#2044 Preventing Weeds, Cholesterol, and Brain Atrophy
What do you think would happen to your body if, every day, you ate an Egg McMuffin for breakfast, a McChicken Sandwich with a Coke for lunch, and a Big Mac, fries, and another Coke for dinner?
The nutritional havoc and eventual death this diet would cause is akin to the brain-seizing death that scrolling TikTok, Instagram, or FB for a few hours a day will create.
Why is it that crabgrass and weeds grow in my garden without cultivation or any attention from me?
Why is it that those weeds are deeper rooted and harder to pull out than any zucchini or tomato plants?
I don’t know the answer to the ‘why, ' but I have learned that preventing cholesterol, fat, plaque, brain atrophy, & weeds is much easier than getting rid of them once they’ve taken hold.
For me, social media is a lot like processed and fast food. It’s easy to find, cheap to acquire, somewhat addictive, and bad for my overall well-being.
Going back to the garden, what happens if, in the spring, I neglect to prepare the soil and I don’t plant tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers? Had I got nothing right? WRONG! I’d get a garden bed filled with weeds!
Doing nothing is not an option. We need to prevent weeds in our gardens, bodies, and brains by replacing toxic food and habits with life-enhancing habits.
So how do we create good habits? There are volumes written about this by smarter folks than me, but since you’re here, let me give you what I’ve got.
Attach a new habit to something you do already. When I was rehabbing my shoulder, the physical therapist told me that people over sixty suffer falls mostly because of bad balance. She suggested that I stand on one foot for half of my tooth brushing and on the other for the other half. That’s a genius suggestion! If I had to create a habit of balancing on one foot for two minutes a few times a day, I'm highly unlikely to stick with it, but attaching it to another habit I already have makes it much stickier.
The same goes for things like pushups before a shower or chair squats at the beginning and end of each meal. Attaching a good habit to an existing habit works. So does making a habit easy and obvious.
If you want to walk in the morning, laying out your walking shorts, shirt, sneakers, and socks the night before greatly increases the likelihood you will walk.
All this to say that good outcomes come from good habits, and good habits don’t get slid into like bad ones. They take thought and intention.
Be intentional; don’t go for the easy scrolls and fast-food options in life – at least not as a matter of habit. The further down you slide, the steeper the climb is to get back up.
I can pull a little bit of crabgrass with two fingers. Leave that same patch for a few weeks, and I can pull it with two hands and a shovel.