Learning to Eat Right is Like Learning to Read

Learning to eat for a healthy lifestyle is no different than learning how to read or ride a bicycle. I work at an elementary school, and it's very common for the children who are struggling and/or behind in school to also have more behavior and emotional problems. Do you blame them? They're frustrated, they don't understand, they've told themselves they can't, and when everyone around them is excelling, they begin to feel more and more deflated and bad things start to happen. The exact same thing happens with food and adults. How we chose to live our lives and the lifestyles we create for ourselves has everything to do with how educated we are about it.

Looking back on things, I'm embarrassed to say that I was TOTALLY uneducated for nearly 40 years! I had tried so many things over the years to try and lose weight and was very successful from time to time, maybe losing 35 or 40 pounds but only to quickly gain it back and be discouraged with the idea of starting from scratch once again. Over the course of my journey, the education came. Things started to make sense. Things started to click. I was seeing that I could do it, and from then on it became fun. I enjoyed it. I wanted to excel. I could see I was being successful.

When we don't take time to get the proper education and tools on board with what we are wanting for ourselves, often times things go bad. Maybe we have behavior problems just like the kids do? Maybe things just in general seem to spiral out of control? Maybe we begin to feel deflated and that we'll just never be quite good enough? It is so easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Especially if the people around you are excelling.  

Much like little children learning to read, once they become more confident and fluent as they hear themselves sound things out and make sounds into real words they can understand, they get excited. They want to try more. They want to keep reading. They want to be successful! We with our bodies and eating are in the same boat. It really is no different. Some of us may feel totally uneducated in the moment and like we don't even know where to start but the truth of the matter is we just need to start small, piece things together, and before we know it, we'll be up and running...motivated, fluent, striving for that goal with the end in sight.