If your eating choice is kale, rather than a candy bar, it Doesn’t Make You a Better Person.

I look forward to reading The Wellness Syndrome, a new book that’s coming out this year in Mid March.

The Wellness Syndrome:
Carl Cederstrom and Andre Spicer say wellness doesn't make you a better person
                   by Rachel Clun  2/3/15

Our wellness obsession is everywhere. There are fitness trackers that notify us if we don't move enough, phone apps that collate data on our exercise, sleep and diet – things we must monitor to ensure we're doing them all correctly.

If you think this constant body monitoring and looking after yourself is the most positive thing you can do, authors Carl Cederstrom and Andre Spicer beg to differ.

In their new book The Wellness Syndrome, Cederstrom and Spicer argue this obsession with individual wellness does not lead to a well society.

"Wellness," the authors write, "is more than just an obsession today. It's a moral demand ... when health becomes an ideology, the failure to conform becomes a stigma."

In an interview with The Times, Spicer said he feels the effects of the pressure from society to be better.

"I'm very much like anyone else," Spicer said.

"I beat myself up, think I've no longer got all these work tasks to do, but I should be doing all this health stuff too. Of course it's fine if you want to look after yourself, it's the extreme amount of pressure you feel to do so from society, that's what we're interested in. Society begins to judge you, morally, if you don't."

Cederstrom and Spicer explained how wellness obsession can be bad for society in an article in New Scientist.

"Those who highly value well-being tend to view those who don't come up to their high standards as "disgusting", even if the truth is they can't afford a personal yoga instructor or the latest lifelogging technology," they write.

"A fascinating stream of research in moral psychology has found that when feelings of disgust are triggered, we tend to rapidly make highly punitive moral judgments."

Cederstrom and Spicer continue: "It is hard to argue against a healthy diet, regular exercise, not smoking and drinking in moderation. However, we say wellness can become a problem and deserves greater scrutiny when it is an unceasing command people feel they must live up to and it becomes a moral demand. When this happens, it can actually undermine the very thing it tries to promote."

In the book, the authors say they're concerned that wellness "has become an ideology", which can been seen in "the prevailing attitudes towards those who fail to look after their bodies."

"These people are demonised as lazy, feeble or weak-willed. They are seen as obscene deviants, unlawfully and unabashedly enjoying what every sensible person should resist," write Cederstrom and Spicer.

Spicer told The Times an example of this is the US and their approach to national health.

"You see that easily in the US, with the correlation between body size and income," says Spicer. "The whole discourse of loss of self-control and not taking care of your health. But the other side to it, the way the upper classes mark themselves out, is extreme health obsession."

Cederstrom told the newspaper the problem is people confuse things that help personal problems and things that solve community issues.

"There is a lot of confusion between things that help personal mood or fitness and solving broader problems," Cederstrom said.

Their plea: keep your health and morality separate. Because, according to their book, you are not a better person for running marathons, and your partner's job won't become less stressful if he starts eating kale.

"Just allow that crack in your self-righteous narrative," Cederstrom said.

I love and accept my body.
My body is not a reflection of my value.
I am not my body.
but I need my body so I can be Here.

Why?
is a Natural Question,
but
not always a Helpful One
       
      by Dr. Amy Johnson, psychologist


Everyone wants to know why.

Why do I keep doing that? Why don’t I get it yet? Why do I feel this way?

Why is a natural question. We’re curious…so we wonder why. Even more than that, we believe we need to know why so that we can solve our problems.

Our problems look formidable and solid, like something that needs fixing. If we know why we keep doing the same things over and over, we can figure out how to stop doing those things.

Or so we reason.

But it doesn’t really work that way.  Even when we think we know why, we’re usually wrong.

The whys we typically look to are in our past, personality, or circumstances, but those whys miss the mark. They may point to another piece in the psychological puzzle, but what was on your mind isn’t as nearly as helpful as seeing that something was on your mind.

The true answer to why you keep doing the same things over and over is that you do what you do because it’s what occurs to you in the moment.

You do the best you can with what you see.

It’s not about your addictive personality, that you self-sabotage, or that some buried part of you doesn’t actually want to change. It’s rarely about a lack of information or a lack of resources either.

Your choices are your best attempt to take care of yourself, feel better, and return to home base.

Sometimes they achieve that and sometimes they do not. Sometimes they achieve the opposite. When you cheat on your spouse because in that moment it feels like the thing that will bring you love, affection, and passion, you might end up with less love, affection, and passion in the end. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t your best attempt in the moment. It was what seemed like the thing to do, so you did it.

You do what you do because it’s what occurs to you from the state of mind you’re in. There is no deeper or more helpful why than that.

Because think about it, even if you were to find a why you were satisfied with…maybe you realize that you keep cheating because you have a deeply ingrained feeling of inadequacy, or you keep drinking because it numbs the pain of your childhood…

…then what?

Then, you’re left with a lot of work to do to get to the bottom of those issues. I’m not suggesting that understanding yourself in that way can’t be helpful. But it’s probably not the answer that’s going to help you find your way out of your unwanted behavior.

Those are superficial answers that leave you with a lot of digging to do, hoping that digging will be fruitful.

When you see that we all do what occurs to us in the moment, there is massive hope. In any moment, something new might occur to you, and you might do something different instead.

Knowing that you do what occurs to you in the moment leaves you with a lot of choice. No longer are you bound by your deep-seated issues, you’re only “bound” by fleeting, passing-by thought.

You start to get a feel for how to best operate within this system. If your actions are always a reflection of how things look in that moment, and things aren’t looking so good, you don’t have to act just then.

Those urges to cheat that seem like a fix at the time, may not be. So you wait. You don’t act on them. You learn to wait to see how you feel later.

The pull toward your old habit, or getting lost in your familiar, bad feelings, isn’t something you need to figure out or take too seriously. Something new is coming down the pike.

When there is no deeper why than how you currently feel, you are free to wait it out a bit. You may soon have the insight or strength to make a different choice. You might later feel better.

Searching for why gets you deeper into thought about your problem and further from seeing it in a brand new way.  Rather than asking why, know that you’re simply seeing the internal movie that’s playing in that moment—if you don’t like that movie, there will be a different one playing next.

                   Dr. Amy Johnson, psychologist  on 1/29/15  -  www. dramyjohnson.com

Most Diet Gurus - no matter what diet is involved -
have closed minds to all opposing opinions.

BUT - it is not a one-size-fits-all world.

Although Every Diet works for Someone, No Diet works for Everyone.

...and ... no matter what Diet / lifestyle plan /way of eating 
is used to accomplish a large weight-loss ...
long-term Maintenance of a large Weight-Loss happens for very few people.

See the ARCHIVES for many, many articles on this subject.