Most parents want what's best for their children and do their best to raise happy, healthy kids. Unfortunately most parents program their children during their formative years to be overweight or obese in later years without realizing it. Earlier generations did the same, resulting in today's obesity epidemic and the ongoing struggle with weight loss.
Your constant battle to lose weight today is the result of actions that started before you could even speak. Babies have little memory or past experience, so they have to rely almost exclusively on instinct. When you were hungry, you cried so as to be fed. When you weren't hungry, you had no interest in eating, right?
Enter the 'airplane game'... A well-meaning parent figured you had to eat right then, probably because they were. Since you weren't hungry and didn't want to eat they turned it into playtime. With a spoonful of food hovering around in the air in front of you, your parent imitated the sound of an airplane. Surprised and pleased, you smiled - and your parent zoomed that food into your open mouth. This was great fun and quickly became a regular mealtime game. BAM! You just learned that eating, when you're not hungry, can be fun!
As you get a bit older, dessert becomes a part of most dinners, and sometimes lunch - but it also becomes leverage. No matter how hungry you are or aren't, your plate is filled and you're expected to eat it ALL. "There's no dessert if you don't finish your dinner." How many times did you hear that growing up? Or "You've been good - I guess you can have a treat... "? BAM! You just learned that high-sugar-content and high-fat treats are a reward to be given or withheld based on how good you are.
When you fell off your bike, skinned your knee or were just really sad, did they give you a treat to help? Come out with a bandage and some frozen, flavored sugar-water to make you 'all better'? BAM! You just learned that sweets are comfort foods, designed to help you feel better when physically or emotionally distressed.
Almost every child goes through these events repeated times during their formative years - the period in our lives when we're programmed for our future patterns. And we've been taught that sweet, high sugar foods are comforting rewards if we're good - and a refuge for us when others are nasty. In the high-stress world we live in today, is it any wonder that so many struggle with weight loss, yo-yo dieting, Type 2 diabetes and obesity?
Each of the 'lessons' we learned above are false, and your conscious mind knows that now as an adult. But your sub-conscious may well retain those memories and create urges for bad foods when you are upset or hurting - or even when you're really proud of an accomplishment! You may or may not be willing and able to remap those urges into a healthier result, but at least you need to be aware of them and fight them when they raise their ugly, health-destroying heads.
Quite simply, your mind and body form an amazing machine well-suited to everything you normally need to do, and food is simply the fuel for that machine - nothing more and nothing less. Give your body the cleanest-burning fuel you can, learn all you can about healthy nutrition and be careful not to program YOUR children with emotional attachments to food that will lead them into their own obesity, weight loss crisis, diabetes or worse. Eat well, live long and help your children do the same!
Fitness publisher and certified personal trainer D. Champigny is on a mission to help the aging population get stronger, get fit and live a healthy lifestyle right through their senior years, and help bodybuilders and weightlifters get better results more safely. To stay up-to-date with the health, exercise, nutrition and weight loss tips Champigny shares across his numerous fitness sites and blogs, follow Flirting With Fitness on Facebook and Google+ today!
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