No one is perfect. But, everyone is capable of improving their everyday healthy lifestyle.
Especially when it comes to eating habits...
In today’s Yolanda’s Take, a listener wants to know how to go from bad eating habits to healthy. She sat down with fellow gospel singer Donnie McClurkin to give her advice.
These are the steps Yolanda Adams recommends to start eating better and living a healthier life.
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1. Walk around with a plastic bag of vegetables.
Make sure you're getting some kind of green during the day. It may sound absurd, but Yolanda says keeping vegetables on you at all times for snacking is an easy trick to ensure you are getting your daily greens and vegetables. It will also save you from making that unhealthy trip to McDonald's.
"Stuff like that started making sense and started helping me, especially with diabetes," fellow gospel singer Donnie McClurkin shares. "And with diabetes, I started realizing that my nutrients were going, my vitamins were going and my body was breaking down. It was based on two things: what I was eating and what I didn't know about my body."
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2. Make sure you are getting your vitamins.
"Make sure you have a good vitamin because you know as we get older, our hormones change and we lose certain things but you don't have to lose it," Yolanda shares. "I don't take any hormone therapies or anything like that. I take natural God-given things from food because that's where you're supposed to get it first because there is such an amazing array of vitamins that are already in food."
"What I was eating was satisfying my appetite, but it was killing my body. And I was watching Dr. Oz one day and he said that vitamin D helps your pancreas," McClurkin adds. "Well, my pancreas had shut down and was pumping up four times a day with my insulin."
A month or two later, McClurkin says he would notice his blood sugar levels drop down to 70 and 69 after taking his shot and eating his food. From there McClurkin went to see his doctor to find out why his blood sugar level was so low, and his doctor said "Your pancreas is pumping out insulin again." This was a direct cause of his vitamin D deficiency, something that drastically affects Black Americans.
3. Don't ignore your symptoms.
"My legs started cramping up at night when I go to sleep and I'm in excruciating pain because my muscles cramp and harden and I found out it was a vitamin B-12 deficiency. We are ignorant, not because we don't know, but because we ignore what we know. Ignorance is one of two things: either you don't know or you ignore what you do know. And in America, we ignore what we do know and we keep on going until our lifespan is cut short and our kids wind up having to bury us," McClurkin shares.
"And it's unnecessary," Yolanda adds. "Cause I want to be around for a long time. I plan to be wearing my red pumps until I'm 92."
Yolanda adds to McClurkin's sentiments that the Black community is suffering from ignorance.
"What tends to happen is that we eat so wrong for so long that by the time we go to the doctor, it's too late," she says.
Yolanda's passion comes from seeing minorities dying far too quickly because of conditions like heart disease and high blood pressure.
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4. Move with purpose.
Make sure you're drinking that water and move something on purpose for 15 minutes every single day, Yolanda advises. "You've got to drink more water. You've got to make sure that you use the microwave less. You've got to make sure that you are cooking your own food 'cause you know what you're putting in it," she adds.
And when cooking, McClurkin adds his own two cents: make sure you aren't cooking those vital nutrients your body needs out of the food.
Remember, change in whatever aspect starts with you. We are just a few days into January, so now is the perfect time to make the change to healthier eating habits. Hopefully, this list helps.
