The Perfect Time to Create a New You
The beginning of a new year is a fitting time to reinforce the idea that you can create a new you at any time. The quickest, healthiest way to do that is to change what you eat.
We don’t really think of it, but the body is constantly at work running every system in the body: the digestive system, immune system, cardiovascular system, respiratory system and many others to keep us healthy. We tend to think of our bodies as static without any change, but that’s not true: the body is constantly breaking down the old and rebuilding new. For example, it replaces the entire skin every six to seven years, gives us all new red blood cells every 120 days, and it actually renews the lining of the entire digestive tract every three to four days.
The food we take in gives the body the ingredients or building blocks to be able to do all this work. So, what you choose to eat will either give the body the building blocks to do its job well, to keep you trim and free of disease, or to set you up for weight problems and ill health. The food you eat today literally makes the you of tomorrow, a week from now and a month from now. The good news is that gives us an awful lot of power to dramatically improve our weight and health pretty quickly.
If you fell off the wagon of a healthy diet last year, you were not the only one. The legendary TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey did as well and ran a show and an O magazine cover story about that very phenomenon two weeks ago.
When things are upsetting in life, food is the drug of choice for most people. For Oprah, her drug of choice this past year was organic multigrain blue chips, which packed on many pounds.
Oprah says money, fame and success don’t mean anything if you can’t control your own being. The one real wealth we have is our health. If we lose our health, accomplishing anything else we want becomes very difficult. The most important way to influence the health of your body is by what we eat.
Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Now there are fears that in the economic crisis consumers will put on “recession pounds” by eating unhealthily. But it’s important to fight that urge. A healthy weight is one of the best defenses we have to protect ourselves from a long list of degenerative diseases and from money worries that could become colossal if we have to enter the medical system to be treated for any of a number of weight-related illnesses.
If you had good intentions last year but ended up being more naughty than nice in eating healthy and controlling your weight and health problems, the important thing is not to berate yourself but to brush it off, learn from the mistakes you made, and start anew. That means making yourself a priority this year – something that goes against the grain of what many women in particular are socialized to do.
Sometimes people need to make a small investment in themselves by getting help to improve or control their eating habits and to not fall off the wagon. My Going Against the Grain Group and nutrition coaching and counseling packages can do just that.
To help people start 2009 on a healthy note and make food their best medicine, I am offering the following specials on my nutrition services.
COACHING PACKAGE SPECIALS
This is an ongoing special: Sign up for any coaching package with me and receive a one-year membership to my online Going Against the Grain Group (a $120 value) absolutely free. To view my coaching program packages and prices, visit Coaching Packages for New Clients or, if you are already a client of mine, visit Coaching Packages for Existing Clients.
GROUP MEMBERSHIP SPECIAL OFFERS
These specials are good only until April 30, 2009: Get ongoing news and support by purchasing a one-year Going Against the Grain Group membership at a special price — for less than $6 a month. Or purchase a package with counseling sessions and an online Going Against the Grain Group membership at a discount. Go to this link for these limited-time Special Offers.
© Copyright 2009 by Melissa Diane Smith
