Doing better next term

Subject: Doing better next term

Simple questions like drinking a certain quantity of water each day or restricting your diet to certain foods all in an effort to improve ones health and, where possible, avoid as much as is possible illness and the onset of becoming disabled in old age should be a no brainer  but often is met with the resistance of old habits and a lifetimes routine.
People of a certain generation grew up unaccustomed to the importance of health through diet or the necessity of exercise and that the body, like a car goes further when maintained properly. People of my generation ate and drank what pleased us with only one criteria, to fulfil the pleasure of taste and convenience. Pie and chips, the bacon and egg fry up, beer in the pub and lots of sweet tea, all an anathema today for many of our diet conscious young.
It's especially a bone of contention within a family where the sense of only putting in your mouth what is good for you is as simple as ABC and yet changing parents to change a lifetimes habit is like turning a tanker around. The common sense of a concerned son or daughters message is taken on board, as is the the acknowledgement of the benefit but old habits die hard and for most of us over a certain age, eating is a habit not an opportunity to improve the machine.

For myself the sight of people nuzzling a sip out of a water bottle is from another custom as far removed from my own as is eating raw fish from a sushi bar. The smell of fried fish and chips or the making of a bacon butty summon up real food and pleasure whilst the ubiquitous salad or a slice of watermelon in the morning is never going to cut it.
Why do we find it difficult to retrain ourselves to consider the sensible message that 'what you put in our mouth has consequences'.
It's not bloody minded stubbornness, although to our loved ones, it seems so as we seem to reject their common sense and rather continue a life long routine of behaviour, mostly the result of our  sub-conscience. How do we throw out the habits of a lifetime, how do we acknowledge that we have been foolish for most of our lives  especially so when the pleasure you got out of eating is now replaced with an act of survival.
Perhaps it's even this conscious effort to prolong survival that's at fault.
Ageing is a process, we slow down, we become restricted in some way from what we did and now find difficulty doing. Ageing is as much a process of mentally acquitting yourself with the knowledge  that you can't put off the inevitable for long and no amount of healthy eating is going to make much difference. 'Nonsense' say our kids, brought up in a different world and primed with the claims made for having a healthy diet and concerned with the benefits of eating well, especially for ones parents who they see failing away before their eyes.
 I can only say Its not that we don't see the logic rather it's the pressure of learning that we have been uneducated for much of our lives and that's a bitter pill to swallow but especially so when taken with all the other pills we now need to keep us alive.
Like the school report "he promises to do better next term".