When we take up a new hobby or sport we give ourselves the space for this new learning. We buy special clothes or equipment, we go to a specific place, we engage with a teacher or mentor and very often other students. In many ways we prime our brain for each practice session and set reasonable expectations for ourselves. True, some of us may be more ambitious with our expectations, but we don’t expect to simply read a yoga book and be able to perform all the poses smoothly from then on. We expect our learning to take time. Some days will be easier, some harder, but we trust that we are still growing as long as we show up and keep practicing. We don’t approach nutrition in the same way, and I think we should. Modern life has complicated eating far beyond satisfying hunger. Our food choices are shaped by our environments, social situations, culture, genetics, stress level, and amount of sleep, to name just a few factors. What’s more, by the time we’re adults we’ve grooved habits for years, decades even. So it’s simply not practical to expect we will undo all these influences rapidly and with minimal effort. If we treat the process of developing new eating habits the way we approach any other new skill we give ourselves the time, acceptance and support to drive sustainable change.
In future posts I’ll dive into tenets of good nutrition, helpful tips for ways to practice these new changes and some of my own challenges (I, too, am still working on my practice).
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