10 BENEFITS OF EATING HEALTHY

The world is fast-paced; virtually everyone hit the streets running, so it can be very easy to forget some all-too-important things in life. First on the list is eating healthy. I hope you are not surprised about that? After all, “health”, they say, “is wealth”, and healthy living equals wealthy living. To be sure, here are some ten benefits of eating healthy—in other words, eating a balanced diet. Before you continue, I should add this mild caveat: some of these benefits may pass as my discoveries!

1—EATING HEALTHY IS LIVING HEALTHY

Ever heard the saying eating is living? The fact is, eating is what makes us living beings, so if you aren’t eating, I’m sure you wouldn’t be reading this. In other words, you would have been long dead! What’s more? It isn’t enough to just eat to live. Like a poet once said, you should “live to eat”. “Living to eat” is another way of saying eating healthy. So if you’re ready to live long on the earth’s crust, start eating healthy—NOW!

2—EATING KEEPS YOUR BRAIN (MIND) SHARP AND ACTIVE

In his best-selling book, The Rules of Management, Richard Templar observes that eating healthy is one rule most managers flout at their peril. As a manager of yourself, eating healthy is a surefire way to elude stress and work burnouts. Stress and work burnouts greatly impact on your brain’s capacity to function well. So if you want to keep your frontal cerebral cortex hale and hearty (thus affording it the chance to THINK BIG, to borrow the title of Ben Carson’s book), you should start eating healthy.

3—EATING HEALTHY ENERGIZES YOU

The body is like a motor, for it to keep moving, it requires a well-powered or a good battery. The good battery that keeps you moving is good food. So if you don’t eat healthy, then be ready to grow weaker and weaker by the day. Eating healthy gives your body the essential calories needed to boost your energy for the day. So if you eat healthy, you may not need to consume energy drinks for life! Well, except, like me, you really like their great taste.

4—EATING HEALTHY IS SLEEPING HEALTHY

Have you ever slept late at night just immediately after gulping a hard morsel for dinner? If yes, you can attest to how uneasy sleeping becomes. You feel the meal running up your stomach, maybe even causing chest burns, to say the least. If no, congratulations friend! Please don’t ever try it. I have once travelled that path. It could be a dead-end.

I guess you may now begin to appreciate why I am telling you the benefits of eating healthy.

5—EATING HEALTHY PREVENTS CANCER

Studies have shown that eating healthy diets means having low saturated fat in the body. And having low fat means that you are less likely to develop certain forms of cancer. Cancer is not something you’ll like to experience. You have to trust me on this one.

6—EATING HEALTHY IS LOOKING BEAUTIFUL

Ever heard the quip “You are what you eat”? Yes, when you see a kwashiorkor-bellied child (like the many images you will find amongst African children in war-torn areas), you at once know that they have been starved to the very limit.. Most of them end up looking like the masquerade that they often display in their festivals: UGLY! Okay, let’s look at eat from another angle, if you are observant, you would have noticed that the richer you get, the fresher your skin becomes. Well, I am taking a risk with this hypothesis. But it follows that when you have money, you tend to eat well—and healthy. And invariably, you tend to look more beautiful. So if you want to keep that skin of yours forever young, make-up and creams aside, keep eating a balanced diet. Before you misconstrue me, you don’t need to be Puff-Daddy rich to eat healthy. Just the basics. Thank you.

7—EATING HEALTHY BOOST YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM

If you have ever been on the sick bed as a child while the noise from your peers, as they bask in the sun and dance in the rain, gets to your hearing, then you will appreciate this benefit. Even as an adult now, you still need to eat healthy to keep your body strong like a King-Kong. When you eat healthy, your immune system become more fortified to resist potential viral diseases that wrecks your body system and leave you on the lonely sick bed, shivering like a chicken. You surely do not want to miss out of life. To be specific, eating lots of veggies could be a good way to start. If you eat healthy, you worry less about health. So it’s important to start eating healthy early in life.

8—EATING HEALTHY BOOST SELF-ESTEEM

Now this may come across as far-fetched to many (and even you) but, trust me, it isn’t. At least from personal experience and my observation of children I have come to appreciate this benefit. Haven’t you observed that when children eat good meals, they are usually eager to share the news with their peers whenever they come to play? I remember doing that too myself. I will start by saying, “Do you know what I ate this morning?” and whether I get a response or not, I continue: “I ate rice and chicken!” and the broad smile on my face alone will say the rest. It is a wonderful feeling. Meanwhile, when children see that their meal is not rich, they get gloomy. Lol.

So eating healthy is one way you can boost your self-esteem.

9—EATING HEALTHY CAN HELP YOU WIN HEARTS

Before you take me on, I must admit, this may pass as being a little far-fetched, prima facie. But just think a little deep about it. In my hometown, before a man and a woman marry, the woman is made to prepare different kinds of delicacies, one after the other, after which professional and other experienced cooks will taste and certify if she is a good cook. Now guess what happens if she isn’t: END OF MARRIAGE! It is that simple. Is it any surprising, then, that one of the most interesting parts of weddings is the part where the wife and the husband demonstrate how they intend to feed each other to the public? These rituals are not for nothing. They help to indicate how caring and equipped both partners are with respects to feeding. So, eating healthy helps you win hearts because it tells the other person that you know how to take care of them. I, for one, would not marry a woman who will not be able to feed me with good food. So if you want to win my nice heart, you must eat healthy, and help me do same.

10—EATING HEALTHY IS A SYMPTOM OF GOOD LIVING

Remember “the golden mean” by Aristotle? Yes, a good life is a life of balance, one that I call “the perfect average”. Exercising, having a good time out of work, moderate dressing and grooming, avoidance of hazardous habits such as smoking, excessive intake of alcohol, among other things, is what really makes for a good life—a life of balance. One area of work-life balance that most people often overlook is the area of eating healthy. Don’t forget that eating healthy is eating a balanced diet.

To conclude, perhaps I should reiterate that eating healthy is not as expensive as you think. And you don’t have to be a rich man to eat healthy. In fact, it will surprise you that so many rich persons end up eating a lot of junk foods that only endangers their health in the long run. Eating healthy, to be sure, simply requires that your meal contains the right amount of nutrients and amino acids your body system needs to function well. One advice I can give is that you should keep taking a lot of fruits and a reasonable amount of water regularly. Yes, eating healthy could be this basic.

There is this popular story surrounding the death of Isaac Newton, that he died while he was solving some serious scientific problem at home in the thought that he had already eaten while, in reality, it was a friend who visited that actually did the eating of the meal his wife had brought to him. Lol. However true that story is, the point to be taken is that no matter how busy and engrossed we may be in life, we must never take eating for granted. More than eating, we must make eating healthy a daily ritual. 

Eating healthy is living wealthy…don’t just eat to live…live to eat!

N/B: this article is the result of a spontaneous written test during an interview with the media house, Contagious 128.