I think there's a misperception for many people who are trying to get fit and eat healthy, in that most programs and advice center on the symptoms, rather than the causes of obesity, one cause in particular. This past week I assigned my boot camp to eliminate one unhealthy item from their diet. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Most people assume that when I hand out assignments like that, the goal is to keep removing an item every week or so, and replacing those choices with healthy ones. And if we're able to keep doing that, eventually our diet will be healthy. A healthy diet is a good result, of course, but it's not the reason for the assignment.
We live in a culture redundant with choice. Colour, flavor, style, size, packaging, imported, home grown, the list is endless. But as neurologists have shown in a number of studies, but probably best illustrated in The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, the result of too many options is usually paralysis. That is, when we have too many choices, we actually become less suited to make good decisions. The activity in our brain becomes accelerated, and we become even more susceptible to sales people and advertisements. And in the end, our tendency is to make decisions that tap into our emotional core. Hence the brilliant marketing of companies like McDonalds, who create memories and nostalgia by marketing to children. No matter how often or how many studies reveal that the food at McDonalds is completely unhealthy, we still get the urge to visit, don't we? We still want to bring our kids there, although we're basically lining their bodies with chemicals and hormones and fat. For me, the memory is Christmas. $1.44 day (the first Monday of every month) at Woolco, where my mom would take the three kids to do their Christmas shopping every December. When we were done she'd take us to McDonalds. My parents made sure that we ate healthy, so McDonalds was a rare treat. The next memory is college, going with my buddies to "Mikky D's" after class and plying back the Big Macs.
As we get older, and as we become swamped with the choices on the market, it's easy for me, especially when I'm stressed, to re-create those moments by heading to McDonalds. (I don't have any emotional ties to picking up a salad.) This is how our brain works, and advertisers know it.
So when I ask my clients to remove one unhealthy item from their diet per week, the goal is not merely a healthier diet, but more importantly, to remind my clients that they have a choice. That everything we eat, everything we do, is a choice.
I pass people all the time, people in their twenties and thirties who walk and act like they're eighty. Bowed and discouraged, they smile apologetically as they move beside you, their bulk rendering it difficult for them to maneuver. I'll be honest, I find it enraging that companies are able to sell their garbage and promote it as being healthy. (The latest is a chocolate milk commercial that tells you it is healthy. Of course, milk has been getting away with this for years, due to the size of their lobby) What's worse, it is passed down from generation to generation. Having spent the majority of my life as a youth worker, I consider obesity in children a form of child abuse. Abuse by both the society and the adults who allow children to eat whatever they like. Fat cells never die, and the amount of cruelty overweight kids have to endure is unbelievable. Most adults are not privy to the abuse because they don't see it, but when you witness it, day after day, month after month, you realize just how much obesity sets you apart as a kid and makes you a target. As adults, we have the ability to inform ourselves. Children do not have that luxury. That said, our culture is designed so that even adults do not realize that they've lost the ability to choose.
Conventional wisdom is rarely wise. In our society, "conventional" wisdom is still established by companies with the most money (Meat & Dairy) and the best advertising (McDonalds, Wendy's, etc…) The issue is control. They want to dominate your decisions, and they spend $300 billion dollars a year to do it. Fortunately, thanks to the mixed blessing that is the internet, there is plenty of information available for people everywhere, from the smallest towns to the major cities, to do their own reserch, to challenge the information that we're being swamped with each day.
My advice then, is simple. Everything you do is a choice, so inform yourself and choose wisely. Understand that advertising companies know how your brains work better than you do, and beware the emotional ties that cause us to make poor choices. Even in small towns, the pace of life in North America is fast, as we have somehow bought into the lie that pleasure and work must be kept separate, and that only leisure activities provide pleasure. We rush from place to place, from event to event, our bodies starving and filled with processed food that is loaded with hormones because we associate leisure-busy with pleasure, although our bodies indicate otherwise.
Every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you lie down, you are being prodded to consume something.
Stop!
Go for a walk.
Spend time with your family.
Turn the television off.
Spend time in meditation or prayer.
Take out a piece of paper and think about what you like best in your life, and what you don't like, and then set yourself some modest goals to change. In the end, you'll realize that it isn't the result that matters, so much as the journey, and if you're in control, it makes all the difference.
-Steve
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