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Size

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I resent that women’s clothing manufacturers have unreasonable sizing. I came to understand this when I tried on a women’s extra large shirt and it was too tight. Then, from the same manufacturer, I tried on a men’s medium and it was very roomy.

Why are women’s t-shirts different from men’s t-shirts? Women’s shirts are tight and short. Men’s are loose and roomy.

Women are taught conflicting messages. Be sexy, but don’t be slutty. Show off the curves of your body, but only if they are hourglass shaped. No pears or apples need apply.

The focus needs to be on health, not weight. Everybody needs to eat well and exercise. Everybody needs to learn healthy ways to deal with stress and difficult emotions.

Stressing about how much you weigh isn’t going to do anything about it. Wishing you were skinnier won’t make it so.

As one coworker says “the only thing for it is to do it”.

Being healthy is a lifelong thing. It isn’t something you do for a week before you get married so you can squeeze into your dress. It isn’t something you do just after New Year’s Day and then drop it in February.

Getting healthy is a gift to yourself. It is saying that you deserve better.

Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps people don’t take care of themselves because deep down they don’t love themselves. Perhaps deep down they treat their bodies badly because they thing they deserve this.

There is no shortcut to health. It isn’t like you can just eat a grapefruit and the pounds melt off and the muscles come on.

How much of women’s self image comes from clothing designers who try to convince us that we are larger than we are?

High end clothes manufacturers market differently. Their clothes are marked at least two sizes smaller. So you think you are smaller than you are.

Perhaps the sizes need to be like men’s sizes. Just do it in inches. That isn’t an arbitrary thing.

Now sure, American health is terrible. Obese is just considered overweight. People don’t seem to know what healthy looks like. And they seem to think “exercise” is a dirty word.

We need to focus not on weight but strength and endurance. If we change the focus not on how much you weigh but are you healthy – do you eat well and do you exercise – then weight will improve naturally. But who cares what you weigh if your heart is in bad shape and your muscles are weak?

Anxiety/pain – mental/physical connection

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It turns out that a lot of the physical problems I have are caused by anxiety. Well, this isn’t according to regular health manuals. This is from people like Louise Hay and John Sarno. Arthritis in the neck, asthma, back pain – all are caused by anxiety, they say. This sounds a lot like blaming the victim.

I have a pretty strong suspicion that if I suddenly develop an anxiety-free life, I’ll still have asthma and arthritis in my neck and scoliosis. Of course, Louise Hay and her ilk would say my disbelief is what makes it so. It is the opposite of Jesus saying “Your faith has healed you.”

Let’s turn it all around. What if I have anxiety because I have these physical problems? What if being in pain and having a hard time breathing is a cause of anxiety? That seems to make more sense. What if my daily life being affected by my physical limitations is what causes anxiety?

I notice that none of these alternative healers have any suggestions as to how to reduce anxiety so my physical problems go away. This certainly sounds like an easy out for them. Point out how your reader has caused her own problems, and then don’t offer any solution. If they offer solutions that don’t work, then everybody will realize that they don’t know what they are talking about.

I had my own techniques to reduce anxiety when I was in college, but I had to quit. Pot is great for anxiety, but it isn’t something you can do for long. Being illegal is part of the problem. Smoking cigarettes is also relaxing, but it causes other problems that create anxiety, like cancer. Nothing like trying to alleviate anxiety with something that causes more anxiety.

Now I try to write, do yoga, and draw every day. Ideally, I’d make some jewelry too. These things help, but cramming them into my morning only seems to cause more anxiety. Sure, I could get up earlier, but then I’m shorting myself on sleep. Sleep is a critical building block of mental health.

So I think I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing and ignore these people who tell me my physical problems are all in my head but don’t tell me how to work on my mental problems. I certainly believe there is a connection. But perhaps you can fix mental problems by going at them physically. Perhaps my chiropractor adjusting my back and neck is healing me in ways I’ve never expected. Perhaps yoga and water aerobics burn off more than calories.

Recovery – you have to want to get well.

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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.

Fear and ignorance could have killed me.

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I can’t let other people’s fear keep me from taking care of my health.

I didn’t get a mammogram for years because everybody told me how painful it was. Friends and comedians would joke that getting a mammogram was like slamming your breast in the freezer door, or putting it in a vise. Who would want to do that?

I didn’t go to a gynecologist because my mother never impressed on me that I should. She never went as far as I knew, once she had stopped having children. She thought that sex was dirty. Sex was something you did once a week as a duty to your husband. So she certainly didn’t teach me how to keep my female parts healthy.

Also, friends talked about how uncomfortable it was to go to the gynecologist. Awkward, unpleasant, strange – they really weren’t selling it as something I should do. They always talked about going for a checkup as a chore, kind of like how my Mom talked about sex. One even said she’d rather have a root canal than go to the gynecologist. Either she has a great dentist or a terrible gynecologist.

Then three years ago I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and I realized that a woman in her 30s could die of cervical cancer. For some reason I thought that was an older woman’s disease. So I went for my first checkup in 20 years. I found that I had moderate to severe cervical dysphasia. Not cancer, but cancer’s next door neighbor. I had surgery to get it removed. If I had waited, I’d be dead by now from something totally preventable.

Fear and ignorance could have killed me.

Now I’m going to a chiropractor. My friends are now saying what they’ve always said about chiropractors. They are quacks. They insist you come a lot and they don’t promise anything. They heard of somebody who got paralyzed by one. But if I’d gone to a regular doctor for my slipped disc a week ago I would have been given pain pills and muscle relaxers. I still would have had a slipped disc. I just wouldn’t have cared.

I’m sure there are true stories of chiropractors who have accidentally harmed patients. But how many regular doctors have perfect records? There is a reason medical malpractice insurance is expensive. Nobody is perfect.

My chiropractor has a good point. We get our teeth checked twice a year, and if one of them goes bad we can get a replacement. We can’t replace our spine, yet we never check it.

Sure, I’m not happy about having to go several times a week, but it isn’t forever. It is just for a few months, then it won’t be that often. Plus, it feels amazing.

I like to think of my back as like a bonsai tree. Change can’t happen overnight. When I had braces it took 4 years to get my teeth straight. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and my back won’t be healed overnight.

Meanwhile I’m going to try to unlearn a whole lot of nonsense that I was taught, and try not to spread any more of it around.

Weak back, strong God

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I’m lying on my back writing this. Sitting up is very tiring because it is painful. But I still want to write. I have my Kindle to write with. I can prop it up on my chest. At this angle I can type with two fingers. It works, albeit a little more slowly. It is like texting, but longer, and hopefully more meaningful.

When I was at the chiropractor’s office yesterday, I asked what caused my slipped disc. The doctor sat down and drew me a diagram. He was very patient and kind and made sure I understood everything. He is also Christian. It is obvious from not only the signs around the office but also in his demeanor.

When he was drawing the diagram he said that God made the front part of our body strong, while the back part is weak. I asked him why God made it that way. He smiled and said he could ask God when he gets to meet Him, but he suspects he’ll have other questions to ask then. He was talking about when he died.

I said we can ask God now. We don’t have to wait until we die. God is always with us, always available to us.

God is present to everybody, regardless of education or training. You don’t have to be ordained to talk with God. Every person has a direct line. It may take a while to get a clear connection, but it is always there. You strengthen the connection by daily Bible reading and prayer. It is just like exercise. It takes effort and work and diligence. You get better at it the more you do it.

I think this is one of the biggest differences with the Christian faith. God came down here, to be among us, to live and die as one of us. It isn’t so much about us having a personal relationship with Jesus, as it is about God through the incarnation of Jesus having a personal relationship with us.

God loves us all the time, everywhere, and however we are.
God wants to connect with each one of us right now.

So I prayed. I asked God why our back muscles are designed to be weaker than our front muscles. The answer I got back is that it is for the same reason we don’t have eyes on the back of our heads. It is to make us have to depend on each other.

“No man is an island.” We aren’t built to be independent. We must learn how to rely on each other. We are stronger when we work together. We are better off when we share life together. We are better off when we ask for help instead of trying to do everything on our own.

Think of emperor penguins. They huddle together to stay warm and alive in the cold arctic winds. When the couples have an egg, one has to stay with the group, crouching on the egg to keep it warm while the other goes to get food. Then they switch. They can’t do it alone.

We are taught by society to be independent, but God constantly teaches that we are stronger if we are interdependent. God constantly teaches us that we must rely on each other. We have to reach out. We have to ask for help. We can’t do it alone.

Thankfully we aren’t alone.

Thankfully there are always people who are willing and able to help. They might not be who we expect, or who we want, but that is also part of the learning process.

Thankfully we also have a loving God, who constantly teaches us, who eternally loves us, and is always available to us.

“Do no harm.” On televisions and junk food in doctor’s offices.

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Must there be a television in every doctor’s office? Must it be on Jerry Springer or Fox News? Must it be so loud?

Most people who come into a doctor’s office are sick, right? They already don’t feel well. So high energy, high hostility television only makes things worse. The commercials are not only not a respite, they are even louder, even more insistent, even more unsettling than the show itself.

I feel tense when I watch TV. It is like drinking a Doctor Pepper and eating two chocolate bars in ten minutes. I feel all hyped up, unsettled, anxious. It took me a long time to realize that this isn’t a normal way to feel, and that television was a big cause of my unease. It took me a long time to wean myself from the addiction that is TV. I’ve not watched broadcast television for five years. I use the television, sure, to watch movies on DVD. But I don’t watch anything live. And I certainly don’t watch anything where people are yelling at each other.

So going into a place that is supposed to make me feel better and being confronted by something that makes me feel worse feels like an assault.

I understand how people like TV. It is numbing. It is distracting. It takes their minds off their pain. Plus, many people are afraid of silence. They don’t know how to be with themselves. They don’t know how to entertain themselves. So the TV in the doctor’s office makes sense, in a strange sort of way. But while it is soothing to them, it is really disturbing to me, and there really is no middle ground.

I think I’m going to call around for a new doctor and ask if their waiting room has a TV. If not, I’ve found my new doctor.

I wrote this while waiting to get an X-ray for a slipped disc. I wasn’t in the chiropractor’s office, but a separate one. It wasn’t far. Because they do radiology all the time, their prices were cheaper, so he sent me there. I noticed that they had complimentary snacks for while you were waiting. Soda. Chips. Nothing healthy. Even their water was fake. Why not have fruit and nuts? Why not have spring water and fruit juices? Why would you offer people things that are harmful to them?

Perhaps it is because that is what people want.

Doctors need to give you what you need, not what you want. We want quick relief but we don’t want to know how to take care of ourselves. We want to keep on eating badly and smoking and not exercising. And we want to be well. We can’t have it all.

Doctors don’t work around this. Either they don’t know to, they don’t know how to, or they don’t care. Maybe they are frustrated, only treating the symptom and not the cause. Maybe they are stuck thinking the usual way is the only way.

I’m saying that a doctor that gives you bad things isn’t really a doctor. A doctor who treats only the symptom and not the cause isn’t really following the pledge of “Do no harm.”

The quick fix versus the long haul.

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I had a dream last night that I was in the hospital. I was waiting on some procedure to be done and noticed that this hospital had a snack area for visitors. There was free food available for them while they were waiting. It was simple stuff – nothing that required cooking or plates or utensils. Purely grab and go.

I thought this was a very kind idea. Then I started studying the offerings. It was mostly cookies and chips. It was all simple carbs, with lots of salt and sugar thrown in for “flavor”. While it was nice that they were offering something, they weren’t offering anything healthy. There were no fresh fruit or protein offerings. All of it was quick-fix, not long-term.

Anybody who has ever been on a long hike before the advent of “energy bars” knows about gorp. Gorp is a strange name for a useful thing. It is a mix of M+Ms, raisins, and nuts. You’ve got something in there for quick, medium, and long-term energy, in that order. If you’ve ever been on a long road trip you’ve had to use something similar. If you try to last long on just caffeine and chips you’ll be crashing soon.

Then my thought was if the hospital offered good food, would people eat it? If the hospital staff follow the same parameters of stuff that is easy to store and prepare, then they could offer string cheese, nuts, and bananas and apples. The shelf life is shorter on these, so they might have some waste. And people when in stressful situations often go for the old standbys. They don’t think about what their body needs, they think about what they want. They want quick comfort, the quick fix. It would be better to not even offer chips and cookies at all.

I see so many people that when they take a break at work they grab a soda and cheese crackers. One of my basic rules is never eat anything that has an ingredient list longer than the “food” item itself. It has taken years of deprogramming, but I’ve learned that the best snack for me is an apple, some nuts (either sunflower or almonds) and some water. It is a middle of the road snack – nothing to rev me up.

Eating is like balancing with yoga. If you are trying to do tree pose and you start to wobble, overcompensating with a shift of weight or a wiggle of the ankle too far is going to make you fall. It is about little shifts, and finding the middle. If you try to overcompensate your feeling tired by drinking caffeine all the time and eating salty or sweet snacks that are full of simple carbs, you are going to crash soon. Then you have to have more. It is a horrible cycle of crash and burn.

Then I remember this dream was in a hospital. Western medicine does a laughable job at taking care of the person’s health. I’m not sure why Western medicine is seen as being superior. Sure, we have a lot of money invested in it. Sure, our doctors get paid a lot of money and our hospitals look like something out of a science-fiction set. But there is absolutely nothing long-term. There is nothing about health to be found in a hospital.

Western medicine treats the symptom and not the cause. Go in with a cough and you’ll get cough medicine. The doctor won’t even notice or care that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. Go in with diabetes and they will say “here’s your insulin”, not “here’s your nutritionist and exercise coach.”

Our medical industry is about reacting to the problem rather than preventing it. It is quick-fix. Its plan is to cut out the tumor, but let you keep eating junk food while sitting on the couch all day.

Now sure, you can’t make people be healthy. You can’t make someone eat well and exercise. You can’t make them be intentional about their lives. But how much of that is caused by our current American mindset? How much of that is just how we have been trained? We’ve been taught to take a pill to fix it. We’ve been taught to place our fate in the hands of “experts.” We are slowly starting to wake up to the fact that just because someone is an authority figure, it doesn’t mean that she or he is an expert. This applies to everyone – teachers, politicians, doctors, ministers – everyone who talks to you as a lesser-than, everyone who assumes you can’t handle your own life and won’t give you the tools to do it yourself.

This country was founded on the idea of freedom – freedom to practice religion as wished, freedom to self-govern, freedom of expression. Sure, it concerns me the amount of freedoms that are being taken away from us. The new information about how our every move and click of the mouse is being watched is deeply concerning. But I’m more concerned with how much we have given away. We’ve become passive consumers, rather than active participants in our own lives. We are allowing ourselves to be molded by advertising and by culture.

Turn off the TV. Go for a walk. Disconnect yourself from your iPod, your Kindle, your Gameboy. They may be wireless, but there is a cord nonetheless, and that cord is around your throat and your mind. Don’t do anything unless you have examined it yourself and found it to be true and helpful. But most of all, take care of your body by eating well and exercising daily. That is the best tool for your kit.

You have control over your moods.

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If you are feeling anxious, your breathing will become shallow. However, once you notice this you can change things. You can change your feelings with your breath. Breathe in slowly and calmly and deeply and you will start to feel better. Intentionally shift from shallow breathing to deep breathing and your mood will shift. You have control.

We have control over depression too. When we are depressed, we tend to eat a lot of “comfort food” that is high in carbohydrates. Bread, desserts, potatoes, pasta – you know the routine. We also tend to not exercise. Sadly, this is a terrible cycle – we feel bad, so we eat more of the things that we think will make us feel good, but they actually make us feel bad. We take time off from exercising because we just don’t feel like it, then we feel worse.

Just like with anxious feelings and breathing, you can turn around depression by eating better and exercising.

Sometimes I wonder what causes what. Are we not mindful about our breathing so we start to breathe shallowly, then we feel anxious? Or is it that we feel anxious and then we breathe shallowly? Do we slack on eating well and exercising and then we feel depressed? Or do we feel depressed and then sink lower because we start to eat badly and stop exercising?

Does it matter, if we have this key? We can improve our moods by being mindful. We have control. We no longer have to suffer the randomness of our emotions.

You don’t have to do anything complicated. Go for a walk. You don’t have to go on a run. And the walk doesn’t have to be long – twenty minutes is good. Can’t do twenty? Then do 10. Now, don’t think you can get away with five – that’s cheating. What you put into it is what you get out of it.

I know people who say that they don’t have a safe place to walk. Walk inside your house. Walk around the kitchen. Walk down the hallway and back. Then when you feel brave, go outside and walk to the mailbox. And back. And back to the mailbox. And back to the door. This trick also works for those people who think they don’t have the strength to walk a long distance and are afraid of getting stranded out far away from their houses. I know a lot of people who think this way. Another option is to drive to a large public place – the hardware store is one of my favorite suggestions. Use their large area and air conditioning to walk. No gym membership needed!

Your body isn’t a car. Well, it is, kind of. It is a machine, albeit an electrochemical one. It is a vehicle for your soul. And you need to put good fuel into it if you want to get anywhere. But you don’t really run out of gas. You may get tired, and if that happens, just slow down and wait until you feel better. You’ll get stronger for the next time. Soon you’ll surprise yourself.

We are so good at making excuses for why we can’t take care of ourselves. Trust me; taking care of your body is a great investment. It is all you have. It is more important than your car or your house or your neighborhood. It is where you live, in the deepest sense. Make it strong.

Eat more vegetables and less meat. Skip the fried stuff. Drop sodas and go for water. Try to go for natural, unprocessed food. Sadly, this is really hard because we’ve been taught that food comes in little packets with writing on it. Rather than eating an energy bar, have an apple and some almonds. Try something organic. Go for colorful food – green, red, yellow – let your eyes be delighted by a rainbow of food.

Sure, there is a lot of fear in changing. And your mind try to trick you – you’ll think you want to eat whatever you want and not exercise. This is your inner two-year-old saying “NO! You can’t tell me what to do!” Tell it to shut up. Two year olds aren’t known for making good decisions.

Don’t be at the mercy of your cravings. They aren’t real. You don’t need a soda. You don’t need pizza. You don’t need a candy bar. You don’t need fried chicken. You think you want them – but they all leave you feeling flat. Deep down you know this.

They are like a bad boyfriend, all flash and pizzazz, but no substance. And just like with the bad boyfriend, you think you are being a rebel by hanging out with him. Really, he’s no good for you.

Comfort food and Western medicine are killing us.

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I know a lady whose adult daughter has Crohn’s disease. She has done well with it for several years, but it has flared up again. She is recently divorced and has moved back in with her parents.

Her mom wondered if she should buy her a Blizzard from Dairy Queen after she found out the test results weren’t good. Uh. No. As another person said – what health condition would that be good for?

But it isn’t physical health she is trying to treat. She is hoping to soothe with food. We do this a lot. We soften the blows of life with ice cream and cake and brownies.

These are celebration foods. Perhaps what we are trying to do is “turn that frown upside down”. Perhaps by eating the same foods we eat at parties we are trying to trick our brains into thinking that everything is fine. We aren’t in the middle of a bad situation. We are at a party!

But junk food never fixes anything. Good food will fix quite a bit. Exercise will always help.

I’m not sure how we got to the point that we treat the symptom rather than addressing the cause. I’m not sure how we have become reactive rather than proactive. I’m not sure how we have become so passive about our health and our lives.

I know that I’m not playing that game anymore. Sometimes I think I want to go back to school to learn how to be a nutritionist, or a life coach, or anything that helps people prevent their own suffering. But then I think I can’t save the world. It seems like such a logical thing – eat well and exercise and you’ll do fine (barring accidents). Eat terribly and be a couch potato, and you’ll suffer. But that is the way of things. I don’t think we’ve always been this way, but we sure are now. Our medical institutions don’t help either. Coughing? Take a pill. Diabetes? Take a pill. There is no education on how to get well.

Doctors who made a pledge to “do no harm” aren’t doing any good either.

Where does the change start? I think it has to start with us. We have to take control of our own health and lives. We have to essentially homeschool ourselves on our health and wellbeing. The more we expect others to do for us, the more passive we are. And the more passive we are, the more we will fall behind.