Humans, a Reflection of Mother Nature
Is it a coincidence that we have similar traits to the very earth we walk on? Is it coincidence that there is a reflective trend in the incidence of human ill health and the degradation and damage of our planet?
It is all too easy to get caught up in the materialist, workaholic human world and forget to stop and look where we have come from and what we are actually part of. As humans, we contain the same amount of water as there is on the surface of planet earth*. We rise and sleep with the sun, females have the same length of menstrual cycle as the moons cycle, we are the same salinity as the sea and growth comes from good nourishment. Just like our planet we are delicate and fragile when we add chemicals and foreign objects to the system. In essence we are a mirror image of the very environment we call home. Yet we forget to look outside our materialistic work and think of the consequences of our behaviours and to varying degrees we are killing of both the human race and the planet that houses us.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well, that depends on you. This can be just passing information or it can help you to see that we are part of something very large and exciting and you can start to make choices that reflect your health and in return the health of your home, the earth.
The less chemicals we consume and spray the healthier we can be, the more we nourish our body and earth the stronger we can grow and the more we have respect for ourselves, others and our planet the more we can get out of life. The steps to achieve this can be as simple as, stepping of the rat race once in a while and see the beauty around you and treat your body, mind and environment as you would treat a small child.
*The exact numbers may vary depending on the book or review you have read.
Fridge Nutrition
I truly believe everyday is a school day and we should learn something new at every opportunity. This should be made up of some factual, some fun and some life lessons. Here is what I have learnt today and I believe it is truly spectacular. I will leave it to you to decide which sections go into which category.
Whilst having a great session with a client over a tea (always makes for a good session) we were putting the running world to right and sorting out nutrition requirements. Tim my client was explaining how well his training was going for the half marathon in Oct and with only 3 weeks training it truly is.
We then moved on to the matter of nutrition. Many magazines, runners guides etc recommend high man made carbohydrate loading pre run. This however seems somewhat illogical to me and I was sharing my point with Tim. Why when manmade carbs cause you to have a blood spike and therefore store the food instantly as fat are they recommended to be consumed in large volumes to prepare you with instant marathon energy. If they suggest having more fat stores which take a long time to burn is good for long distance running then they are right or if you have no fat and need some they are right, otherwise I beg to differ. They have also forgotten to look at what negative implications this can have on the body.
We concluded it was important to eat protein and natural carbohydrates (vegetables, salad and fruit). Since it can be hard to eat enough nutrition during hectic lives Tim came up with a revolutionary idea. He, like many of us, has been told foods in the fridge lose their nutrition. However, the fridge is tightly sealed, how can the nutrients escape? Tim’s solution is to open the fridge take in a great breath and have one of your five a day from the floating nutrients. Phenomenal!
Why Bother?
Why do we bother working all the hours we do, what is the point of it all? What is the point in making money when there is little to no time to spend it? It is all too easy to lose sight of why we work so hard and spend so much time away from our friends, families and loved ones. Do you ever feel you’re on a treadmill and just want to step off and enjoy life?
When was the last time you went out and did something you really enjoyed that made you happy? It is important to make yourself feel good in this world not just others. If we are happy we can then give more to others, it is not a selfish act to put your feelings first sometimes. Today so many of us have lost sight of what life is about. We simply work 8 till late and then come home eat, telly, bed and then start all over again. What has happened to doing the things that make us happy, laugh or relaxed. Why are we spending all this time working and not choosing to make time to play?
If you had to plan your perfect day would you be able to do it now? Could you list 10 things that you love to do? These can be anything from having a drink at your favourite watering hole with a friend to skiing in the Alpes. What makes all the hard work worthwhile for you?
For most of us, the possibility of not working due to winning the lottery is not that high, some may say lightning chance, so we have to accept that we will need to work to maintain our present lifestyles. However, what can we do so that we are not just following the rat race and loosing life one day at a time?
What are some of the things we can do to get a balance and make time to do the things that make us happy? The starting point has to be knowing what it is that makes you happy, so make a list of your favourite day and all those things you want to do and love to do. Then start to do, begin to schedule in your activities in to your weekend and evenings and make life what you want it to be. Stay off the rat race and make life worth living.
Does a size 12 define us?
Why have we become so obsessed with numbers and what they mean in the weight loss/body shape world? I don’t believe there is a single woman who has not been upset because a certain size top, pair of jeans/trousers or skirt, did not fit her in a particular shop. And men are not exempt from this. And when these outfits don’t fit, we instantly feel it’s a, bad day or I’m fat and no good, this exercise/diet/healthy eating is just a waste of time, why should I bother, pass me the chocolate and crisps!! What is frightening is when the questions lead you to ask, ‘if I’m not a 12, who am I?’ As if a size is defining who you are.
There are many reasons we have ended up with these thoughts and beliefs, unfortunately they are not easy to stop, we can’t just say stop doing it. But if we can at least be come conscious of what is happening and know when it’s happening we are on the way to helping ourselves feel better. So what are some of the influence?
- Media
- Marketing
- Celebrities
- Peers and friends
- Learnt behaviours
Media, marketing and celebrities are constantly bombarding us with what we should look like, what we should wear and how to wear it. A question we should first ask is who said and will that suit me, someone who is not only bone? But this is not what we think or believe due to a life time of instilled beliefs and values and now it is very difficult to break these learnt patterns and behaviours. Instead we discuss it with friends and work colleges and fuel the situation further. Can anybody see the label in your clothing? Do people really look and think oh she is a size… or do they think she has good figure or do they not really care? I believe it is more about your own perception of yourself that you project onto what others might be thinking.
Manufactures also have a major part to play in the size war. How can we say we are, per say, size 12 when every brand of cloths is a different size, every style is a different size and I am sure you have experienced it before, sometimes even the exact same rack of tops/jeans are slightly different in size. If this is the case how can we ever be just one size? Most of us know what style makes us look good and what brands fit so why don’t we go with what will make us feel good and not set ourselves up to experience pain?
It is a sad a distressing time to think that if we don’t fit into a specific size we are not who we thought we were and are not good enough. Why not look outside the label and ask better questions, such as how do I look as me (not as a size), how do I feel and what is important in my world and if like most you’re not totally happy ask yourself ‘am I working towards that I want to be?’ If you’re not, why not start now to be who you what to be, not what a false media driven world tells you, you should be.
Sully - The Dream Catcher
Not long ago my friends four year old daughter, Lilly, started to have bad nightmares. So much so she did not want to go to bed. Her fast thinking father, Dan, rushed out and brought Sully the dream catching monster from the film Monsters Inc, one of Lilly’s favourite films. Dan explained how Sully would catch her nightmares before she had them and she would have no more bad dreams just happy ones. To all our amazement from that night on, as long as Sully is there, she never has bad dreams.
This got me thinking. If a blue cuddly monster can cause a child to believe so strongly that they are not going to have nightmares that they don’t, surly anything we believe strongly enough can be true.
The key to understanding this as a possibility is that no one see’s the real world, just their interpretation of the world based on their own values, past experiences and beliefs. If a bald headed, tattooed man walked into the room in biker kit, people would respond very differently. For example, if someone had been mugged by a man that matched that description, they are going to treat the man differently than someone who has a best friend that looks like that. We assess the world on what we have experienced before, what we think we know and believe.
This opens the floor to debate as to what is actually true and what is not. In fact, no one can ever say something is absolutely right, only their take on it from their past experiences, values and beliefs. Of course, there are something’s that are more likely to be common knowledge as we have all experienced them, be it in a slightly different way. For example too much chocolate will make you fat!
The question then has to be asked, if we personally believe something to be true and we get feedback confirming this (as we have looked for it), then surly it’s now true. Magic football socks for example. Many people have a pair of luck socks they wear under the football socks. Do we really believe they are lucky/magic or have we worn them enough times when the team has won to believe they bring luck?
The question I would like to ask is don’t we all need a Sully? Not just for dream catching but one that can allow us all to believe again in what we can be, achieve and do if only we believe. Can Sully be the creator of belief in adulthood?
Societal expectations are killing us!
Is it not time we started to realise the negative effect we are having on ourselves with the latest diet, exercise regime and you must be….expectations?
What are some of these ‘societal expectations’?
- Be slim and fit into the BMI range (to be discussed in a later blog)
- Keep up with the latest fashion and look (at work and/or social)
- Eat only this… (depends what you have read or latest fad)
- Exercise at least 3 times a week for an hour
- Use the latest gimmick to exercise it will definitely work
- Remember your British, stiff upper lip and tell people everything is good
- Been tanned or white, depending on the latest look
- Work hard and long hours to be successful
- Spend lots of time with your family or you’re not a good parent/husband/wife
These are a selection of societal expectations and they vary across cultures and families.
We are all brought up in a world that is dictated by unwritten expectations, we are never actually given a list about these farcical rules, nor do we consciously sign up to them. But, whether we are aware of them or not they are there and have been for years. Many expectations are instilled in us from an early age and they become part of our reality. We then live by these ‘rules’ and feel guilty or bad if we do not maintain them and believe we have let people down or failed. How can we have failed or been bad if what we have broken are only expectations created over time that hold no more truth or absolute fact than teddy bears talk (which most of us believed at some point!).
In addition to this how many hours do we truly believe we have in a day to achieve and reach all these expectations. We have set ourselves up to fail before we have even started. But hey, let’s get on with them and try and then prove to ourselves we are not good enough.
If only society could step back and look at what it’s creating. We (as we all follow and feed into these nonsense) are creating extremes in many aspect of our lives such as; body size, eating disorders of all types are increasing both gaining and losing weight and working hours are extreme, more unemployed and at the same time, more people working crazy hours. The amount of people that you speak to who are having weight or work challenges is countless. Yes we need to work to live and have a ‘healthy’ lifestyle but at what cost must we have these. It seems only to apt, that depression is at an all time high. There must be a middle ground and not the extreme we find ourselves in today.
What would it take to have values, rather than expectations, that allow people to accept themselves more easily and not be judged in a heartbeat on what we (society) expects of them? What would our values have to be for this to exist?
Spectrums not black and white
It seems that in the world of health, fitness and wellbeing everything is black and white and we have lost sight of spectrums. At a time when there are more diet and exercise clubs and gimmicks than ever before, we have a growing obesity epidemic on our hands, talk about extreme opposites. Why then is this multi million pound health and fitness industry not getting success in the war against ill health and obesity.
I believe the number one reason to this problem is the extreme approach the industry uses. You are either on a diet or presumably eating junk. If you’re not training hard and every day, you must be doing nothing, whatever happened to ‘anything is better than nothing’.
In our hectic lifestyles we are expected to commit 100% to whatever diet or exercise plan we are given and if you don’t well you may as well start again next week or, well, just give up. Surly if you are moving more than you were last week you are doing better?! We have to start asking ourselves better questions and change what is currently been done as its clearly not working. A new approach needs to be implemented. Ask yourself, if diets worked why there is not just one and why are people not on it for life. Clearly then they don’t for life, they are just a quick fix. The question therefore should be ‘what can I personally do to get to my results taking into account my current lifestyle?’
I do not advocate counting calories but to demonstrate my point I will use them here. They say that on average adults put on 2 pounds every year of their adult life. Not much you say, but over the years that soon adds up. However, for our example, say currently you eat 3 mars bars per week and you decide to cut back and have only two a week from now on, what difference would it really make?
1 mars = approx 300cals
So in a month you would have had 4×300=1200cals less (the equivalent of almost a day’s worth of food)
In a year that’s 1200×12=14,400cals less (the equivalent of approx 8 days worth of food.
Counting calories does not make your diet/eating plan healthy but this highlights how you can still enjoy life and make a substantial difference to your waist line and well being. If you want to change for life you need to move away from societal black and white views and find your place on the spectrum. Any time you do better than yesterday, you are working towards your goals.
What is health?
The word health is used in so many different ways today but what actually is it and how do we achieve health if indeed that’s what we are aiming for. Is it slimness, is it how far you can run, is it how many hours you can function for and does it vary with all of us.
The dictionary definition of health is: the condition of the body and the degree to which it is free from illness, or the state of being well (taken from the online Cambridge Dictionary).
Many people feel they are free from illness and it is hard to argue with them as they may well appear healthy and participate fully in the activities they have become used to doing on a day to day basis. However, what if you asked a model to play a game of squash? Would she be able to play the game for more than 10 minutes and if she can’t, does that make her unhealthy? I am sure she looks slim and fits ‘societal healthy’.
One of the key indicators of health today, is that you are slim. As obesity rises, more and more importance is being put on the waist line measurements. I am not saying they are not of use and have some relevance but are they everything and are these measurements causing us to make bad decisions on how to become healthy?
If your waist line is bigger than the ‘norm’, a fast way to lose the inches is to eat low fat or low sugar foods. But do these foods really put life and therefore health into your body? Our bodies make 3millon cells a second. Would you feed a new born or small infant low fat/low sugar food, or would you choose foods packed with nutrition to nourish the body? As adults we somehow think we are different but just like children we are growing everyday and as such need to put the right ingredients in to grow. Eating nutritious food 80% of the time may be one of the ways to improve health. Although we cannot see inside we need to know our cells are forming well and we can control this by what we choose to put in
What other factors may influence health?
Good sleep and sufficient rest
Water
Movement
Good thoughts
Safety
Love
As the media and Government continue to lose sight of the true definition of health and instead focus on the waist line, the obesity epidemic can only continue to rise. We need to address the whole person and strive to provide education on each missing aspect, with each individual, if we are to see improvements in health and indeed wellbeing.
Just Do It! And no, this is not a Nike promotion!
I am not sure about you but I have been told countless times by doctors, health care professionals and bosses to’ just go and do it’. Why do people think that if they say ‘you should just do it’ it’s going to solve the problem? Surly if we knew how to ‘just do it’ we would have done it by now and would not we wasting their time.
I find it hard to believe any of us choose not to go and do the things that would make us health, well and rich if we knew what to do and what was stopping us from doing them. Simply been told to ‘do it’ is not going to get to the route of the problem, rather mask the problem like pain killers do!
The question should be, ‘what is actually stopping us from getting what we want and how can we help ourselves?’ Let’s take weight loss as an example. The doctor says ‘just stop eating so much and exercise more’. I am pretty confident to say, most if not all, overweight patient know they need to eat less and move more. I mean it’s not rocket science! The true problem/question is what’s stopping them changing their present behaviour. How many people really address the deeper questions and change their behaviour for life?
We are all intelligent human beings and know what is right, the problems arise when emotions and beliefs get in the way and cause us to act in ways that are destructive to our wellbeing. If we do not address these deeper areas, emotions and beliefs, true change cannot happen. This is not to say we all have ‘issues’, what it is saying is, we have all picked up emotional attachments, beliefs and values throughout our lives. These can easily be retrained, just as easily as we change our mind about, say cloths we do and do not like. Have you ever looked back at a photo and thought ‘why would I buy something like that!’ At the time you must have liked it and now you have changed your beliefs and dislike it.
So next time you are told to ‘just do it’, have a think about the things you have always done and what your emotions, beliefs or values are around them. If you change these then the behaviour will follow suit.
Root Cause - Emotions not Behaviours
As our lives become more inactive due to cars, computers and the fear of gyms, to name but a few factors, its vital people eat healthier and find ways to move more. However, when we look at the statistics it is frightening to see how few people really change or maintain a healthy lifestyle for any considerable time. We have to ask ourselves, how do we create lasting change to solve this personal and societal, epidemic.
Many approaches to health and wellbeing are still segmental when in fact the human body is a unitary system with the mind and body being inseparable. Traditional approaches aim only to address the behaviour of an individual by implementing change with food and/or movement rather than the root cause (fig 1.) of the problem, emotions and thoughts which ultimately drive the behaviour.
The iceberg analogy (fig. 1) outlines the importance of getting to the root cause, the emotions/thoughts. Studies have shown how hard it is to change a behaviour, Paul Chek noted that it takes 300 repetitions to create a habit and 3500 to 5000 consistent repetitions (if you run the old habit just once, you have to start over) to change an old habit (Chek 2002). If this is even half true, how many people are going to consistently run the new habit successful at a conscious level and not give in to temptation? What is needed is an approach that has an impact at the fundamental level and influences the emotions and thoughts that drive an individual, consciously or unconsciously, to behave in the way they do. If change is made at this level then behaviour can only follow.
The brain is highly complex and will associate events and behaviours when the emotions are strong enough. When you hear the song to your first kiss/date do you feel set emotions? The brain has associated the music and the emotions. The same happens any time strong emotions occur alongside a specific behaviour like eating a box of chocolates when you feel lonely and sad. Each time you experience the feeling of loneliness or sad in the future you will crave that box of chocolates and likewise those specific chocolates could cause you to feel lonely or sad. Unless the emotions are addressed and understood, the behaviour of eating chocolates will never go for good.
There are many approaches that help people move forward from these associated emotions, everything from neuro linguistic programming (NLP), time line therapy and counselling to acupuncture and hypnosis.
It could be deduced from this that there is no point in simply working with food and movement as it all happens at the level of the brain/mind. However, as previously mentioned, you cannot split the mind and body. The body does influence the mind and so working with healthy eating and movement, in conjunction with emotions and thoughts is paramount. When the body is static and/or unhealthy food choices are made, the body is compromised from a nutritional point and this has knock on effects to energy levels and emotions. The neural networks run the entire body from muscles to memory so anything that influences one influences the other. It is for this reason we must educate people on the importance of addressing the entire body and help people create life changing strategies to health and fitness.
