Why Should We Bother, (Seriously)

I ask my students on the first day of class, “Why are you here? Why are you taking this class?”

The name of the course is The Yes To Life Solution to get Slim & Healthy.

So as you would expect, most students say something like, “I’d like to lose a few pounds.” or “I have high cholesterol and want to get my numbers down.”

Sounds logical, right?

Logical — but not very powerful in motivating a person to change something as ingrained as the way they eat!

What does health mean, anyway? Is it about getting a good report card at your annual physical? Or is there more to it than that?

Do we want our obituary to say, “Her cholesterol was perfect, her blood pressure was good, and she could still get into her wedding dress!”

Well, if that’s not what we are working toward, what DO we want?  Why should we bother to change the habits of a lifetime in order to get slim & healthy?

A simple question can help us discover what we REALLY want.

The question? ? ? "WHY?"

So let’s try it:

Why do you want to lower your cholesterol?  
Because I don’t want to have heart disease.

Why don’t you want to have heart disease?
Because I”m afraid I won’t be able to be active, and might die young.

Why don’t you want to lose the ability to be active?
Because I have lots of things I like to do, like hiking and traveling.

Why don’t you want to die young
Because I adore my grandchildren and want to live to see them grow up and have their own families.

Did you notice what just happened?  
Which is more motivating?
“I want to lower my cholesterol.” OR “I want to stay active, continue hiking and traveling, and I want to be here to watch my grandchildren grow up and have families of their own.”

Let’s explore this just a bit further.
The first answer is usually about getting rid of something we don’t want.
This is valid, and can provide a good starting point.
Have you heard the phrase, “pain pushes until vision pulls?”

So we can be grateful for the pain, whether it is physical, emotional, social, or spiritual because it can get our attention and motivate us to look for a solution.

But when the pain lessons just a bit, or we start getting used to the pain, the motivation begins to dissipate. That’s when we’re likely to fall back into the old patterns that caused the pain in the first place.

But discovering our deeper “why,” our vision of what we really, truly want, has the power to keep us moving in the direction that will get us there.

I call this deeper why a Yes to Life why.  

So, I ask you to think about your own life.
Would you like to be slim and healthy?
Why?

The great news is that a whole-food, plant-based diet provides a tremendous foundation for your amazing body to achieve these goals.

Changing our eating habits can feel hard, but it can also be fun and empowering if we have a Yes to Life why.