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Knowledge is key to understanding a ‘healthy’ diet

 

As one who is passionate about seeing people live their lives to the fullest in the healthiest way
possible, often funneling that passion into a meaningful message or conversation can be so
difficult.
 
No matter how much health and wellness activists preach about eating healthy, people will
continue to eat whatever they want, whenever they want as long as they believe that what they
are eating has no consequence on their health.
 
Still, many do not understand what a “healthy diet” entails. Sometimes, “healthy eating’s” all
too encompassing definition gets hidden behind a message that as long as you’re not eating
french fries, burgers and other guilty-pleasure foods that are submerged in grease, then you are
certainly pursuing a healthy diet. Unfortunately, that claim is untrue.
 
So then, what is actually a healthy diet? Dietary experts define healthy eating by these five
guiding principles:
 
1. Adequacy – eating foods that offer essential nutrients, energy, fiber and body weight.
 
2. Balance – consuming enough foods that contain diverse nutrients.
 
3. Moderation – not too much of anything and not too little of anything.
 
4. Variety – keeping your diet exciting by eating a mix of different foods of every color.
 
5. Calorie-Control – eating within your daily caloric needs requirements.
 
Health and wellness advocates like me understand the issues: eating lots of sugar can result in the
onset of diabetes, composting is better for the environment, using less paper means going greener
and so forth.
 
We also really desire for others to understand these issues and join our cheerleading squad.
However, we sometimes let our emotion get the best of us and we consequently fail when
communicating these important issues in a practical and applicable way.
 
We must understand this: it is unreasonable, for example, to expect someone who is accustomed
to eating a bag of Lays potato chips for breakfast to automatically conform to a different culture
that believes in “healthy eating” which is often misinterpreted as “food deprivation.”
 
Getting people to change their actions for the better of themselves and others takes what I like to
call the 3 Ps: patience, persistence and practice.
 
It makes people like me who are passionate feel good when we pay homage to million-dollar
campaigns that scream messages in our faces such as, “No GMO’s,” “Organic is the Best,” and
“Stop Fracking.”
 
Furthermore, we feel like good citizens especially when we act as responsible environmental
stewards by recycling our drinking bottles, walking more than we drive and turning off the lights
and faucet when we are not using them. Yet we struggle to express the worth in pursuing these
efforts.
 
According to psychologists, it is believed that it takes 30 days for one to change a habit.
Therefore, we must be patient and respectful in our desires to see more people become “like us.”
 
People who are overzealous and passionate about what they believe in often have trouble
understanding why others aren’t as passionate about the same things they believe in. Regardless
of your passion, communicating with others the benefits you find in pursuing those activities is
critical to showing others why what you believe in is valuable.
 
We ought to be gentle in our approach, understanding that the knowledge that we have did not
come to us overnight. We should admonish those who do not understand issues related to a
safeguard earth or a more sustainable food system to consider the issues and to help them find
their place in becoming a part of the solution.
 
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