While eating healthy is very important and the lack of is a very real reason for being overweight, I guess I feel exercise is just as important for a healthy body and I would resist telling someone trying to lose weight and get healthy to concentrate on diet. I prefer to think of losing weight and being healthy as a more holistic effort.
I’d also like to make an important point on eating healthy and exercise. In my volunteer work in South Central Los Angeles I can easily see the consequences of the financial and emotional pressure/stress in the neighborhoods that lead to unhealthful eating behaviors and physical inactivity.
The choices made by especially children can be strongly affected by the family and community environments in which they live. Urban poverty living conditions matter because they throw up many barriers to engaging in healthy food choice and exercise behavior. Healthy foods can be hard to find in urban disadvantaged neighborhoods because instead of large supermarkets they have a disproportionate number of fast food chains and small stores providing mostly high-fat, high density energy foods. Not having good transportation options just adds to the problem. With food insecurity and limited food budgets, foods such as refined grains, sugars, cereals, potatoes and processed meat products etc. are more affordable and last longer than fresh vegetables and fruits and lean meats and fish. A lack of exercise is also part of parental efforts to keep children safe in unsafe neighborhoods. Children and adults are more likely to stay indoors and engage in sedentary activities, such as watching television or playing video games etc. when it’s dangerous to play in a park (even IF there is one) or any outdoor activity.
One of the many satisfying aspects of my volunteer work is supporting and working on bringing together the intervention programs of neighborhood and wider community projects that can help make a difference in healthy eating, exercise, reducing violence and substance abuse, education enhancements and for me especially sex trafficking. Bringing together a diverse group of neighborhood/community programs and with the larger organizational numbers working on getting more government and private funding sources can help immensely. I do wish more people would see these needs and do more volunteer work to help with all the issues in areas similar to south central.
‘The negative feelings we all have can be addictive…just as the positive…it’s up to
us to decide which ones we want to choose and feed”… Pema Chodron