Whether they suffered from obesity, had a nicotine or caffeine addiction or crisped in the sun one too many times, many people, for one reason or another, finally understand that they may not have been leading the healthiest lifestyle.
However, according to one scientist with the National Institutes of Health, American culture promotes a belief that working toward a healthier lifestyle completely erases all the damage that had previously been inflicted on themselves.
Not necessarily so.
Americans believe in control of their bodies, mental faculties and futures; therefore, dropping a few pounds or overcoming unhealthy habits is not merely sensible, it is a new beginning -- being born again, explained one doctor.
A Negative Message
The pessimistic idea shoving its way through is that no matter how hard someone may want to wipe the slate of an unhealthy life clean and begin again, they simply cannot eliminate the damage that has been done. The effect of changing one's diet or lifestyle might only amount to a matter of changing probabilities and slightly improving the odds.
This bubble-bursting message continues to pronounce that while many people might decide to go to the gym, drink less, eat better and relax more, it will only make them feel better for being fitter; however, people shouldn't expect to erase the effects of all those previous years of neglect and harm.
New York Times April 17, 2005
I believe that the state of your health mirrors that of your previous choices.
This whole idea sounds a lot like the argument some people use to justify a lifetime of miserable health -- the old "my genes made me do it" defense -- just because their parents and relatives may have suffered from obesity and cancer that shortened their lives.
These tend to be the same people who give you grief for seeking to implement positive changes in your life.
I firmly believe that we tend to manifest what we believe or have our intentions focused on. The perspective shared in the above article reflects a common view in the conventional medical paradigm, namely that once you damage your body it has a very limited capacity to regenerate and repair itself.
I couldn't disagree more and believe that we have enormous untapped capacity for recovery as long as we remove ourselves or limit our exposures to toxic poisons while giving our body the foundational healing foods we were designed to eat.
If anyone tries to discourage you from making important health changes that can have a significant impact on your life and your family, keep these points in mind:
Although they are obviously important, your genes do not have the final say in what your state of health turns out to be. Their expression is what's most important and it can be powerfully altered by your lifestyle, as well as your emotions. In other words, the future quality of our lives has much more to do with what you do and how you feel, day in and day out, than it does with your late father's three-pack-a-day smoking habit or his morbid obesity.
You give up a great deal of your personal power, responsibility, and ability to recover from illness when you come to negative conclusions about yourself and the gift you have been given to heal. Your body's fate has not been set in motion. You can enhance its numerous healing mechanisms with a powerful, synergistic combination of beliefs and healthy lifestyle choices.
An important factor in helping you achieve good health and maintain a healthy weight is to follow a diet based on eating the right foods for your specific genetic biochemistry. Following the Total Health Program, and learning to eat according to your metabolic type, are effective ways to do just that.
In addition, it's important to have an effective tool that adequately addresses the emotional issues that contributed to your poor health choices in the first place. Learning an effective energy psychology tool like Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a simple way to accomplish this seemingly difficult task.
EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments for over 5,000 years, but without the invasiveness of needles. Instead, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to input kinetic energy onto specific meridians on the head and chest while you think about your specific problem -- whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, etc. -- and voice positive affirmations.
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