Leaving a Legacy of Health

What legacy are we leaving to the next generation with our health?  Mark and I are on a road trip. We are brainstorming ideas about how we can, as a team, encourage our generation to maintain or even regain their health. Statistics(Center for Disease Control) show that our age group tops the list of obese Americans at 39.7% of the over 50 crowd being overweight. Can you wrap your mind around that fact? Unless things change, over half of our age group will be overweight  in a few short years! Good grief! Is this the legacy we want to leave for future generations?

I will not waste your time reminding you of the enormous health risks involved or the financial burden to our work force. In a matter of time, the consequences of poor choices will catch up with us and become reality. Instead of focusing on the negatives to our own lives, I want to encourage you to make some changes.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I am new to this but I am in! Good health is what God intended all along for us. It was not his plan for us to drag through the day carrying 20, 40, 60 or more pounds. His plan is for us to walk around with joy, not because we inherited a million dollars, but because we are living life to the fullest. 

Do you know a person who is obese and is filled with joy? Haven't met one yet. We are planning our next diet. We say "I will be happy when I weigh ___." Yes, I realize that there are articles that state that we should accept ourselves just as we are. However, if I am 50 pounds or more overweight I contend that that is maybe not a great idea.  In James, it talks about learning patience. "If you let that patience work in you, the end result will be good. You will be mature and complete. You will be all that God wants you to be." The Bible never talks about accepting yourselves just the way you are. It talks about letting God have control and helping you change. 

Practicing healthy behaviors requires patience...good grief, a lot of patience. It has taken a year and a half to lose the last 35 pounds I needed to lose and to become more skilled in weight lifting and bike riding. Every single time I ride bikes, it hurts! Every single time. However, it has built endurance and strength that I did not possess. Lifting weights is difficult. I never want to do it, ever.   But it has built such confidence in other areas. For example, the  courage to write this blog and not care about the haters I will encounter by writing it. We say we desire maturity in our lives but we don't want to pay the price through perseverance. 

I desire that our generation leads the way in perseverance, maturity and wisdom. We are not reaching our potential. The younger generation is looking to us for answers. They are observing how we are handling marriage.  How are we parenting? How are we handling money? How are we handling our free time? What are we reading? What are we looking at on the Internet? How are we handling our bodies as they age? Are we aging gracefully with strength and vitality? Time will tell the impact we will have on the next generation. I want to be a light to the younger generation. I want them to see the power of God through the way that I live.

In Psalms 103, it says that "He gives us plenty of good things. He makes us young again, like an eagle that grows new feathers." I need some new feathers.
Just an extra note here...if you are overwhelmed and need a plan, email me at pat_cooper@sbcglobal.net or go to my husband's website(coopbringsit.com) and see what he does. He is a MACHINE...like he is not made like the rest of us.  He is truly Superman. 

I have been on vacation for almost three weeks(two different trips).  I wanted to wait until I returned to write more about making a commitment to stay healthy. I actually wanted to see if I would stick with my healthy eating before I wrote about it.  Otherwise, I would come back and regret every word that I had written.  Good news...it can be done on vacation!  I am not by any means advising you that you should never eat unhealthy on a vacation.  This is a personal choice for each person.  However, for me, I decided long before I went that it was worth trying to make good food and exercise choices on a trip and still enjoy the trip! 
First of all, I realized that every place you go, whether visiting in a home, sitting in an airport for 3 hours or going to a restaurant in a tourist location...you can make a healthy choice.  I did it.  I also found numerous opportunities to exercise.  I came home from the trips feeling good about myself and without a weight gain. I am NOT saying this to make anyone feel guilty about how you handle vacations.  I just know how slippery a slope it is for me to gain all my weight back.  I am not ready to slide down that slope.
First of all, I found a lot of ways to exercise.  Almost all hotels, motels or condos have a room set aside for exercise. My husband and I went each morning, while the rest of the family was relaxing, to either lift weights or walk/run on a treadmill.  It was not a big deal at all.  When we visited out of town guests, they took us on a hike in the mountains.  We even rented mountain bikes and we were rewarded with magnificent mountain views that we would have not seen otherwise.  When we were ready for dinner each night, we walked to the restaurant and enjoyed not having to find a parking spot in a crowded tourist town.
Keep in mind that this is all new for me. In the past, vacation was a time to overeat more than I was already overeating:). I would have never considered exercising. However, I came home from trips with a weight gain...and a lot of guilt.
I must tell you some things that my husband and I noticed on this vacation. My husband tends to be very friendly.  Each night, we ended the day sitting in the hot tub of the hotel.  Mark would talk to each and every guest that happened to be in the hot tub with us. He would make conversation about good places to eat and invariably the most popular places mentioned were the ones they "served the most food." The quality of the food was not as important as the quantity of the food!  Is this what we have become as a nation? Probably no need to mention that Mark and I were the only ones walking to the restaurant in this tourist town. The weather was pleasant and there were multiple restaurants within two miles of the hotel. The traffic and parking was an ordeal but everyone else chose to fight the traffic.  I am not advocating walking everywhere when you are at home.  We chose to walk because we were in a tourist town and it was an easy way to get in a little exercise.
As far as food on the trip, I could order a salad with grilled chicken at nearly every restaurant. At one place I ordered chicken fajitas and asked them to leave out the tortillas. We were a little disappointed at what our hotel called a "hot complimentary breakfast."  That consisted of biscuits, pancakes, and waffles.  I opted to go to a fast food restaurant, ordered an egg McMuffin but did not eat the muffin. My breakfast consisted up egg and a meat, which is a fairly good choice for breakfast. A protein breakfast will keep you satisfied longer than a biscuit. A small package of almonds, kept in my purse, was a nice thing to have if we were nearing an ice cream shop or something like that.  Even when we had a 3 hour delay at the airport, there were salads, cheese, celery and plenty of apples and oranges. I guess I never noticed them before because I was always "on vacation."
This was a stunning revelation.  I never knew that people could actually stay on a healthy diet on vacation. I had the mindset that vacation was a time to splurge.  You had to splurge or it was not a vacation.
 If you want to quit reading, you can. At this point I wanted to relate this to a story in the Bible. In the book of Numbers, the children of Israel were eating only manna, provided everyday by God in the desert. They got really angry about this fact and began complaining.  They were saying "If only we could go back to Egypt and eat that good food again.  We had it made."  Funny thing...they were in slavery when they were in Egypt. Sometimes when I am on vacation, I may get bitter and say "I deserve this delicious desert."  In reality, my overeating kept me in slavery. I don't want to return to that kind of slavery.  To exercise my choice and eat anything I want will mean I have very few choices about what to wear when I return home. Something to think about.

Is it okay for Christians to overeat? Don't shoot the messenger!

Romans 12:2 (NLT)

 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

I am attempting to examine what this verse really means. How far do we take this verse as a Christian?  Does it only apply to the "big issues" or does it apply to things like how we spend our money or what we eat for lunch?  In what ways should we be different and in what ways is it okay to blend in to the world's ways? In particular, I have been looking at food issues and how we take care of our body.  Should we look like the world in those issues or should we take a strikingly different stance?

We could look around at prominent Christian leaders and observe that they seem to look about the same as the rest of the world. Many are overweight.  Many lack the physical stamina through lack of exercise. I want to look at my own life with a critical eye and see if I am trying to not copy the behavior and customs of this world.  Because this verse implies that if I don't copy them, God can transform me into a new person by changing the way that I think.  Then I will learn that God's will for me is good and pleasing and perfect. Notice I said that I am looking at myself, not others.  When I mentioned that popular leaders are not following this standard for their life, I realize that more fingers are pointing back at me if I dare to point one finger at them.  So let's make this clear that this is about me, not anyone else.  If you see me in a fast food restaurant eating french fries, it will be obvious that I am just like everyone else:)

What are America's habits for eating?  Obviously we are missing the mark badly in this area. Take a minute to read the following article on health issues in America.

Excess body weight: A major health issue in America

For many people, the modern American lifestyle has led them to eat more unhealthy foods, eat bigger food portions, and be less physically active. As a result, the number of Americans who are overweight or obese (very overweight) has been rising. About 1 in 3 American adults is now obese, and another 1 in 3 is overweight.

Being overweight or obese can have far-reaching health consequences. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), excess body weight increases the risk for:

• Heart disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol levels
• Stroke
• Liver and gallbladder disease
• Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
• Arthritis
• Abnormal menstrual periods and infertility in women
• Certain cancers

Overweight and obese people, on average, do not live as long as people who stay at a healthy body weight throughout their lives.

Not only are more adults overweight or obese, but more children are, too. Among children and teens, about 17% (or 12.5 million) are obese, a rate that has almost tripled since 1980. Some of the same health problems affecting obese adults can also affect obese children. These include heart disease risk factors such as high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure, as well as asthma, sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes, muscle and joint problems, and liver disease. Obese children and teens are also at higher risk for social and psychological problems, such as discrimination and poor self-esteem.  Obese children and teens are more likely to be obese as adults. 

How many times will we read these statistics and ignore the fact that America is growing weaker and weaker as a nation?  Can we continue to rationalize away the issue that is not only an epidemic in America, but the Christians don't look any different from the non-Christians?  No stone gets thrown at the speaker if someone points out that Christian divorce rates are the same as non-Christian divorce rates.  We are aghast and say this is wrong!  But the weight/health issue is protected somehow from debate.  It seems okay to be overweight and under-exercised.  Just a little nag of discontentment.  Just a little depression about the way we look.  But no radical alarm that this is not right.  We should enjoy health more than anyone.  God is saying, "My ways are best.  They are good.  They are perfect.  Try them and you will see." You will never hear this proclaimed from the pulpit.  Someone might be embarrassed.  

Remember "there is no condemnation in Christ...none." Period.  Never.  Just a conviction that he wants better for us than the food-addicted, stress-induced cravings, handle-depression-through-eating-ice-cream type life we are choosing.  I have said this before.  I have lived that way most of my life. However,  I am not living that way at the present time and I enjoy life a lot better than I used to.  I am seeing that his ways are really better...amazing actually:) 

Ponder this verse and see if you are conforming to the world or are you actually choosing a narrow way that very few are walking on these days.  Life doesn't have to be so miserable. God wants an abundant life for me and you.

Romans 12:2 (NLT)

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.