Five excuses we use for eating poorly and how to flip those …

The late Zig Ziglar was a motivational speaker who was skilled at telling a good story. One of those he wrote into his book, “Something Else to Smile About,” and goes like this:

My brother, the late Judge Ziglar, loved to tell the story of the fellow who went next door to borrow his neighbor’s lawnmower. The neighbor explained that he could not let him use the mower because all the flights had been canceled from New York to Los Angeles. The borrower asked him what canceled flights from New York to Los Angeles had to do with borrowing his lawnmower. “It doesn’t have anything to do with it, but if I don’t want to let you use my lawnmower, one excuse is as good as another.”

When we just don’t want to do something, instead of admitting that fact and dealing with it, we make excuses and indulge in what we really want. Kind of like how we make excuses for a steady diet of poor nutrition when we know our bodies need better. Following are five leading excuses we use for choosing to consistently eat poorly, and simple suggestions for how to flip that to overcome those excuses:

1. Time. Not only have you heard it before, you probably say (often!) something like, “By the time I get home I don’t have time to cook … I have things to do when I get home … there’s the kids sports activities and school activities, I just don’t have time to cook.”

But then, the average person can find hours for searching the internet, being active on social media, and hours of television shows. FLIP IT – Be honest with yourself, if you can spend hours watching Netflix, you can spend half an hour cooking a healthy meal for you and your family. Instead of making the time spent cooking to be a bigger project than it is, tell yourself the truth that the time spent cooking is an investment in your family’s health.

If you really are so busy you don’t have time to cook, then tell yourself you need to re-examine your priorities in order to create time to provide yourself and your family with the nutrition they need to be fit and maintain their health.

2. Energy. You’ve also probably said, or at least heard, “By the time I get home from work/school/etc. I’m exhausted. I don’t have the energy to cook.” But you do have the energy to walk the dog, wash the laundry, play with the kids, go to the gym, go shopping, go out with friends, play on the church softball team … etc., etc. FLIP IT by being honest with yourself that taking 30 minutes to cook a nutritious meal is one of the least energy-draining activities of your day … it’s just not that hard! On top of that, junk food is a physical drain, while a nutritious meal can help provide a boost of energy you need for the rest of your day or evening.

3. Ignorance. Some claim ignorance by saying something like, “I’m not a dietitian, I don’t know how to cook nutritious meals” or “I don’t have any recipes for nutritious dishes.” FLIP IT – It’s 2019. Just minutes on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone will lead you to scores of sources on how to cook healthy dishes and entire nutritious meals, complete with recipes, shopping lists, and even instructional videos. Even your local grocery store sell cookbooks. And you have friends who eat well who would be willing to share recipes. If you really are ignorant about preparing nutritious meals, remaining so will only be by choice.

4. Income. Many claim that more nutritious food choices cost more, “I can’t afford it!” It is true that more nutritious dietary choices cost a little more, but not nearly as much as you think! That’s not an opinion, that’s fact. The healthiest diets cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health.

According to the study, which was published in the British Medical Journal, “The researchers found that healthier diet patterns — for example, diets rich in fruits, vegetables, fish and nuts — cost more than unhealthy diets (for example, those rich in processed foods, meats, and refined grains). But on average, a day’s worth of the most healthy diet patterns cost only $1.50 more per day than the least healthy ones.”

FLIP IT – Many people have enough spare cash to cover the additional cost. If not, most of us can find a way to reallocate $1.50 per day from our financial resources in order to improve our nutrition.

5. Interest. This is when a person says, “I just don’t care.” They may also tell the stories of people they know who lived long lives fueled by junk food, and life is short so eat the cake … and pie, and fries, and bacon, and candy, and … and … FLIP IT with more honesty: Providing yourself with good nutrition doesn’t mean you never get to eat favorite foods that are not as nutritious; it means you prioritize nutrition to better care for your body while mixing in some food favorites of lesser nutritional value.

READY TO DROP THE EXCUSES?
One of the greatest God-given gifts you’ll have in this lifetime is your physical body. You’ll invest in maximizing your health and vitality by fueling your body with the kind of food that is best for it. If you don’t want to do that, you can eat whatever you choose, but everything you put in your body has its affects. Instead of making excuses, why not choose wisely?

Scotty