This is truly a case of good news being taken a step too far. Of course healthy eating is important. Few people will argue that point. But I’m going to take this moment to speak against placing your major focus on eating healthy foods.
Healthy eating is simply not enough. A recent scientific study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 3, 2006) will even back me up. Scientists compared two groups of people – equivalent in nearly every way except for where they live.
One group lived in the United States and the other in the United Kingdom. The Brits were healthier. And even “a standard set of risk factors (smoking, drinking, and obesity) do not fully account” for the health differences the researchers found.
It’s easy enough to understand why people latch on to the healthy eating bandwagon so easily. 3 main reasons:
- Food choices are easy to describe and measure. “You can eat this many points worth of that food and still maintain your ideal weight.”
- The results of having made the choices are also easy to describe and measure. “Your cholesterol reading was too high. Better cut back on the saturated fats.”
- Food choices are within the zone of control for most adults in our society. “No thanks, I’ll skip dessert tonight.”
But frankly, in my mind, healthy food choices aren’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to genuine healthy living.
What’s the missing link? It’s not getting your exercise, an adequate amount of sleep, refraining from tobacco use, wearing your seatbelt, or flossing. Those are all important, of course.
But the main thing I see every day can be described using one simple word:
Stress.
The word is simple enough. We all have some idea of what it feels like to be under stress. But to be perfectly honest with you, I sincerely doubt that many of us truly understand its potential to undermine our state of health. I’ve made quite a study of it over the years, and I’ll be the first to admit that there’s plenty I haven’t figured out yet either.
But there’s a lot I do know. One of the most relevant pieces is this. Until and unless your stress is under good control, you’ll be hard-pressed to follow a healthy food plan for very long. Most successful healthy eaters that I know adjust their attitude first, and their balanced state of mind eventually leads to a balanced diet. It just doesn’t work the other way around.
It is possible, of course, to use willpower to control your food choices temporarily. But that’s forcing the situation – manipulating yourself through the use of fear (“If I eat those fries, I’m likely to drop dead of a heart attack”) or a desire to out-maneuver others with your supposed asceticism (“I don’t allow sweets in the house. You’ll just have to take that pie home.”)
If you think that either of those approaches is truly healthy, we need to talk. Seriously.
Here’s the thing. Unhealthy eating is often a subconscious effort to rebalance your life in the face of stress. Manipulating the outward expression of a problem situation, in this case food choices, does absolutely nothing to resolve the underlying stressor.
Speaking as a person obsessed with digging for the underlying situation, I find all this fuss about food disturbing. Not only does it not solve the problem, but it obscures the possibility that there even could be one.
Unless you’ve got a serious reason not to, I say – go out for an ice cream once in a while if you like it. Take a friend and make an event out of it. Eat cake on your birthday.
But don’t skip that morning appointment with your journal. Use it to figure out what lies beneath the surface of your situation. A simple self-awareness practice may just turn out to be the real foundation of your healthy lifestyle.
Elizabeth Eckert can help you explore how simple everyday choices create health — or undermine even the best of intentions. With a background that ranges from energy medicine to structural bodywork to developmental psychology, this "Stick-To-It Coach" has the experience to support you in creating the healthiest possible expression of — you!
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