Day ten and let me guess, you are starting to struggle with keeping those New Year’s resolutions. You are most likely experiencing drug like cravings and feeling the withdrawal effects of an addict. Hopefully, your cravings are not for some pharmaceutical or back alley drug but are instead only for food items like chocolate candy, cookies, potato chips and popcorn.
Like an addict, you are probably hearing the deserts, fried food and salty snacks calling your name. It is as if chocolate chip cookies have a Sirens’ voice, methodically singing to you words intended to sink your New Year’s Resolution. The Junk Food Siren, as I call her, sings, “Eat me, eat me, and don’t stop at just one chip, cookie or slice”.
Like the Pied Piper those potato chips seem to play a tune that makes you get off the couch at the oddest times of the day and night. The tune that is played leads you further away from your healthy lifestyle resolution making you feel lost and powerless to do anything other than get in your car, drive to the store where you will purchase and begin to devour a family sized bag of salty, crunchy potato chips.
I get it and I know it is tough. It feels as if food, in particular junk food, has placed an unbreakable spell on you. And the truth of the matter is that it has! Junk food has control of your life. Junk food controls the life of many because junk food is addictive.
Numerous studies have shown that we experience the same type of addiction from food as we do from cocaine or heroin. How? Regrettably, most of the foods we eat today are processed. Those processed foods that we mindlessly and routinely purchase are created and packed with synthetic chemical additives. The consumption of this stuff has made many of us something we hoped and prayed our children would never become – drug addicts. A can of soda has become like a crack pipe, a candy bar has become a sugary alternative to heroin and those salty crunch snacks have become the equivalent to cocaine.
If it was not bad enough that we ourselves have become drug addicts the so-called “food” which we “prepare” and serve to our children makes them not only miniature drug addicts but obese miniature drug addicts. (Side note: Can you really call someone obese miniature? I’m just saying).
At any rate, our food selections and our dietary habits are the catalyst for one-third of US children being obese. We have sentenced our future not only to addiction but having to face the prospects of prolonged health issues, costly medical procedures and a reduced life span. More children will die from poor nutrition than from any school shooting. America where is your outrage? Where is the demand and implementation of health policy changes in your own home? I digress!
Are you still feeling weak and ready to give up on your New Year’s Resolution? Is the junk food you have been craving worth exacerbating your addiction? It is my hope that the answer to the aforementioned questions is a resounding NO!
Parents we must be better role models for our children. Your commitment to your health and exercise is not just about you. Your ability to stay on course with your New Year’s Resolution may be the most profound statement that you can ever make to your child.
If you can’t fight your own demons how can you expect your child to be any different? If you won’t love yourself enough to treat it like the Temple it was intended to be why would you expect your child to treat their body any differently? If you can’t just say no to junk food how can you ever expect your child to just say no to drugs.
Be who you want your children to be because the best, most lasting lessons children remember occur from those who do as they tell us to do. Eat right, lose weight and be the healthiest you that you can possibly be. Your children are not only watching but they are modeling you.