Change

Humans by nature are creatures of habit. No matter how different our views and situations may be from one another, day by day most of us have firmly set routines that we deviate from only rarely. Some of us need that sense of security and familiarity. New options present excitement but also present risk. But even in the simplest of daily activities change can be discouraging, even if we understand that if we are ever to advance to the next level something must change. And sometimes change just seems like too much work.

Take one of the most obvious examples: our health particularly in the form of how we take care of our bodies. While we may not all be expert nutritionists or personal trainers there are a few things that we all generally know and accept as true. Example: regular exercise is good for our bodies and dining on pizza and beer every night is bad for us. Sure many of us can afford to be rather lax in our younger years. But as time goes on our lifestyles catch up with us, and all those hours in the office chair and the Ben & Jerry's start to show.

Now even with all the drugs and machines and other miracle cures that claim to take you from couch potato to incredible hunk in 30 days but are clearly bunk, it's still a multi-billion dollar industry. People want to be thin and attractive and healthy, but mostly thin and attractive. Let's be honest: there is not a person who goes to the gym regularly that doesn't on some small level do so because they want to look more attractive. It's only natural and I tell you truly there is nothing wrong with that. Of course your sense of self-confidence should stem from who you are as a person, but a self-confident person ultimately should look good because people with good self-esteem want to take care of their physical appearance. Why? Because caring for yourself means you do so both on the inside and the outside. It's not that you care what the scale reads or what size clothing you can fit into, but more that you know you're taking care of yourself. And when you take care of yourself properly you DO look good, and you will think so when you look in the mirror, even in spite of the supposed little imperfections that you know are there.

And yet obesity is at record highs in the United States and our country isn't the only one it's becoming a growing (quite literally) problem. I can think of loads of people I see regularly at the gym or even on my daily bus commute who aren't just ten or fifteen pounds overweight but easily three, four, or even five times that. They sit around in their free time and will use an elevator to go up one flight of stairs. Now I know that I personally can feel pretty bad if I got too many days without working out or eat too much junk, so how can these people who live their whole lives this way possibly feel? Wouldn't you just hate feeling that way all the time? I know they do, and yet they stay the same year after year.

Deep down we all know how to fix it. We get more active and eat more healthy foods. That's it. There is no huge secret. Most of us may not have the genes to be Victoria Secret models but that is no excuse to turn into the living blob. But still so many never try, often times because they think it's too hard. Well the truth is that it is hard. There is no denying that. But it's also true that anything worth having is worth striving for. Learning to love yourself means loving ALL of yourself, faults and all. But the day you surrender to the "it's too hard" mentality is the day you give it all up, because you really are just waiting for death at that point.