Sep 08
30
They say that health is wealth. It’s a very true statement. Most people would give all their wealth for good health. Some take health for granted – until something goes wrong and then they regret past excesses or lack of attention to diet and exercise.
Youth has little or no time for anything as boring as health, yet our early years are very important when it comes to building a ‘health platform’ for our future. When you’re young you don’t give a second thought to health – that is until something goes wrong, but you believe that it never will.
Diet is somebody else’s concern when we are young, we don’t worry ourselves about it. All we are interested in is getting more of what we like – which is usually candy, cake and cookies washed down with copious quantities of cola.
It all starts to matter when we become teenagers and we begin to take note of our looks and the way others look. We are all too aware of the comparisons that are made.
Parents often have a difficult job convincing their children to eat green vegetables. At an early age, we are not the least interested in what is good for us. We rebel against what we don’t like, and in far too many instances parents lose out to headstrong children. The resulting diet in those crucial years is often not as good as it should, or could be.
Arriving in early adulthood overweight is not helpful. To have so many ingrained bad habits as far as eating and exercise is concerned makes doing something about it difficult – although not impossible.
With loads of bad habits, many of which will have been deeply engrained, it is difficult to make change. It can come from developing an awareness of what needs to be changed. Many of the habits will have been learned in childhood and will be a challenge to break.
To make a real and lasting difference it’s not diets that are needed, but a more fundamental change in behaviour. The only really successful way to do this is to learn new habits, slim habits, that will enable lasting change to take place.