Transformation Tuesday: Mike Moriarity
There is usually more than one reason why an individual would want to make a transformation in their life, whether that is health, personal, job, sport, etc. I will give you one of my many reasons. I don’t consider this a personal transformation, but a family, or maybe family history transformation.
My commitment to health and fitness started at a young age. My family has a history of heart disease. My grandfather had 3 heart attacks. My father has had 2 heart attacks. I was in 4th grade when my father had his first heart attack. Since then my family was forced to focus on what we needed to do in our lives to help avoid this in the future. My mother cooked differently and my father made it routine to exercise and stopped smoking. It was made clear by example the consequences of certain life choices. Looking back these seem like fairly simple changes but even back in the 90’s our society’s knowledge was still greatly limited. And even with the knowledge, change can be a struggle and as a family, we were far from perfect when it came to diet and exercise. Common struggles get in the way such as time, convenience, money or just liking the taste of pizza. We all continue to grow and learn though.
I believe living through it at a young age had a huge impact on how I live my life now. It is important to continue to educate each other and our children. I have a family of my own now and take pride in teaching them the importance of nutrition and exercise. I explain to them why they need to drink milk, not just force them. There is always a motivation that can be found to eat well and stay active. They love chicken, tilapia and broccoli (or baby trees). We are a very active family as well and it is just as important to teach them play and exercise is supposed to be fun! This was a generational transformation and it could not have been done without learning from previous generations. I believe this story will just continue to be more and more common place as the generations go by and society continues to learn and grow. Final lesson, don’t smoke kids.