A Motivational interview with Lola Adeshina

Lola has been my friend and classmate for the past 6 months and I have to say her well rounded and motivated attitude has been an inspiration. Lola has been on her healthy eating journey for 2 years, I decided I would like to interview her to find out the deets on how she does it. We sit down in our learning team room and of course she has a healthy looking smoothie and smile. 

Why did you begin your healthy eating journey?

I began this journey mainly because I started running into a lot of health issues and made the decision to start an overall healthy lifestyle to avoid further problems with my health, so I started out with clearing my refrigerator of any bad foods, ever since then I have noticed a huge difference in my health and never looked back.

What do you enjoy about eating healthy?

It makes me feel good! I wake up feeling energized, my skin feels refreshed and nourished. I find that when I don’t eat healthy I tend to be less happy... also, who wouldn’t love the perks of an acne-free face (she chuckles). Eating healthy allows me to be organized in the sense that I can have healthy prepared meals for my long days at work, instead of worrying about what to eat or even worse- what is going into my body.

What has been the biggest challenge of eating healthy?

Temptations! I don’t believe anyone that says they’d rather have kale chips than chocolate and ice cream on a bad day.

Confession of a dine-out-holic

So I have a confession to make. I love eating at restaurants and trying out different types of cuisines. It’s is amazing the variety of food I can try by eating out.  I can try Ethiopian one day and Japanese another.  It’s like traveling through different cultures in a short period of time in the same city. I get to learn more about what an injera is and how to eat it; I get to taste different types of ramen dunk in deliciously rich bone soup.  As an individual that values learning about different cultures, dining out has been a great teacher to me.

 Brunch

 Mexican

 Filipino

Fast food

Living in an urban city with a big University population made me dine out more often. It’s a social event. If I haven’t seen someone for a long time, I would meet up with them for lunch or dinner and grab a bite. I also enjoy trying new restaurants because being adventurous is part of being a dine-out-holic. Students get influenced by the social norms of our peer group all the time.  It has been shown that friends are an influential model agents with food selection (Kinard et al., 2011). So if your friends are eating unhealthy food, you’re most likely going to be engaging in the same behavior.