Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that made him sick.
Hippocrates
I have been pondering this quote for some years now and I thought it would be a fitting topic for my first post. It encapsulates much of my philosophy about nutrition and health and helps you discern the true nature of your actions and their impact on your health.
Because the diseases we suffer from in the first world are mostly chronic in nature, the effects of our choices and lifestyle are massively delayed.
Our brains are much better at understanding cause and effect in the short term. Introduce several contributing factors and a span of years or decades between cause and effect, and we’re much more prone to losing our way.
Step One: Recognize the problem
In order to give up the things which made you sick, you first have to recognize what made you sick, and face the reality that it was harmful to you.
This isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. We receive messages from many fronts that say “there are no such things as bad foods, only bad diets”, “junk food is fine in moderation”, “eat well 80% of the time and do whatever you want with the other 20%”.
Some of these messages come from health agencies, doctors, dietitians, and fitness coaches, people who are esteemed and held up as authorities on the matter.
While the results of following this advice may lead to an improvement in your health because it’s better than what you were doing before, it’s good advice in a relative sense only.
Is it truly a positive health message? Will following it lead to the best possible health and vitality, or will it be merely “good enough” to be healthier than others? Could your indulgence in inappropriate foods be holding you back from being optimally healthy?
And would you be better off giving up much of it entirely?
Do all foods fit?
In a culture where messages like “all foods fit” and ” there are no bad foods, only bad diets” prevail, it’s frowned upon to label foods as bad or harmful. Doing so is associated with “disordered eating patterns” and obsessions surrounding food, especially if the person has thoughts about who they are as a person based on their food choices – “If I eat bad foods, I am a bad person.”
Here’s the kicker for me, because I believe many “foods” are categorically bad for human health and shouldn’t be eaten, ever. They don’t even have positive or redeeming qualities, there is nothing about them that is good for you. Honestly, calling a lot of it “food” is stretching the definition of the term.
If it causes or contributes to disease, I contend that it’s harmful and therefore bad, at the very least in the context, manner, and quantity that you consumed it.
If there are no such things as bad foods, what makes up a bad diet? Health-promoting foods?
I don’t think so. A bad diet has to have bad components to make it bad.
Excess and Deficiency
Some may argue that excess itself is bad. Too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing, right?
If food was consumed excessively, what caused the excess?
Processed foods are designed to be overconsumed, to be hyperpalatable, so I suspect that they’re most of the problem. Overeating is difficult if you’re eating a human-appropriate diet.
Perhaps a diet is bad because it is lacking certain things. A lack of good is bad, right?
But if your diet is lacking something and that’s why it’s bad (meaning, it leads to health problems), what displaced those foods that are lacking?
Weston A. Price called processed foods the “displacing foods of modern commerce”. If your diet weren’t filled with nutrient-poor processed foods, it would necessarily be filled by more nutritious, wholesome, natural foods. Processed foods aren’t everything that’s wrong with bad diets, but they’re most of it, and they have a role in both excess and deficiency.
The problem? A departure from nature.
Almost all of the bad parts of our modern diet, in my opinion, are characterized by a departure from nature. In nature, we find health, balance, and healing.
If the reality is that your indulgence in processed foods laden with industrial seed oils, sugars, refined grains and carbohydrates, flavors, dyes, unnatural components, and straight up toxins led to your health problems, then they were bad for you. They were bad foods. Eating them led to disease. No mattter what we as a society have been conditioned to believe, things that lead to disease are bad. Recognize this, and you have taken an important step.
Desire for healing
Then, your desire to be healed must be greater than your desire to hold on to destructive habits, indulgences, and paradigms that were holding you back.
Healing won’t happen to the extent it could if you still cling to the things that made you sick. I believe that health is our natural state and we have a birthright to vibrant health, and it is up to you as the individual to claim it.
Without a strong intrinsic desire for better health, quality of life, vitality, and happiness, you won’t be able to persevere through the obstacles, stumbles, and setbacks you will surely experience.
Once you are at this point, once you’re truly willing to give up what made you sick (or is in the process of making you sick), and you’re fueled by inner desire, you’re ready for change. And it will come powerfully and transformatively once you are deeply committed to health and healing, because direct action will follow.
Now, the question is:
Do you want it badly enough?
