It also reminded me why I am doing this. I have been fighting my thyroid, estrogen, and a host of other hormones this year that has made it difficult to keep with my goals and healthy life style. Let me rephrase that... and keep it real. I HAVE MADE IT DIFFICULT on my hormones to provide me with what I need to support my healthy life style. I know better. A year of lacksey-daisy fitness habits mixed with regular drinking and crap food have been my own doing. Any imbalances I had prior may have made things more difficult, but certainly not impossible and I caved way to easy.
Chronic fatigue, chronic disease, chronic depression, cancer, alcoholism, liver disease, sugar addiction, and hormonal imbalances all run rampid on both sides of my blood line. The things I have watched my family go through have not only been astronomically devastating, but have been the fuel that feeds my fire to stop the insanity! This is also the reason for my insatiable hunger for learning, researching, blogging, and learning more. So much of what I have seen has been a result of lifestyle and not genetics. It feels like genetics when so many close family members on both sides have suffered so much through many of the same things. The first thing we want to do is blame our genetics and render ourselves doomed. Truth is, culturally, generations before me were taught that fortified, processed foods were part of a healthy diet. Smoking was a healthy form of relaxation. Drinking was also a way to unwind and let go. Exercise was only something you did to look good in a bikini. And then began the diet and weight-loss industry (a whole other blog.. and it wouldn't take you long to find several of them in my blog site).
I grew up like most. My diet was full of Top Romain, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Hamburger Helper, fast food, Chicken pot pies, cheesy lasagna (my fave!) and large meat and potato dinners. Ice cream was a staple in the freezer, and lunch boxes were always stocked with wonder bread sandwiches, Doritos, Twinkies and Oreos. Both of my parents heavily smoked and both drank. If I'm being completely real with you, my son grew up in that same environment until his late teens when I began to change as a result of watching my family in thier later years. He also began to come into his own beliefs about food and nutrition as a teen and is now a vegetarian.
So why am I sharing this? It all seems so personal, but really this is a national crisis. I'm not special. I'm not alone in the way I grew up. This was life for most, and in many ways still is today. We may not glorify smoking, but Vaping has become the "healthier" version that I have literately watched parents influence thier adult kids to try. You can find a vape shop in almost every shopping center selling more flavors than Baskin Robins. Pot shops are now on almost every corner and considered a healthy way to unwind and socialize (and I'm not speaking of medical marijuana), liquor is now sold in Walmart and every grocery store in my state. The (processed) food industry in hugely booming. (Be prepared for the longest ranting, run-on sentence ever.....) And the weight loss industry is quite possibly the most lucrative in our nation, with pyramid multi-level marketing
Back to me personally. I said in a resent blog that I wasn't going to beat myself up for this past year, yet I find myself increasing frustrated for knowing better and letting myself go down the rabbit hole anyway. But, yes. I am human and know better or not, I did. It's all part of my journey and it's these times when I'm knocked off my high-horse and humbled, that I remember what I felt like before I ever began this journey of a healthier lifestyle.
Sometimes it can be overwhelming with information overload and the wide spectrum of "diets" that claim to be the real "paleolithic" way to eat, or the ones that remove entire food groups for everyone (allergies or not). With so much misinformation, and a completely dysfunctional relationship with food in our nation, my personal challenge has been to resist the hang-ups with body image and looking a certain way, and instead concentrate on what will make me healthy vibrant, strong and give me the best quality of life, well into my senior years. My one word mantra is sustainable. If it's not sustainable for a life time, I don't do it.
Anyway, let's chat. What motivates you? What are your hurtles? Do you struggle with body image vs. good health? Are they separate? What does sustainable health mean to you ? What changes would you like to see for the next generation? .... Your kids?
The advantage we have today is we are trying to get back on the right track.We have mass amounts of information available at our finger tips to research and decide what is right for us. Slowly our government's food pyramid and food labeling laws are changing. We see more demand for organic and non-GMO. Local produce, farmer's markets, and urban farming are on the rise. These are all positives and gives hope to our future generations to take it and run!
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