I love seeing rules broken, but don`t get me wrong, I love rules; they are central in maintaining order and civility, and breaking should only serve to further these ends. We all live in imaginary constraints that the society seems to have invented long before. These boxes contain stern rules that form or derive from convention, tradition, law, morality or simply good manners that require a lot of courage before bend or even break them. People are aware that breaking these rules is the first step to adventure and satisfaction, and yet few dare to. Few rules across the many spheres of life have already been broken and majority of these rules are usually broken to better cope up with changes in life and make life more livable.
When my mother started out her career as a dietitian, she tells me, nutrition was an outstanding issue. She spent most of the time advising people about what to eat, and how junk food would blow up their waist sizes. However, Instead of drawing more clients to her office, people shied away because donuts, chicken wings and McDonald’s burgers were too dear, too tasty to live without. As a nutritionist, my mum did not struggle with the same issues that her clients struggled with, and she spent the better part of her thirties trying avoiding high energy, high fat and high street foods. She perfectly understood, and spared no moment to let others understand too, that consuming too much sugar takes a devastating toll on their health. In addition, she always impressed upon me that excessive sugar consumption is the key factor underlying obesity and different chronic lifestyle disorders like diabetes. Naturally, the thought being obese scared me, but with statistics indicating as many as 32.8% of Americans are either obese or overweight, I knew how sharp the risk was, besides the fact that this rate has been doubling every 10 years since 1975 (Nielesen 162).
Despite knowing the risks, and having a dietician for a mother, I was like many Americans; in love with my junk and the busy school life made it extremely difficult to reduce sugar in my diet. However, two years without taking sugar, I decided to take control over my own body. I struggled for over a year, fighting cravings and more than once relapsing. Running away from such readily available food is no mean feat, and at one instance, I was forced to stay hungry for a whole day, because I did not know how to cook, and could not find any healthy food to eat. Several years later, I have successfully conquered my habits; my waistline is back to where I love to have it and my mother sleeps easier nowadays, telling other people to change. On my side, adopting the junk-free food and breaking the addiction enabled me to maintain a more balanced diet. My health was under my control, embracing my natural tendencies and fitting them into my diet. This was the best idea and worked to the success of my healthy body, and after which I have taken it upon myself to help other people break whatever habits that have formed into rules in their own lives.
The fact that breaking my junk food addiction worked positively on my side, is a glaring testimony to me that that rules are made to be broken as long as the outcome is legitimate. In addition, it is important that people do not just live constrained in boxes, but explore ways to break or creatively bend the existing rules in their personal, professional and other spheres of life (Paisly 20-26).
Work Cited
Nielesen, J. Rules Are Meant to Be Broken. London: MLR Press, 2012.
Paisly, Addison. Broken Rules. London: iUniverse, 2008.
