Dangers of Ignoring Simple

Eating habits are multi-faceted & they are very ingrained in the subconscious mind. If children are to grow up in a healthy environment, parents must wake up to the fact that they are mentoring with every choice & mouthful. What comes home in the shopping bags is not only groceries, but lessons for the future... Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht

SIMPLE BUT PROFOUND

It is most difficult to teach simple things, because people not only tend not to listen, but often feel insulted by the content. It's my job as the writer & workshop presenter to let them know while I'm well aware of these perceptions, it's necessary to disassemble behaviors, habits & choices & reprogram change, perhaps on very subtle levels.

Waking up to eating habits is the first step in getting sugar & disorderly issues under control. This is also paramount in developing a nutritionally sound eating plan for your self. We live in a society filled with unhealthy food at every turn. Most of us walk around without any self-discipline. I know many children & adults who have never eaten a fresh vegetable or protein that hasn't been processed.

People eat at all hours and often all day long. Few people know what a serving size looks like. Look around. It’s easy to find serving sizes that have multiplied to the point of being ridiculous. The next time you are in a restaurant focus on the plates that come out of the kitchen. The other day I spotted a plate of food that was taller than the woman who was eating it!

Then there are the people who don't eat at all. Many are addicted to nicotine & some to alcohol. They turn their backs on healthy breakfasts, often miss lunch & then have "whatever" for dinner. Addicted people tend to drink lots of caffeine in the form of coffee or soda. Thin people feel it is just fine to drink the regular versions. The more obese tend to drink diet versions, believing this is o.k. as the calorie count is low.

Grazing behaviors have become the norm, often replacing regular meals while interfering with normal appetite levels.
Eating habits & the problems that plague them have an extraordinary number of facets. It will help you to observe those of others, even if you do not experience the same. As you collect more & more awareness, your own subconscious mind will feel confident in showing you additional facets of your own. This is key to self-improvement.

MEET PIERCE

My kids & I don’t like “healthy food” and never have. Does this mean that we will never enjoy eating again if we choose to lick our junk food tendencies? This doesn’t exactly motivate me to want to change!

KNOWLEDGE HOOK

It’s not uncommon for those addicted to sugar & junk to report not liking healthy foods, but this is more of a generalization than a fact-filled statement. If Pierce or his kids were asked to choose some foods that they enjoyed off of a table with a hundred or so choices, I will bet that some of the foods they would choose would fall into the healthy category.

“Generalizing” is a common pitfall in the addictive personality, often used as an escape mechanism from dealing with the truth & making change. As you continue to explore this book you will find that managing sugar & junk is more about what needs to be added to your nutritional intake & less about what needs to be taken out.

There is tremendous power in awareness & waking up from automatic pilot. As your awareness is heightened, new choices will appear almost magically. Change & lifestyle change in particular is often perceived as being difficult, if not impossible. While there may be some obstacles to overcome, if the new chosen behavior is imaged with powerful, positive emotional states & then placed hypnotically, the journey miles will be very different.

LIFESTYLE CHANGE IS WHERE IT'S AT

Lifestyle change means what it says. This is not something temporary, but permanent. This alone scares people who prefer to hang on to what they know, even if it is not working or is truly detrimental to their health. You can see examples of this without even looking very hard. In fact, why not look right inside yourself and find some very personal examples.

Earlier you learned about your family & personal medical history & how it connects to sugar and carbohydrate issues, as well as connecting to weight gain or the yo-yo syndrome. While it is important for everyone to pay attention to eating habits, it is paramount for those with sugar, carbohydrate or any other addiction. Not to do so is flirting with disaster in the present, as well as down the path. Make no mistake, every meal is important and can either take you towards chronic killer disease or towards a very high level of health and performance.

SELF-EXPLORATION EXERCISE

Relax for a moment. Don't rush through these seeming simple questions.

What time do you get up in the morning? Do you feel well rested? Do you dream? These are all-important questions and need awareness application. Some people are early risers and have a morning ritual. Others prefer to wait until the alarm rings for the third time and then find they rushing through their morning needs and often out the door without any nutrition at all. Smokers or those with a history of smoking often stop long enough for a morning coffee or grab this on their way to work.
I’m sure you have heard this before!

Breakfast is a very important meal and must not be missed, especially if your goal is to manage a healthy weight & move away from addiction. While you don’t have to eat the minute your feet hit the floor, you must plan for breakfast. In the chapters that follow you will learn about healthy choices and what your body needs if you are sugar or carbohydrate addicted. These choices will also hold true if you have a problem with nicotine, caffeine, alcohol or drugs.

In this work you are learning to observe & to notice your appetite, determining if it is high, medium or low. You might also notice if you body sends communications about hunger such as tummy hunger, other physical signs and of course feeling shaky, lightheaded or weakness. At this point you haven’t learned about what you need to be eating and so make note of what you currently eat and drink. It’s important to set up a knowledge hook for this and later you will hang a motivation on it.

Review your past behaviors, noticing if you ever skip breakfast, including the reasons why you might do this. These are areas that will need correction in the future. You will learn how to defend the needs of your body from outside forces, such as schedules, business breakfasts, etc. Notice if you ever become hungry between breakfast & lunch & again make a note about this. If you do notice mid-morning hunger, determine the distance from breakfast and then think about what you tend to do about this, such as getting another cup of coffee, visiting the snack machine, or perhaps smoking. Later on in this work you will come to understand much more about why your body responds in this way and what needs correction.

Most of us live on auto-pilot, having little idea as to what we put in our mouths to care for our body cells. Water is a very important health drink & needs awareness work. Think for a moment about your water consumption in the early part of the day, making some mental notes about this. Few people consume sufficient water, instead filling the body with coffee, tea or soda, all of which take away from high level health.