size of Your Jeans can teach you. Implementing the information into daily life can be challenging. We like what we used to eat. We want to be comfortable, to have things be easy. After all, we work hard, have too much to do, and familiar foods can feel like a reward after a long day.
Part of what I see as a problem here is that the conventional wisdom, the “what to eat” information purported by all the major health agencies, is all about deprivation. And it’s wrong!
Healthy living can be delicious.
That said, when we ignore any of the health prescriptions we hear because we automatically go to “it’s hard to put them in place”, we set ourselves up for disease and ill health. If you’ve ever been sick, whether with something small like a cold or something major like diabetes or cancer, you know how hard that time is. Maybe you are suffering with something right now and you feel there was nothing you could have done to avoid what ails you.
You might be right. Then again, 85% of all lifestyle diseases (cancer, syndrome X, diabetes, obesity and all of their attendant symptoms and ills) are preventable through lifestyle change. They are also reversible once you have them if you are willing to take on the kinds of change that work like miracles.
Think about what’s on the end of your fork, how you think about your life and yourself, whether or not you get exercise, and more simple things.
Regardless of whether you could have avoided a condition or not, if you have a strong immune system you’ll heal more quickly. It’s likely you’ll not get as sick as someone who does not, and you’ll bounce back faster. A strong healthy immune system starts with the ideas mentioned above. Food, move, sleep, love, done.
So what’s harder, choosing healthy foods every day or doing what’s comfortable and dealing with illness when it comes (which often knocks us off our day-to-day business and life plans)?
Exercise builds strong bones, keeps the brain working, boosts our feel-good hormones, and improves every marker of health. Of course it also helps us stay fit and lean. And it’s hard to make time for it every day, find motivation for it every day, and do it — every day.
Breaking a hip and clinging to life is harder.
Anything that keeps you from doing what you love, like high blood pressure, extra weight, and shortness of breath, is heart-breakingly hard.
Waking up one day knowing you’ve traded your very being — loving and being loved because of how you feel about your body or yourself, because choosing health and healthy choices was too hard? That’s hard just to imagine.
Choose your hard and create a the possibility of a long, healthy, juicy, love filled life.
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Gregory Anne Cox: Midlife mind and body success strategies. Because the quality of your life, and the level of your success, depends on how you feel. http://midlifewithavengeance.com
Connect on Twitter: @gregoryanne
The post Would We Rather Starve Ourselves Than Learn to Live on Something Else? appeared first on Midlife Coaching for Women | Evelyn Kalinosky.
