When it comes to food, we're not all islands...
We live in a world where we admire and reward independence, success through effort and believe you get what you deserve, reap what you sow, stand on your own two feet. The idea is succinct yet very far from reality. We are not islands, we shelter in storms and play in the sun, we crave contact, seek acceptance, adopt cultures often without regard - we are in fact significantly more at the whim of the tides of our environment than we care to admit. And therein lies a window to our health problems that is often underestimated and overlooked by a fraternity that at its core pursues research and inquiry on the basis that we are islands and the seas that lash our shores and winds that buffet our outcrops matter not. Imagine the uproar if I was to suggest we were obese or ill because our parents have made us so, our governments have been paid to do so, and the battle of the marketing minds is, and has been since the sixties, lost to those with profit aims rather than aims that develop the health of their countrymen. Imagine if I was to say it's our belief that we are in fact responsible, independent individuals that has actually enabled an anti-health environment to develop. That one simple belief that we are islands has allowed us to ignore the seas and breeze long enough that now we find ourselves collectively surrounded by all the things that are bad for us. That we have been trained to love what is bad for us. That we have been conditioned to covet the commodities that build wealth within existing power bases rather than encourage fulfilment through family, friendship, physical and spirtual development. We have gone from apples to donuts in less than 100 years with a mix of reckless abandon and delight? The sweet dough, cloud-like texture, the multi-coloured sprinkles on a sticky deep chocolate coating, the instantaneous dissolution of substance with the briefest flash of satiety leaving us wanting more. We now swell with abundance and pay for our generational melancholy. What will it take to shift all of this?
There is a race on. Will we manage to eliminate ourselves through our outputs polluting the rock we are lucky enough to live on, or will we eat and sit ourselves into mass disease. My money is on that latter - despite all our efforts to sustain life (successful as they are) we seem more hell bent on ending it all by way of malaise. We are fiercely attached to a belief that each of us is able and willing on a moment by moment basis to always choose the apple over the donut. Because of this we refuse to back significant, sweeping, assertive and unwavering mass changes to policy affecting taxes, marketing and food production, with a mix of punishment and reward that will clean up our living environment. So we lay dormant, passive, islands, constantly buffeted by the buffet most recently conjured up in a lab that is the cornerstone of modern food consumerism.
My research in practise (no not standardised, randomised, double blind trials referenced to all and sundry who would condition my research topic to an 'acceptable' hypothesis and then allow it on the basis of scientific rigour to be adopted into a publication which by it's mere history allows the isolated finding to become undisputed fact - another brick in the tower of tripe that to date hasn't worked), my collection of the odd experiential piece of knowledge followed by some critical thinking dessert leads me frequently to one conclusion. Those of us with weight problems (and health problems if you would like to include an even larger cohort) suffer more in this environment, have a higher dependency than others on food (beyond its consumption as a fuel), and have been more poorly conditioned to cope. Fundamentally, we 'chose' the donut over the apple almost every time unless, on a given Monday, we have gathered all our 'independent fortitude' and decided to eat only apples from now on. Tuesday's forecast by the way is for wind, rain and multi-coloured sprinkles.
I often see and take part in discussions on nutrition. And, invariably, those discussions spin from the issues of the overweight to informational issues. That is, we start talking about 'what' an overweight person is, then the 'why' becomes centred very quickly on either poor information, mis-information, not enough facts to act on (more research required please on the Vitamin C content of the rind of an orange grown on the south side of the western most hills in the tropical north when al Niño is present) or low and behold - a lack of will power. I actually prefer the 'lack of will power' chat over the others as, again in my experience, knowing what to do is very very far away from actually doing it anyway. Our challenge is not one of information (and if it was, yeha, easy - let's educate the problem away), but one of behaviour - and when you talk behaviour you then get into a very difficult arena where most scientists are happy to strip off their white coat and promptly head home for a red wine, venison and of course some greens. Leaving us. The practitioners, the heathens of the academic world, the people who prove if that fact is indeed robust or not - that is, if it contributes in some meaningful way to helping someone in their efforts to live well. Being left in a galaxy far far away from facts we must then proceed with the unravelling, in partnership with a client through mere consultation, the lifetime of conditioning that brings them to eat the donut. We then proceed to fearlessly explore that galaxy of personal facts defining the challenges in environment, thinking and conditioning in order to support the client to establish and maintain an apple eating regimen that will eventually improve and likely save their lives.
Ours is not an easy job. To 'shift' all this we must, in lieu of quantum societal change, help one person at a time realise they are not an island. Help them define and explore how they are connected to their world. Help them cut loose from the ties that bind them to the things that hurt them and avoid the weather that brings that folly to their doorstep. We work tirelessly to align their health with their expectations in circumstances often of pain and at times disillusionment. We continue to work amongst the rubble of islands because that is still how most of us are encouraged to think.
This week, take one of your clients who struggles with their weight. Put a donut in one hand (even better if it's warm) and an apple in the other. Ask your client which they think they SHOULD eat? Ask your client which they WANT to eat? Realise in order to help you will need to know more about behaviour than you ever will about food. Then partner your client in an investigation of their environment and discuss the good and the unfortunate with them until through the storm the dawn begins to come.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken. Most of us are looking to break chains not understand metal. Good luck and thanks for being a practitioner in today's challenging world. I hope one day we will, as aware and sometimes weary practitioners, seek out training more often in the skills of counselling and behaviour modification so that we can help clients practise loving what is good for them.
It’s no wonder then that she’s battled for decades with her weight and why ‘going to the gym’ doesn’t work for her. She didn’t need to exercise more or even eat less. She firstly had to understand how she was communicating her emotions and find an alternative language.
I agree entirely, Steve. The wind, the rain, the tripe towers covered in sprinkles - it’s complicated. You read the energy in energy out mantra everywhere, but rarely is it actually that, but mostly it is treated as such. No wonder progress is slow.