DIET IV. “A NEW WAY OF LIVING, FROM RIGIDITY TO FLEXIBILITY”

The words “A New Life” or “A New Way of Living” may sound ridiculous and outlandish. We may ask “What do you mean with a new life? We already have our life and we cannot change it, we cannot give up our meal schedule because it may offend and make uncomfortable the people we share our meals at home, at work, at restaurants when we entertain or we are entertained; we cannot upset those who lovingly prepare special meals for us, our spouse may think we do not care”, and the list of excuses can go on indefinitely.

I used to be very overweight when I was a teenager and I hated it. As I grew up I lost weight eating more fruits and smaller portions. I have stayed in my ideal weight for many years; nevertheless I enjoy eating and it is easy to gain weight for me. For this reason, keeping my weight down has been a difficult journey. For example, I had to lean to say no to my mother’s cooking. My mom loves me and her way of showing her affection was making a lot of food and keeping filling my plate until my stomach almost blew up every time I visited her. I eventually got the courage to tell her that would not eat certain foods and that I would serve myself in order to control the portions I ingested, in other words, I made myself responsible for my actions. Initially she was offended, but through the years, she learned to respect my choices, my boundaries. The same applied to my wife, she cooked good meals trying to please me; once in my thirties, I was gaining weight and I became concerned because remembering my teenage, I did not want to be overweight like that again. We were raised by parents who experienced the limitations of WWII and we were taught that “food was sacred”, and should not go to waste; we had a saying in my family “it is better to have upset stomach due to overeating that to throw away leftovers”. When I got home for dinner, I would tell my wife I was going to get my own portion. At the beginning she appeared bothered because there were more leftovers and it took some guts to throw away some food. Through time, we learned not to fix as much and as heavy. Sometimes my brain wants “more”, but I learned that it is better to avoid temptation than to fight temptation; if there are no leftovers, I will not eat them!

CHANGE ACTIVATES a GRIEVING PROCESS. Following healthier eating habits is very difficult because in addition to altering our diet we need to change our behavior toward other aspects of our life. Losing certain foods, avoiding socializing over meals, eating out in restaurants –especially in the beginning of our process, will activate a grieving situation that involves denial, anger, frustration and eventually a stage of acceptance.  Change involves trusting, which is particularly difficult to “control freaks” like many of us. Change means getting rid of old ideas or survival skills we acquired through the years that were useful then, but no longer necessary today. It is like the clutter in a computer than needs to be cleaned every so often for the computer’s health.  When we were two years old, we acquired survival skills that are no longer useful. For example, at age two we demanded to have “our lollipop now”; obviously, this behavior is no longer useful at age thirty!

The human being is in constant change because it needs to cope with ever changing internal and external environments. The body evolves as it ages; our metabolism is very complex involving carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, minerals, vitamins, enzymes, hormones, neurochemicals, and many substances our science has not been able to discover to date. It becomes even more complex when we add the history of everyone of us. Each one of our brains has been “sculpted” in a different manner based on our chemistry, genes, and external environment as we have grown up in this planet. A child that has been raised in a hostile environment and physically abused may react defensibly when a parent tries to caress his/her face while somebody that has grown in a loving and nurturing setting may welcome this same gesture of love by this member of the family.

We also carry a multitude of RIGID IDEAS of “how life should be lived” and preach them to others without practicing them ourselves; for example, we preach eating healthy when we are overweight or have other unhealthy habits such as drinking or smoking in excess. Sometimes we consume so called “natural” supplements, “liver cleansers”, “colon cleansers”, and other unnecessary chemicals without changing –this is a way of rationalization, a very sophisticated denial mechanism that “justifies” our unhealthy behavior and prevents our progress. Rationalization is justifying our conduct by way of lying to ourselves.

So what is DIET IV? Diet IV is a series of little things we can choose to do to change gradually, with very minimal “pain” or effort. It is a way to “train” our brain to be “open”; a way to switch from “RIGIDITY” to “FLEXIBILITY”.

RIGIDITY indicates CLOSEMINDEDNESS; an Eastern proverb says that as we get older, we have to behave like a tree green limb that bends (copes) with the wind; not like an old one which will brake easily.  Rigidity means “I do it my way, and that is final!”, “I am too old to change”, “I will change when I get older”; “I am too young to change”. It also means expecting “them” to behave up to our expectations. Who are “them”? Them is “the system and its people”, this includes our children, spouse, parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, the slow person driving in front of us in the fast lane of the road while we head to work, our boss, the people we do business with, the stock market, the janitor, the secretary, the governor, the president, the past president, etcetera. When they do not fit within our list of things of what “they should do to be good”, we become afraid and out fear activates worry, anxiety, anger, despair, and the like. When we have these feelings, we usually turn to our “pacifiers” or compulsions.

PACIFIERS?  Everybody has a different pacifier; some people use food (foodohol), while other use alcohol, workohol, worryhol, angerhol, preachohol (or itoldyousohol), passive-aggresivehol, self-pittyhol, self-loathinghol, etcetera. The reader  may already be judging me because these words are not in the dictionary (and because it sounds that I am preaching!), but at least you are getting “the hang of it”! I am not free of these compulsions either; however today I am willing to become aware of what is the way of taking over my wellbeing, my happiness and peace of mind -which will take us to FLEXIBILITY.

FLEXIBILITY means OPENMINDEDNESS. It means “If it cannot be my way, there may be another acceptable way of doing it; perhaps if I learn the way somebody else (example: my spouse, my children, my sibling, my neighbor, my mother-in-law) does it, it may even come up better and I will learn! And if it happens not to work out, I will also learn how not to do it!” This is actually the way I have learned from the people I am reluctant to learn out of fear of acknowledging that the “could be right” sometimes. All humans have something worth to learn from. The way we open ourselves to learn is not just by sharing our assets, which is what we have been taught in order to “succeed”; but to SHARE OUR WEAKNESSES. Unfortunately, sharing our weaknesses makes us “vulnerable” and this is a state we are not trained to be in. Vulnerable is a very scary state, because it opens a door to being “counseled” by people like us who cannot resist to “tell us the right way” of living our lives, and this can be an unpleasant experience, unless we invite them to share how they have manage similar situations. For example, when my middle son passed away a couple of years ago, it was very hard to listen to people who have not lost a love one to tell me how to grieve; when I shared my story with another father who have lost a son, he told me his story. His son had died twenty four years ago, and the fact that he was still alive and thriving in life gave me hope.

For individuals who wish to change their eating habits, people who have lost weight and/or modified their eating habits in a long term basis are a good source to share their weaknesses in this territory because they have already solved this problem. Some people have lost a lot of weight in a very short period of time, most will gain it back and more; however, they good teachers by just following from a distance to see if they really CHANGE for good, or go back to their old habits –which, unfortunately is the usual outcome.

When CHANGE is hard because it means CHANGING an UNHEALTHY HABIT for A HEALTHY HABIT. The most common outcome is that we EXCHANGE an unhealthy habit such us overeating or eating the wrong foods for another unhealthy habit, such as over worrying, smoking, using sedatives, etcetera. IT IS LIKE CHANGING FROM A DIRTY UNDEAR into ANOTHER SET OF DIRTY UNDERWEAR!

Flexibility means adopting a forgiving attitude toward our mistakes and the ones of those around us, it means acknowledging that GOOD JUDGEMENT COMES FROM EXPERIENCE, but EXPERIEMCE COMES FROM BAD JUDGEMENT. It means, and I do not wish to sound religious, “WE MAKE THE PLANS AND LEAVE THE RESULTS UP TO GOD”.

Depression and anxiety are very common when our mind stays rigid. The thought that we “should not make mistakes”, and beating ourselves because when our plans to succeed turn into errors are signs of rigid thinking that lead to moments of unnecessary suffering for not allowing ourselves to be human, and also not allowing other human beings to be human –especially those around us. These feeling sometimes are dealt with compulsions such as using alcohol (including “innocent” beer and fine wines), overworking, and/or overeating. Yes, overeating is a “pacifier” that only lasts while we consume food. It is another manner of attempting to escape from our preoccupations through pleasure. The Japanese proverb “PLEASURE SEEKERS HAVE NO LEISURE” comes to mind. It means that as long as we do not learn to rest, to live quiet moments with ourselves just “being”, we will not have rest because pleasure is fleeting; once pleasure is over we have to del ourselves one more time!

Somebody said, “To err is human, to forgive is divine”. This saying reflects our human difficulty forgiving, not much forgiving others but forgiving ourselves for being anxious, overwhelmed, preoccupied –in other words, occupying our mind with what does not exist: pre is a prefix that means before.

A “NEW WAY OF LIFE” MEANS FINDING A HEALTHY SUBSTITUTE TO OVEREATING AS A REMEDY TO TIREDNESS, DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY OR PREOCCUPATION, SOMETHING HEALTHY SUCH AS:

   A. EXERCISE. We can exercise a short period of time as only three to five minutes before eating, or instead of eating if it is not time to eat.

   B. PRAY. I am not a priest, a minister, a rabbi or any religious leader of any kind; I am simply a medical doctor that wishes to give options to my patients. Some of them have told me they have found relief praying for their God of their understanding will for them as a solution of their anxieties. I heard that one of the most powerful prayers is “THANK YOU” because it tells the brain that we have received everything we need.

   C. PRACTICE FORGIVENESS. Dictionaries define the word FORGIVENESS as “quitting being angry about something”, it is a nonreligious word. This practice has been utilized by religious and nonreligious people since the very beginning of time. It is the same type of forgiveness we grant to babies when they spill their food and to puppies when they poop on the carpet! It is an unconditional act that frees us to go on with our life. There is a multitude of medical scientific studies that have proven the benefit of this practice, it provides a freedom and a sense of wellbeing that it is impossible to describe unless it is practiced by the people who are entitled to retribution. Initially, it is not the action of forgiving that will help us cope with dislike but the WILLINGNESS TO FORGIVE. We do not have to forgive anybody (including ourselves) right now; however, we can say that we are WILLING TO FORGIVE WHEN WE ARE READY. If this does not appeal to us at this moment, let us remember that we are starting (not trying, but starting already) a NEW WAY OF LIFE where we have to stay “flexible”.

   D. FIND A HOBBY.Having a hobby for many of us  is a luxury or a waste  of time. Perhaps we learned as we grew up that “time is money”. This way of thinking is rigid or close-minded and we already mentioned that we are looking to “open our mind”. Therefore, we try to “waste time on purpose” reading something about anything such as comic, history, geography or any type of books of our choice; sitting around for five minutes, playing ball, or “doing nothing” for only two minutes. As we continue to practice “wasting time”, we find other options that we used to consider as “worthless”.

   E. MEDITATE. Meditation is not something that only certain skilled people can do. Meditation is a simple act of sitting around and taking a deep breath. Our brain may say that this is “being stupid”, but that is OK if allowing ourselves to be “stupid” will clear our mind from “clutter”. Somebody told me that meditation is “silencing the mind”; another said it was sitting on the edge of the bed, a sofa in the living room, or a chair at work and feel receiving an imaginary beam of energy; another human told me that it is done taking a deep breath with our shoulders down. I guess the number of ways we meditate is as large as the number of humans who practice it. It seems that the common denominator is to find a manner to “retreat” from the nervous world we live for few minutes a day. I sometimes go to a restroom at the hospital and sit down saying “Thank you God”, or “Whatever you want God” because it removes me from “being in charge”, it is a way of giving the problems I cannot solve at any given moment to somebody bigger than me. Please note that I use the word God for convenience, but it can easily be Nature, Life, World, or any word we are comfortable with. An eighty five year old man friend of mine told me once that I can give all my problems even to a baboon; at least I will not have to carry them while I am resting!!

   F. CHANGE OUR DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS. As I was growing up, I defined happiness as excitement, as a state of peacefulness compared to the flat line of an EKG or a mix of both; this was unrealistic because a flat line means no life, while seeking pleasure is time consuming and deceiving because as I got pleasure, my disappointment once it was gone was like a hangover. Then I heard that happiness is not something I can demand, it comes quietly while I serve others. We serve others leading by example, if we change into a healthier way of living, we are actually plowing the road for those who wish to follow. Obviously we will not change the ones we choose, but many will change because of us –we will never know how many people we have impacted with our change, but we do not have to know. Our job is to care for ourselves. A mentor told me once that if I wanted my children and patients to eat healthy, I had to eat healthy!

   G. MAKE TIME FOR OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Older people tell us that the most valuable aspect of our life is our loved ones. Therefore, it makes sense to MAKE TIME to spend with them. For over thirty years of being involved in medicine, I have seen a lot of people dying. Dying people see the world different from us, they are given the gift of really “seeing” reality plain and simple –some of us call it “the bigger picture”, they have told me how much time they lost chasing the unchaseable, that “thing” that once it is reached will make them “happy forever”. We know there is no such thing; nevertheless, we keep doing, acquiring and discarding following a vicious cycle not having time for anything. At the end, we realize the senselessness of life the way we have been living it, and we “wake up”. Let us not wait till the end and make a conscious effort to wake up today and make some moments for those we care for. For those we love but do not care as much for us we can simply appreciate the opportunity to experience their existence without trying to change them, we basically let them live their lives acknowledging that they are as nervous and fearful  -and frequently as needy from approval, as we are.

   H. TAKE A VACATION. Vacation means vacate our minds from the “business” of regular living. It is healthy to remove ourselves from the routines involved in the places we live and work. For this reason is a good idea to take a week or even a couple of days off. It does not have to be a trip going out of town, it may be checking in a cheap hotel nearby and try something different –even if you have to bring your own lunch!

   I. OUR LIFE IS OUR MESSAGE. Make time for ourselves. We are very busy people serving at work, home, church, benefit organizations, and so forth. As a consequence, it is easy to forget to serve our own body, mind and spirit. Sometimes I am so busy that I have to “hide” from others so I can rest, read and nourish myself adequately. Let us not feel guilty for doing something good for ourselves.

   J. DO NOT EXPECT INSTANT RESULTS. Our mode of thinking has been “sculpted” for many years and it is almost as if it was engraved in stone and it will take some practice to change.

   K. DO NOT TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY: Plan to make a lot mistakes. If you are genuinely trying to change and you “fail”, instead of giving yourself one star, give yourself two stars. Remember that you are starting a NEW LIFE where the MAJOR GOAL is CUTTING YOURSELF SOME SLACK, and it starts today.

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR JOURNEY, WHICH EVENTHOUGH IS FULL OF UNCERTAINTY, WILL ALLOW YOU TO LIVE BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS, TO SEE THAT THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

© Rafael E. Cuellar, MD, 2009