Health Education Week!!

Its National Health Education Week! A week where us health educators get all excited and promote all of our initiatives a little extra. Health education has had an interesting history and a roller coaster of emotions, feelings, opinions etc. We have health departments and committees and programs and grants and all of these things, yet we don't see much of a change in our national obesity rates. We are very deliberate in our health education to children, but their parents don't know how to continue that at home; they "know" what to do, but they do not carry it out. Why is this? I have been trying to answer that very same question. I feel as though health education shouldn't be so much about the facts of nutrition and exercise, but on restructuring the way we think about those things. Its great to know about vitamins and minerals and macro vs micro nutrients and all the muscles in the body, but what do you do with that information? With a restructured mind you think about food as fuel, what it does in your body and why instead of pure pleasure or satiating hunger quickly. As for exercise, with a restructured mind, you do it because you love your body and you want to treat it nice with some fresh air and use your God given muscles. People view their exercise as a job or a have to, they view eating as bad or weight gain, and it skews not only their views but others as well! People watch you whether you know it or not, they see how you shy away from those foods, and hear your comments about how those carbs are bad, or you are on a "wedding" diet; they start to think that it IS bad and they should stay away too. This thinking can lead to much worse things, mainly, eating disorders. They are caused by disordered thinking of food, body image and fitness. We place a hype on being "skinny", on looking great, on dropping weight. It's time we start educating on the right ways to think, the positive ways, the empowering ways. Stop thinking that fitness and wellness are bad words, but they are empowering words! They are NOT body building, every day gymming, crazy dieting words. They are moving your body everyday in ways you enjoy, eating good, whole, nutritious foods, loving yourself, positive thought stemming words. They are NOT just a fad, or lasting just a little while but lasting your entire life, always working at it, always building, always improving words. Let's take the stigma out of fitness/wellness/health and start implementing a new way to think about those things.

As always,

God Bless.