I can hear it already, "not another post/person telling me how to live my life", well hold on just a second. I am no expert but if you are here then maybe you need to hear this. And if you love the way you are living your life now, then don't waste your time reading this.
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The way you treat your body is a direct reflection of how you feel about yourself.
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And you may argue that you love yourself and that smoking cigarettes, or eating fast food, or drinking diet Coke everyday makes you happy and it isn't hurting anyone so who cares? Well, do YOU care?
You're right! Who cares what anyone else thinks. But what do you think?
Do you feel like crap daily? Do you have a crappy immune system? Is your physical body letting you down, or are YOU letting IT down? What are you doing to respect your body? Do you have chronic returning pain? Are you proactive about making lifestyle changes where you know you need to? Where the doctor has said you need to?
You may also argue that eating healthy is expensive. You have a lot of kids. You're on a tight budget.
While I understand the disadvantages of living in a food desert, not living in a place where there is access to many grocery stores, or the idea that eating healthy and organic is expensive, here are my thoughts on that:
Say you go through McDonald's or any other sort of cheap fast food place, sure you're spending a small amount of money but you're getting a small amount of nutrients, if any. Your body will devour that highly processed empty caloric food and then you'll be hungry again because your body is STARVING for nutrients. So, you will go and buy more garbage to fill you up. You spend more money by going to a vending machine for a soda with caffeine to pick you up because your body is crashing from lack of nutrients. Or you buy a candy bar full of empty calories and unrecognizable ingredients to light up your brain's feel good receptors from the sugar because now you're feeling like crap! So you've now spent more money on empty calories that are going to leave your body feeling hungry and adding fat to your body. You're making it hard on your body to thrive because you aren't providing it the basic essentials it needs to feel good. You feel me?
Now what if you swapped out those bad habits with cooking your meals in advance from home? Having a meal with nutrients your body can actually thrive off of and feel full and nourished from.
"Oh but I'm not a chef! I don't know how to cook" I'm not a chef either but I love experimenting with different foods and flavors in the kitchen. I actually consider myself a very lazy cook. Most days it's a frozen bag of veggies, a protein and a grain, done! Seasonings also become your best allies.
"Healthy organic food is expensive!" You also don't have to buy organic if you can't afford it. But that also doesn't mean your only other option is buying processed foods with a mile long ingredients list of dyes and preservatives your body just doesn't recognize. No.
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Your body's survival depends on only a few things, eating nutrients is one of them.
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Find a clean healthy protein, such as fish, tempeh or chicken breast (I'm a vegetarian but I won't discount chicken or beef), add a serving of vegetables and a some grains. I mean how expensive is a bag of rice? I buy those 20 lb bags of rice for about $10. That's probably about what you would spend in a drive thru for you and the kids, right? $10 on the Dollar Menu. So how can someone say that it's more expensive to eat healthy when I have a 20 lb bag of rice for $10 to last me 3 to 6 months.
"Meat is expensive," you say? Well, I am a vegetarian which helps but the other 3 out of 5 people in my house are not. And while organic meat IS pricier, I try to buy it on clearance, on sale or I buy a bulk pack of frozen chicken. You don't have to eat meat to survive, in fact millions of people are proving just that. And if you can't give it up, then reduce it. Everyone should go at least 1 day a week without eating an animal. Not only is it good for you, but it is good for the environment.
As for vegetables, all you have to do is buy what's in season because it will be the cheapest, buy whats on sale and store it. Create meals around whats in season. We love smoothies in my house and so when the store discounts a bundle of bananas because they are spotted, I buy them all, peel and freeze them. Same with any other type of vegetable. Buy, wash, prep, store and freeze. Not only is it creating a stockpile and affordable but you're able to enjoy those frozen foods later when they're out of season. Canned and frozen are excellent options too. Frozen being better than canned because they are frozen shortly after being harvested which helps retain their nutrients.
Lastly, meal prepping will also be a huge advantage to anyone trying to eat better. Choosing a day, like Sunday to prep your meals for the week is going to prevent poor choices. I have 5 people in my family so prepping is challenging but, I choose my hard. Living with health problems associated with being overweight or spending more time in the kitchen one day a week. Bonus! That also means only 1 time to clean up. Invest in storage containers. Make it fun. Turn up some music and prep away!
Other than that, I honestly feel that the way you choose to live your life is all a matter of choice. Go figure! You decide what is a priority. You decide what matters the most. You decide whether or not you want to feel good. You decide what is too hard for you to change. And if you find yourself making more excuses than solutions well that's on you.
I think people make excuses for their unhealthy habits because they know how hard its going to be to change them. I also believe it's easier for people to make excuses because it solidifies the fact that they are 'right' in a sense to themselves. That they are unworthy of feeling good and healthy. But when they turn 35 and the doctor says you have high this high that, diabetes, overweight, etc etc. they'll wish they had been proactive.
And that is why a person's health journey is far more than just changing their eating habits, it's all encompassing, you have to work on what's happening up in your head as well. But that's a whole 'nother post topic.