I know a lady who spent $8,000 to learn how to eat.

She went to a group of chiropractors who have cross trained in nutrition. I’m not sure why this particular paring is becoming common these days, but it is. It seems odd that regular doctors don’t seem to care about nutrition, but chiropractors do. Mine does. I’ve heard of others who do. This seems odd because chiropractors aren’t seen as “regular doctors” in many people’s eyes, so even going to them for what they normally provide is seen as suspect.

Sadly, the nutrition part isn’t covered by insurance, so it was all out of pocket. This too seems odd – it is far cheaper to teach someone how to prevent disease rather than “cure” it after it has set in. But this is a foreign concept to insurance companies. They would rather pay to get you well than to keep you well.

She didn’t have to spend any of that money. She could have done what they did for free. They put her on an elimination diet. Strip away all the stuff that usually causes problems, and stick with that for a few weeks to get all the junk out of the system. Then start adding back suspicious things and see if there is a problem. The usual stuff is all processed food and anything with gluten.

We have a winner. She was gluten intolerant. The funny/sad part is that she had figured that out on her own years back. She had gone gluten-free and done much better. Her weight had gone down and her joints didn’t hurt. But she had dropped it. She thought it was too hard.

She did the same thing this time. She said that it was too hard to go gluten free on a fast-food diet. She drives a lot and works a lot. She is too tired to cook when she gets home so she gets food on the way. But this makes no sense. There are plenty of gluten-free options these days. Everything is marked whether it is gluten free or not. It isn’t a special diet – it is pretty mainstream.

The point is that she wanted a magic pill. She wanted something simple and fast and easy. It requires work and sacrifice to make any important change, and that was the part that she found too hard.

It reminds me of when people started to notice that I’d lost weight. They (always large themselves) asked me what was my “secret”. I told them – eat better and exercise more. Their faces always sunk. They wanted it to be something simple like “eat two grapefruit a day and keep on doing the same old things you were always doing”. It doesn’t work like that.

Anything worth having requires work. The easy way is rarely the healthy way.

The point is that if she wants to get well, she has to choose. Her health has to be the winner. If she cannot eat healthy and work the way she is working, then she has to find another job. Or she has to figure out that she can cook up a large pot of food that is healthy on her days off and freeze it and reheat it at work.

The point is that she doesn’t want to take care of herself. She is a miserable person. She sleeps all the time on her time off. She has admitted that she hates everybody and has no friends.

I cannot imagine living this kind of life. I cannot imagine anybody wanting to be in this life, just going through the motions. She goes to work and hates it. She goes home and sleeps. She is escaping everything. She is trapped in her body and in her life. I can’t comprehend why anybody would want to stay in this situation. By her choice she has said that miserable is better.

She was hoping to be able to retire when she gets to be 50. She didn’t check the retirement rules correctly. Sure, she can retire, but she won’t collect her pension until she is 65, and then it willl be greatly reduced because she didn’t work long enough.

She wants to retire early because her husband is significantly older than her. She is concerned that by the time she is able to retire, he will be dead. She would like to spend time with him now. The problem is, the way her health is going, it is highly likely she will die before him. The sad part is, she already has, she just doesn’t know it. By refusing to take care of herself and sleeping all the time when she is home – she has already decided to not participate in life. She is already not alive.

I hate this. I hate all of it. There is no reason for any of this. There is no reason for her to be miserable.

Sure, it is hard to swim upstream and take care of yourself. Sure, it would be great to have everything done for you, and done well. It just doesn’t happen. Nobody is going to exercise for you. Nobody is going to turn off the TV for you. Nobody is going to make you take care of yourself.

She reads a lot of books about health and talks like an expert on it, but still won’t do it. I feel like I’m just standing by, watching her drown. I can’t save her. I want her to choose to live, and live well. Right now she is just mimicking life, just going through the motions. She has to want to live. I can’t instill that in her.

I’ve realized that this situation is just like any other addiction or mental illness. If you don’t want to get better, no amount of outside intervention will help. You can only be committed to the mental hospital if you are a danger to yourself or others. Nobody can put you on the path to recovery – you have to do it yourself. This applies to regular life as well. She has to want to get better. I’d hoped that spending all that money would be the incentive to start taking her health seriously, but it hasn’t worked.

So I wait, and pray.

Life wasn’t made to be endured.