Wake Up! TV For Your Best Life
What’s the real problem behind childhood obesity? I discuss this on today’s episode of Change Your Eating.
What’s better than helping someone in some way? It makes us really feel good.
We all know it. We’ve done it. We all strived to do it. In fact, it’s the divine law. It’s only giving what we receive.
We love to help other people. It’s a little more difficult to help ourselves. When we’re talking about childhood obesity and cleaning up our own eating habits, they actually can both work together.
Childhood obesity is an incredible problem that’s arising like crazy. Kids are having strokes, they have high blood pressures and they have adult onset diabetes. They’re having diseases that are going to kill them.
And it’s largely because of the food that we are giving them access to either by preparing it at home, by having it home or by giving them the money to get it.
What can we do about that?
When we sit down at a plate of food, whether it’s at a restaurant or at home and we’re trying to eat better, it’s all about ourselves. When it’s all about ourselves, that makes it a little more challenging. But we can switch that and realize that people are watching you, children are watching, the world is watching your eating behavior.
When they’re watching you and they can tell that you feel better, you have more energy, you have more mental clarity, your body is moving better, all because they can see that you’re eating a little bit differently. Then they’re going to want to copy you.
That’s what mentoring is. Mentoring is one of the best ways you can help anyone. It’s really difficult to tell somebody, “You should eat in this way.”
Our children, they almost never respond to, “Eat your vegetables,” but when you’re bringing home really fresh good food and you’re eating that way and you’re enjoying it, they will start copying you.
It may not happen overnight. There may be this time period where you have to face the firing squad where they’ll say, “You’re the worst mom ever. Dad, you never buy good foods. You never take us anywhere good to eat.” But that will change.
And even when you’re talking about that pleasurable kind of food, if you’re not doing it very often and you’re not doing any particular pattern or you’re always going for quality and you’re keeping the quantity down, it’s totally okay to make an event out of it.
But don’t do it because it’s at the end of a busy day and it’s the easy route because that’s not teaching our children the right things. It really isn’t. They’re really being harmed from it.
Also don’t do it because of this drive toward showing love through our food. I know for sure that I did that a lot right after I was divorced because I had this need to really show love to my children. But I realized it was a very dysfunctional way to show love to them. And I shifted that.
So I ask you to just try and consider your eating behavior with your children or your eating behavior with yourself. It will affect your children’s eating behavior.
Our children are the opposite of the canary in the coal mine. The canaries would recognize the CO2 levels rising and they’d start getting sick or die. And then the early ones had to get out of the coal mine. I think there are late signs that our eating behavior for such a long time, our eating habit is really starting to affect us. Our children are very resilient, yet they’re getting adult onset diabetes.
It’s really time for us to wake up. Let’s do something about this. Let’s help our children. When we help our children this way, guess what? We’re helping ourselves.
Just to end this podcast, I want you to remember if you want to feel better today, eat better today.
