I’m Wealthy, I’m Healthy

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.

When we become teenagers we begin to notice others and make comparisons. This is the first time we become aware of how we look. It’s the first time it becomes an important issue in our lives.

Eating the right food when we are children is vitally important. We don’t normally have too much say in what we eat, but children do try and intimidate their parents into giving them things they want. Sometimes this can result in a very distorted diet - a bad diet.

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.

The most important thing is to break bad habits and that requires developing an awareness of what they are. Many of the bad habits will have been endorsed by upbringing. To go against this can be a challenge. What has been accepted as a family culture in terms of diet and exercise takes real resolve and determination to change.

Change can be made easier by not going against the norm, but by learning new habits - slim habits, if you like. New habits will enable change to take place without having to directly confront the past.