When we were younger our parents had to threaten us to finish our meals. We would argue and fuss about it and try any way possible to get out of it. Those of us with dogs know they played a key role in helping us "finish" our food. Or there was the trick of simply moving the food around to make it look like we ate another bite or two. Either way, these tricks are no longer needed. These tricks are long gone, and some of us may even wish we still had this problem of not wanting to eat food.
Today is a different story. Today we inhale food. Today we barely taste the food long enough to complain about it (not like we would anyway). Now we are old enough to pick and choose what we want, and we almost wish we still had our parents doing that for us. Because like most young adults our freedom typically leads us to fast food, fat food, and too much food. It’s like we never actually paid attention to what our parents fed us, and why they fed us that stuff we used to always complain about.
Social media just makes it all worse. Every time we log into Twitter, Facebook, and sometimes even Instagram it's blown up with pictures of food, videos of making food, and people writing about food. Temptation is everywhere. We try to eat healthy, but once a craving is triggered you might as well forget about it. The worst part is crappy food is typically cheaper and lasts longer. I can go to the store and buy high-calorie pasta sides that are $1 each and seemingly last forever, or I can buy asparagus for $4 and it lasts maybe a week (and let's be honest, the pasta sides taste better than the asparagus anyway). This truth is discouraging for a broke college student, and we either have to pick being fat or poor. That’s an exaggeration, but you get my point.
I don’t know about you, but I never crave anything healthy. I really wish I did. I see people post a picture of a platter of colorful fruit with a caption saying, “Craving this” and I’m truly jealous because I wish I actually wanted that. But I want pizza, donuts, and cheese sticks. The fact that pizza can conveniently be ordered online doesn’t make it any better. I could go to a restaurant with the mindset that I’m going to order a nice salad, and sometimes I actually do, but I’m not excited or satisfied by that. I wish my mouth didn’t water at the thought of Chipotle, and that I had that response to a healthy wrap of some kind (I don’t know a specific wrap because that’s not my life!).
The truth is eating healthy isn’t that great. The same goes for eating just one slice of pizza. But sometimes will power needs to take control before we completely pig out and we need to accept being slightly unsatisfied. And maybe I’ll start a diet tomorrow, or maybe not. We’ll see what happens.
