Impatience · 16 July 2013
Impatience is the key to ruining any attempt at getting healthy. Whether we are training our bodies to eat a plant-based, whole food diet or to run with minimalist shoes (especially no-shoe shoes), the best way to get off track is to be impatient.
When I first started eating differently, I weaned myself from meat. I was not trying to be completely vegan, but I did want to get away from processed foods so that I could run better. I wanted to be leaner so that I could be fitter, but I was not planning on cutting out meat or eating that much healthier. I just wanted to run. I just wanted to be a little bit of an athlete.
That desire to be athletic was probably why I have been able to make the transition to eating a plant-based, whole food diet fairly easily. Everything I was doing, including eating right, was geared toward making me healthier so I could run a little farther and hopefully, a little faster.
Even so, I have not completely gotten rid of processed foods or sugar from my diet. In fact, I have gone through the detoxification process many times as I rid myself of these noxious foods. It will be a lifelong process that I am willing to keep going through, especially since I find myself having fewer episodes of sugar binging. I am finding that I can be patient with myself.
Unfortunately, impatience is much easier to have than patience.
Most people want to lose weight and get healthy immediately. When health does not happen right away, they give up. They go back to sitting around instead of exercising and eating the way they did before instead of eating healthy. (Fortunately, if they give up processed foods and eat plant-based, whole foods, they will lose weight quickly.)
They do the same thing with shoes.
As I have talked to people about shoes and going to no-shoe shoes, I find that most of them are not willing to go through the long body reeducation process. They want immediate results. Maybe it is just that they do not understand they need to educate their legs, feet, and supporting muscles. Maybe they do not understand that years of wearing shoes with too much support has atrophied their muscles. Maybe they do not understand that it takes time to get to a place where they can exercise barefoot. Whatever the reason, most of the people I have talked to about no-shoe shoes give them up too early in the process. They do not give themselves time to build up the muscles. They are too impatient.
As I look at our largely unhealthy society, I believe that misinformation and ignorance play big roles in why people eat poorly and are out of shape. But once people know the right things to do, they ought to be able to get healthy. They ought to be able to get on the right track.
Unfortunately, even when we find the right track, we find ways to get derailed. And all too easily, we find the real key to ruining our attempts at getting healthy is impatience.
© 2013 Michael T. Miyoshi
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