Saturday, February 19, 2011

Normal or Insane?

I was coaching a client earlier this week about eating habits. He said something interesting to me. He said he just wanted to be able to eat "normal".  He said that meant he just wanted to eat the way he usually does: bread, potatoes, pasta, starches.  Two thoughts occured to me.

First, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing yet expecting different results.  If we eat the way we always have and we expect to change our health, i.e. lose weight, control blood chemistry, have more energy, etc., we might just be insane.

This is the down side to crash diets. For example, HCG works very well at helping a person drop a lot of weight very quickly. The challenge is that it was never intended to be a long term solution. If after a round of HCG a person slowly goes back to their "normal" eating habits, they will also slowly go back to their "normal" unhealthy self. To think otherwise is...insanity.

Second, I realized that in this sense, being normal is not always a good thing. What is normal?

Mirriam-Webster dictionary describes normal as "conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern".  What is standard or regular pattern of health in this country? Let's see...1 in 2 women will get breast cancer, 1 in 3 men will get prostate cancer. 1 in 3 will become diabetic, unless you are of a minority group in which case it is 1 in 2. So, "normal" lifestyle patterns cause "normal" diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.  

If that is normal, I want to be weird. I want my family, friends, patients, and everyone I can influence to be weird with me until healthy is normal again. 

Can you join me? Do you have the courage to be weird? It is really not hard. Eat veggies, fruits, and lean meats daily, refuse food with bug spray on it (if you are not eating organic- it is covered in bug spray), shut off the TV or computer, take a multivitamin and fish oil (USANA Health Sciences), avoid sugar, dare I say it...choose to be healthy.

You can do it! I can help. Call, email, send smoke signals, use carrier pigeons- I don't really care how you reach me- just do it. Make the change and choose health!