Choose You Blog

My eight year old has a guide to good health. She says, “People who are healthy live a long life.”

Being healthy, making healthy choices aka Choosing You, according to her means:

• exercise
• eat healthy foods such as vegetables and fruit
• taking care of your body such as washing hands, brushing teeth, taking baths, and putting on lotion
• wear sunblock so you don’t get sunburned
• go to sleep on time so you don’t wake up in the morning all cranky and tired

That’s it, she says, the golden ticket to being healthy.

Grown-ups make it more complicated, she said, “I’m only eight, I don’t know everything about being healthy.”

But she does, apparently. She said all of this to me as she skipped out the door to go swimming, after a day of running around. She ate pot roast and vegetables for dinner, slept well last night, and woke up with energy this morning.

Granted, she is young, and young is often/usually/almost always the very best health tonic. And when you’re young and feeling good, it’s so easy to do the right health thing, or at least not suffer such harsh consequences if you don’t. So maybe the very hardest part of Choosing You is accepting the bygones of youth. So maybe the very hardest part is realizing you can’t just get away with it all anymore, and this means to keep up with what you once did means making really good health choices.

I’m not above admitting feeling a little resentful about that. I used to be able to get away with a lot. I miss that. I miss being skinny without trying, eating anything I wanted. These days the old adage “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” is suddenly, painfully too true. I miss laying down in bed and going to sleep, only to awaken, refreshed, with the sun. These days it takes a lot to calm my mind, and hormone shifts disrupt my sleep.

But feeling good is worth it to me. So maybe in this case, the mother learns from the child, who learned from the mother, who needs to follow her own lessons. It’s that important to me for my child, so it must be that important for me.