Developing a Healthy Habit

Our environment doesn’t always help with healthy lifestyle habits; it can encourage obesity. Some reasons are:

• Lack of neighborhood sidewalks and safe places for recreation. Not having area parks, trails, sidewalks, and affordable gyms makes it hard for people to be physically active.
• Work schedules. People often say that they don’t have time to be physically active given the long hours at work and the time spent commuting back and forth to work. We could find the time, if available and safe, walk at work.
• We like oversized meals. Americans are surrounded by huge food portions in restaurants, fast food places, gas stations, movie theaters, supermarkets, and even home. Some of these meals and snacks can feed two or more people. Over time, this will cause weight gain if it isn’t balanced with physical activity.
• Lack of access to healthy foods. Some people don’t live in neighborhoods that have supermarkets that sell healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Or if they do, these items are often too costly.
• Food advertising. We are surrounded by ads from food companies. Most of the time children are the targets of advertising for high-calorie, high-fat snacks and sugary drinks. The goal of these ads is to sway people to buy these high-calorie foods, and often wedo. Then we think the kids got problems. We helped to get them started.