You Really Are What You Eat

Many people think “As long as I workout, I can eat whatever I want.” NOT TRUE! This is a huge problem that people need to realize. It is important to have a well-balanced diet and an active lifestyle. As a child, my younger brother was always very active. He's been playing basketball and football since he was five years old. He has always been such an active kid, practicing both sports twice a week, not to mention at least two games a week. With all this running around, you’d imagine him to be a skinny child; he wasn’t. He had always been a husky kid, struggling with his weight. How could this be? The food he ate. After practice, the boy was hungry so my parents always took him to the most convenient fast food drive-thru and bought him the usual hamburger, fries and a soda. If he did really well during one of his games, he deserved a reward… pizza! Man, that boy could eat. When grandma was babysitting him, it was worse. She never wanted him to feel an ounce of hunger so she made sure she fed him almost every hour with sweets, fattening, and greasy foods. No one really thought about the problems that food caused, that’s just how we all ate.

I would eat exactly the same, McDonald’s was my favorite place to go. I would go so often that the people who worked there all knew me by name. I lived off of fast food and soda. Nothing healthy would ever touch my tongue. I never took a second look at what I was eating because I was so skinny. Seventh grade to my sophomore year in college I weighed only 94lbs no matter how much junk I ate. Only problem was, I was in and out of the doctors on almost a weekly bases. If it wasn’t for one thing, it was the other. There was always something wrong with me. But of course it wasn’t what I was eating, I was so tiny! During one of my regular doctor visits, he made a “joke” to me about how my medical file was thicker than most of the elderly patients he has seen. Wow! That comment hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe I do need to change my lifestyle.

By the age of 20, my luck started to run out and my metabolism wasn’t working in my favor anymore. It seemed as though my weight started increasing out of nowhere. I had to do something. I started to change the way I ate. Eating fruits, veggies and only drinking water. I also started to workout a few days a week and started to see some changes. I didn’t need to see the doctor so much, I wasn’t so cranky anymore, and just felt better overall. Recently, my brother decided to start eating the right things and for the first time in 10 years his weight didn’t make him feel bad about himself. Pounds have been falling off of him and he can now fit into pants that he had to stop wearing 3 years ago. He now has this self-confidence that no one has ever seen in him before.

It is very important for people to take a look at what they are eating or feeding their loved ones. Just because they are active or even skinny, it doesn’t mean that is okay for them to eat.