Top 8 Reasons to Eat a More Nutritious Diet

Oh sure, we'd all like to eat a healthier diet.  If only it came in donut and french-fry form. If only our children pleaded with us for V-8 juice, right? If only we weren't lactose intolerant. And of course, if only it were cheaper, better, faster, and easier! Guess what, it can be cheaper, better, faster, and easier than you fear it to be...  but first, you have to be mo-tee-vated, sister.

Chew on these for a minute? My Top 8 Reasons to Eat a More Nutritious Diet are:

1. To get off the yo-yo diet train. By most recent study estimates, 80 to 95% of people who lose weight on a diet gain half or all of it back in one to three years. Forming the habit of putting nutrition first in your food choices helps your goal of "keeping it off" immensely.


2. To finish that run-walk for your favorite charity. If you're carrying a lot of extra weight around the middle, or have to worry about your blood glucose the whole time, it's going to be a lot harder.


3. To show your children how to "grow up big and strong" with strong bones and teeth and a body fit for the school soccer field. They need a parental example... guess what, you're IT.


4. To be ready when the boss sends you on a high-pressure business trip.  Eating a well-balanced diet helps elevate those anti-stress hormones in your brain.


5. You plan to have a baby, and you want to avoid some common complications of pregnancy.  Or you're going to be a baby daddy, and you're going to have to be present for him/her right through graduation day.


6. To still have health and stamina when your parent(s) get old and need you either to care for them, or at least to manage their care, from medications and transportation to finances and moving to assisted living.


7. To look in the mirror and know that because you take care of and manage yourself, you can care about and manage other things that matter to you, whether it's working to stop pollution, being a rock star, or beating your buddy at tennis.


8. And last, since these are perhaps the most obvious, but not stressed enough. Please think before you randomly eat in front of the TV; consistently eating a more nutritious diet will help stave off obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, pancreatic cancer, diabetes related conditions like poor eyesight, and diseases of malnutrition.

2012 is coming and you know what they say, feel the fear and do it anyway.
Best wishes! See you in '012.