Monthly Archives: January 2016

Why the “healthy” weight may not be so healthy

January 27, 2016 By in Love your body Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

1. Healthy behaviours and healthy weights are not the same thing:

  • Overweight people who exercise and eat healthily develop excellent metabolic health, even if they are still an “unhealthy” weight.
  • Slim people who are inactive and eat poorly typically have poor health, despite their “healthy” weight.

2. Much of what contributes to body weight is actually healthy:

  • Many people who work out regularly will develop significantly greater muscle and bone mass, improve their health substantially, yet are at risk of becoming an “unhealthy” weight.
  • Not all body fat is associated with poor health, with more fat in some areas (such as the buttocks and hips) linked to better health.

3. Not accepting our current body weight is highly stressful:

  • Body weight has a strong genetic component, and I don’t know of a single person who has found weight loss to be an easy and stress-free process over the long-term.
  • Seeing yourself as an incorrect weight is a constant emotional stressor (consider that 9 in 10 formerly obese people would choose blindness (!) over being obese again).
  • Constant emotional stress predicts significantly poorer health and early mortality.

4. A large difference between your current and desired body weight is considered a better predictor of physical and mental health, than a large current body weight!

  • There is no clear bodily mechanism that directly links being overweight to poor health.
  • The association between weight and health differs between cultures who perceive the same body weights differently.

Yes, a clear association does exist between body weight and mortality for the population.

But how can one point to this data and accurately conclude that a single individual must be of a particular weight if they wish to be healthy? Especially when the association between weight and health is largely influenced by the way that we perceive our bodies.

Healthier, I think, to do more healthy behaviours, than to stress about needing to be a “healthy” weight.

How to use your personal conflict as an opportunity for growth

January 21, 2016 By in Change your thinking Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

If you’ve recently experienced anger, torment or hurt, here’s an exercise I recommend:

Think of the recent conflict that brought you these emotions.

Now, think hard about one way either:

  1. You previously behaved in a way somewhat similar to how the other person did, or
  2. Your own behaviour in the situation was not perfect (maybe you also did something slightly insensitive or hurtful, even if you meant well, or can justify exactly why you did it).

When you look for and find a fault in your own behaviour, it often hurts. But if you are brave enough to acknowledge it, you are rewarded with a sense of pleasure, pride, acceptance and growth.

Shifting our perspective of conflict from being externally caused, to (at least partially) internally caused, is a useful practice. It can help us become:

  • less biased,
  • less judgmental,
  • less argumentative,
  • less inclined to complain,
  • less likely to react with further conflict, and
  • more forgiving.

Happiness doesn’t come from insisting we are always right.

But it does require us to open minded enough to see that, very often, our initial perspective has room to improve.

How you can think your way to better health

January 15, 2016 By in Holistic health Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Consider the following:

  • Perceiving your daily activities as exercise can result in significant drops in weight, waist circumference and blood pressure, without any actual changes to your reported eating or exercise.
  • Having a make-over decreases your blood pressure, but only if you perceive that it makes you look younger.
  • Pretending to be a pilot improves your vision by around 40%.
  • Your blood sugar level (if you are diabetic) will rise and fall based more on your perception of time, than the actual time.
  • Imagining yourself getting the cold makes you 4 times more likely to actually get it.
  • Viewing your cancer (if you are a cancer survivor) as ‘cured’, as opposed to ‘in remission’, correlates to you being physically healthier, more energetic and less depressed.
  • You have about a 1 in 3 chance of healing yourself from virtually any disorder if you are given a placebo (an effect that remains even if you know it is a placebo).
  • Pretending you have travelled back in time (if you are elderly) significantly improves your strength, flexibility, posture, height, weight, hearing, vision, arthritis, and makes you look physically younger (!!) when judged by people blinded to the study.

Each of these scientific findings makes good sense when we see our mind and body as deeply connected, and understand that our beliefs are far more important than we give them credit for.

If you have a health problem that you can’t overcome, I think it is at least worth asking: is it because I actually can’t, or because I have been living in a society that has made me think that I actually can’t?

Why eating healthy isn’t as hard as you think

January 5, 2016 By in Quit the dieting Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

First, consider these 3 dinners:

  1. Cheese pizza, soft drink and chocolate.
  2. Beef lasagne.
  3. Vegetable and lentil salad with quinoa, kale and freshly grown herbs.

Next, notice these 2 observations:

1. There are some nutritional benefits to eating the beef lasagne. It contains protein, B vitamins, iron and zinc, and is more nutritious than option 1.

2. We don’t need to eat a meal like the vegetable and lentil salad every single night. Healthy eating is compatible with a wide range of foods, because one unhealthy food in small amounts doesn’t make a diet unhealthy.

This all means that good nutrition is far from black and white.

Thinking about food in terms of all or nothing only creates a cycle of aspiring to eat perfectly (unnecessarily), and beating ourselves up when we don’t.

Instead, good nutrition is best viewed as a scale, and best achieved like this:

Step. By step. By step. By step.

The goal is actually not to eat like someone very different to you.

The goal is to eat better than you did yesterday.