Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food !

What’s in it for me?

Why eat nutritious foods, and live a healthy lifestyle?

Have you ever taken a minute to reflect on your motivation for living a healthy lifestyle? As I see it, most everyone fits into one (or more) of these three categories:

1. Reach specific goals

2. Manage disease and do damage control

3. Prevention

1. Reaching specific goals.

These are the people that want to lose weight, tone up, run a 5k, compete in a competition, look their best for a reunion or some other special event… The list goes on. For these people- they will try the most extreme diets, but are they making lifestyle changes? They want to reach a specific goal but what happens after that? Hopefully they make new goals and keep striving for something. I had a client tell me that I always have something up my sleeve. Maybe he was right, as a dietitian and personal trainer you always want to see people improve and make health a way of life not just to meet one goal.

2. Managing disease and do damage control.

These are the people that have had a wake up call- either they were told by their doctor they are at high risk for one of many health issues or waited to late until they were diagnosed with a disease. The good thing about many diseases is that nutrition and a healthy lifestyle play a huge part in management and minimizing complications. For example- diabetes, heart disease, congestive heart failure, obesity, high cholesterol levels, kidney problems, GI issues, the list can go on and on.

These people are motivated to make changes and realize they are what they eat. This is where lifestyle changes are extremely important.

3. Prevention

These are the people that realize early on- what you eat and how you live today effects you down the road. This is where I fit in. I realized at a young age, watching my mom fight breast cancer, that nutrition played a HUGE part in fighting disease. She was in remission after winning the battle against breast cancer and then  she diagnosed with bone cancer. She was told she didn’t have much longer to live. What did she do? Fought like hell, and changed her diet and lifestyle completely. What happened? She lived for years after the doctors said she would. Although, she still isn’t here today, I couldn’t feel more blessed and grateful for the extra years we had with her. Maybe it wasn’t just the lifestyle changes, but this played a huge part in her surviving longer than anyone said she would. Maybe your story isn’t exactly the same as mine, but you know someone that has a preventable disease. Why wouldn’t you do everything you can today to make sure you live to see your kids have kids or grow old with the people you care about?

What can you do??? GET INFORMED! Find out what you need to do to live a lifestyle that will significantly decrease your risk of preventable diseases.