Habits

So yesterday's post talked about Tony Horton's advice for making a plan, sticking to it, and doing it, forever. Essentially forming a habit. Humans are creatures of habit, some more than others. My twenty year old son is very habitual and fortunately has mostly good habits. His eating, exercising, and studying habits would be the envy of anyone. Unfortunately a lot of Americans have bad habits that are holding them back and keeping them from realizing their full potential.

On our trip back from Jackson Hole on Monday we stopped in the town of Rawlins Wyoming for lunch. There weren't a lot of healthy food options (at least within a stone's throw of the Interstate) and our hunger got the best of us and we ended up choosing a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. Upon further consideration I think McDonald's would have been a better option. Anyway we perused the menu and quickly determined that Taco Bell offered no food choices of redeeming value. The KFC menu wasn't much better but they did have a grilled chicken option that seemed like the least of all evils so we both went with that.

It is a rare occasion when I visit a fast food restaurant these days and I have to say I was appalled by the experience. The food was awful! Really devoid of taste. I was tempted to ask for my money back. I looked around me and saw nothing but sad, overweight (many obese) people shoveling this slop into their mouths. I could certainly tell that no one was actually enjoying their food. In a society where 20% of our meals are consumed in the car I can only assume that we eat this way out of habit.

Mark Sisson has a good post about creating good habits here. If you have some bad habits that you would like to break read this.