If only I learned this in high school

What class do you wish was taught in high school?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

I hate to think about it because it kind of makes me feel old now, but I graduated from high school almost 19 years ago (which means next year would be my 20 year reunion, yikes). Looking back at the years I spent in two very different high schools, and the class offerings, it’s hard to decide what kinds of classes I wish I had available to me. Of course, things have likely changed since my time.

I remember seeing people on social media bringing up this kind of idea many times before, and one of the usual requests/recommendations is that they wish they had classes for things like Personal Finance or something akin to Home Economics. While I agree that those would have been very beneficial, I also think that some of those topics should definitely come from parents because they would have a better understanding of how to handle their own unique living situations, and the classes would just be an extension of that knowledge to help improve things. (Personally, from what I’m hearing these days, parents need to be more involved in their children’s lives in general, but that’s a whole different rant.)

As for my own personal answer to the prompt, I’d have to say I wish there was a class focused on diet and nutrition. Home Economics classes might teach a lesson or two in cooking, and I was fortunate to learn a few things in the Catering classes that my first high school offered, but none of that covers diet and nutrition, or eating healthier and developing healthy eating habits.

Well, that’s just what I wish for, but again, it could fall in the category of Parental Responsibilities like I was touching on earlier. And who knows, maybe there are some high schools out there that do offer diet and nutrition classes. If there are, they weren’t anywhere near me.

Small things add up

Daily writing prompt
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

There are so many different things I could change in my life that would be improvements. If I were to look at them the way I normally do, I wouldn’t be able to stick to them because I have a problem with that.

For instance, take the idea of “eating better/healthier” and trying to treat that in its entirety as a small improvement. The idea is simple enough to follow and seems like it could be a small thing to do but we often take for granted what our relationship with food is even like. How much thought do you put into what you’re eating?

I’ve gone through different phases of eating healthier and trying do things differently for weight management. I’ve seen success with some, while others I failed miserably with. Although the thought of eating better is simple, it means a change in lifestyle. You have to identify many more changes than you expect when trying to make a “small improvement” related to food. Source and acquisition. Quantities and preparation methods. Storage. So, rather than trying to treat something that is actually much larger as a “small improvement” one thing I’ve been slowly trying to integrate into my life in an attempt to modify my lifestyle towards eating better is simply just “eat some veggies” or “have some fruit” in addition to the other things I eat.

It doesn’t matter that I might be adding more calories to my meals, I just need to add better sources of nutrition to those meals. Then when I’ve made that a consistent thing I can move on to the next small improvement.