Day 1 of WEGO Health Challenge - Health Time Capsule

Today is the first day of the WEGO Health Writer's Challenge (actually it was yesterday but I was traveling home from Charleston, so I thought I'd do a post early this morning and the other later this afternoon) and the topic is a Health Time Capsule. I have to pretend I'm making a health time capsule that will be opened in 10 years. What do I put in it & what will people think of it when they find it. 

First, what I need to do is define my health focus for this challenge. I write about a lot of different things so I can probably pick a million, and maybe I'll do a different one each time but I think the biggest movement that I truly believe in and where I'd like to be an advocate is revealing the truths of the diet industry. I began my "get healthy" path by going on a couple of extreme diets & working out hard every day. One week, I'd be cutting out all high density carbs, including fruit. The next week, I'd be measuring out my almonds and weighing my protein. It all was very extreme and emotionally distracting. What ended up happening was my inability to continue to stay on such an extreme diet would emerge, I would binge all weekend and then feel guilty about it the following week. Then my binges started on friday instead of saturday. Then thursday and by the end of it, I was only eating healthy on Tuesdays. The rest of the days, I was rebelling against the idea that I couldn't eat certain fruits & veggies because they had too much "sugar". In the end, I was eating a box of oreos. 

I appreciate that there are many out there who have no issues with food control, but based on the multi billion dollar diet industry, shows like the biggest loser, and the rising numbers in disordered eating, I would say that I'm not alone in my inability to do so. So if I were building a Health Time Capsule, I would include certain things that have helped me change that "diet" mentality along the way. Here's a brief list. 

1. A book called "Women, Food & God" by Geneen Roth

buy it here

2. Another book called "A Return to Love" by Marianne Williamson

buy it here!

3. A yoga mat & a yoga book to help start a yoga practice

source

4. A cookbook called " Super Natural Cooking" by Heidi Swanson

source

5. (since I'm in Greenville, SC & I'm assuming people looking at my time capsule live here) A list of local farms that sell milk, cheese. meat, veggies, etc. 

I'm doing this this year!

6. A book called "French Women Don't Get Fat" by Mirielle Guiliano

Amazon

7. Hiking guides for the surrounding states

Hiking Trail in Eastern NC/SC

I'm sure I could come up with many other things, but those are probably the things I think would help get my point across. I would hope that as people look through my time capsule, that they were things they have already adopted! But if not, I hope that they realize that being skinny isn't the most important thing but a by product of living a healthy lifestyle. I wanted to include the local farms, specifically the ones that serve meat, to show that one can eat meat in a fairly healthy/sustainable way. 

I can't wait to read what other's wrote about today! This is going to be fun!

Namaste, y'all!