Weight-A-Minute: Healthy Living Means Living Healthy
You are in control of how to construct your life. Take credit for enjoying a healthy lifestyle. Healthy habits and patterns do not just happen on their own. They are either taught to you and you've embraced them, or you've stopped destructive and unhealthy habits and created new healthier ones. Either way, healthy living takes many forms, but the core to healthy living is healthy eating. The benefits from choosing healthier food items will manifest in every aspect of your life. Just as a tulip bulb planted in nutritious soil will produce a flower each year, when you are grounded in healthy eating patterns you, too, will flourish year after year.
Living healthy means changing unhealthy patterns and habits, as explained in Healthy Living Means Living Healthy. It's about realizing there is no quick fix, no need for perfection, and that there is always room for improvement. It is not dependent on the numbers on a scale, but rather on how you conduct your thoughts and feelings, and how you manage the many challenges throughout the years.
We have been bombarded with messages that losing weight can be done with little time or effort. The weight loss industry has brainwashed us to believe the best diets are the ones that promise amazing results in a short amount of time. Losing weight isn't about fad diets or food deprivation; it's about changing attitudes toward food, and learning to live healthy regardless of circumstances. Healthy eating is the core to healthy living for a lifetime.
Reversing a pattern of unhealthy thoughts and habits that have accumulated over a lifetime requires time and patience. There is no timeline for this transition. Let weight loss be the by-product of healthy living, rather than the focus. Question the validity of any diet products or program that promises you a large weight loss in a short amount of time, or requires you to purchase products and gimmicks to be successful. Making weight loss last a lifetime is up to you, not anyone or anything else. It's about making and keeping the patterns that work for you. This takes continued practice, not perfection. Once you start to eat and crave healthier food choices, feeling better mentally and physically will follow. It's then you'll notice other aspects of your life begin to change.
Healthy living changes by:
How to live and how to think -- When you eat food that nourishes you, you begin to think more clearly and realize what is acceptable or not in your life.
How to build self-esteem -- Your self-esteem will increase. When you control your food intake, you start to find you control other aspects of your life that you once believed was out of your control.
How to enjoy holidays and deal with others -- As your conviction of which food items you choose to eat becomes stronger, it will never matter if there is a holiday or what others near you are eating. You'll realize it's all irrelevant, and you can enjoy holidays and people better without the fear of being swayed to eat poorly.
How to deal with emotional eating -- You'll learn that you can never feed an emotion. If you have tried to do so in the past, mindlessly eating to the state of sickness, it was not only futile but also destructive. It's time to feel emotions and move through them, because deep in your core you'll understand that you were never able to feed or satisfy emotions by eating.
Stop thinking about dieting, and instead start thinking about living healthy regardless of the time of day or year. Evaluate your current eating patterns and ask yourself, "Are they serving me?" Acknowledge changes as they happen; it gives them staying-power. Make choices and decisions that are in line with living healthy, and incorporate healthy habits into every aspect of your life. It begins with food choices and becomes a never-ending succession of successful patterns. Enjoy the results!!