Are you digging your grave with your teeth?

Eating of junk foods could lead you to death (Photo:Courtesy)

By JAMES GITAU

As I write this article, I am seated in a popular food outlet. At the next table, a couple has bought a large plate of fries for their son, who cannot be more than three years old. They are pushing him to finish the food, which he is downing with a bottle of soda.

Such scenes make me think of how some of us are digging our graves with our teeth. Unfortunately, we have indoctrinated our children into this club. And the more money we have, the faster we dig.

Have you noticed the number of fast food restaurants, bars and nyama choma joints mushrooming in the city, towns, along the highways and generally across the country? Take a look at the shelves in your local supermarket or duka and see what is in abundance. Check what people fill their trolleys with at the supermarket: Food that lines the path to illness and the risk of early departure from this ‘plane’ called earth.

Go to the hospitals around the country and witness the suffering. If you go to the city hospitals for the rich, you will be lucky to get a parking spot during visiting hours. If you go to Kenyatta National Hospital, a few minutes to visiting hours, you will be forgiven for thinking a rally is about to start.

Your next visit should be to Lang’ata Cemetery on any given day other than Sunday. Observe the number of burials taking place simultaneously, and how fast the space is filling up.

Finally, ask your doctor what is killing so many people. An honest medic will tell you that it is what people are putting in theirs mouth every day.

In all this suffering, are there people and organisations raking in money? Yes; big money is being made by those in the so-called health industry. Sometimes, I wonder if it should not be called the disease industry. Incidentally, most medical schools around the world focus on studying diseases, not health. Check their curriculums.

We can all experience a healthy life if we are determined to. Nobody deserves to go through misery, suffering from one ailment and then another. I say this with utmost conviction as I have had phenomenal health for almost 16 years — minimum contact with the ‘disease industry’, except for medical checks and physical injury.

My health took a turn for the better when I decided I had had enough of leading a poor lifestyle. How can you do the same?

1.            Realise you have the choice and power to make a change.

This involves re-evaluating your current lifestyle and health with the help of a health expert, for instance a nutritionist or a wellness expert. Go through the checklist of a healthy life and see where you might have gaps. Make the decision to experience a healthier life now.

2.            Take responsibility.

You are in charge of your health, and you must not surrender that responsibility to restaurants, supermarkets or your spouse. You do not have to eat everything you are offered; you can design your own meal plans and follow them. If your spouse chooses an unhealthy lifestyle, that is his or her choice, and you do not have to do the same.

Worst of all is surrendering your life to the ‘disease industry’. Many people have become so dependent on pills that they cannot think of any other way out of their misery. Remember, when you are sick, it means your body is out of balance, and there are many ways of helping it return to its natural and healthy state.

3. Make healthy living a lifestyle, not an occasional event.

Eating vegetables and exercising once in awhile is not enough. Just like you take a bath every day to cleanse the external body, do the same for the internal. When you treat your body well consistently, it will respond with equal enthusiasm, and keep you energised and vibrant.

The author is a life coach and founder of Peak Performance International, a human potential development firm: [email protected]