Living healthy bad for emotional health

What?

That can't be right.  Isn't it true that regular exercise, healthy eating, and regular healthy sleep will infuse you with a healthy vigour?

Isn't it true that as fitness increases and weight decreases you feel more confident in your health and experience an overall increase in happiness and self esteem?

Yes, those things are true.  Here's what else is true, it's another one of those elephants in the room..

Many people face social rejection, every day, for making healthy choices.

It's an interesting irony.  We're inundated with stories in the media about how we're harming ourselves with poor eating habits and lack of exercise.  We see success stories of how people turned their lives around, reducing their cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, and increased their fitness by living healthy.

We're inspired to do better, but when people start practicing what is preached, many face ridicule and rejection from others, even from friends and family.  People bear the burden of extra stress and humiliation for making healthy choices.  How healthy is that?  Shamed for trying to be healthy.  Now that's a real shame.

To be clear, there are positive stories where a family member decides to eat healthier and in so doing influences others in the family to start eating healthy as well.  Everybody wins there.

A client of mine recently told me about experiencing some stress about how this years family Christmas dinner was going to pan out.  They're making an honest effort to eat less and felt that the typical Xmas day pig out was going to be stressful for them.

They called a family meeting to talk about it.  Turns out the rest of the family was very supportive and revealed that they also wanted to eat less and reduce the amount of junk food consumed on Christmas day; they wanted the family time, minus the overeating.

That's positive.  I like hearing stories like that one.

Come on, eat like us. Join the party!

Eating this? Get lost loser!

I also hear people telling me that since they started eating healthy, that they've found most restaurants, with their high salt, high fat, high calorie meals, have extremely limited menu choices for healthy eating.

To overcome this the healthy eater needs to order off-menu.  That's when the eyes start rolling.  That's when the comments start, "why not treat yourself?  Just eat it the way it is.  It's not going to kill you."

The thing is, eating 100% more food than you need isn't a treat, it's a trap.  Many of those who get this and are trying to escape the daily cycle of overeating begetting more overeating, are faced with peer pressure to keep overeating, and face social rejection if they don't overeat.

I've had many people tell me about how stressed they feel when they go out for food with others or are invited to dinner in someones home.  The explain how they're singled out.  They become the laughing stock as low-ball jokes about them eating less are flung at them while the whole crowd has a laugh at their expense, which is typically followed up by them being told they should suck it up.

Eating healthy is like smoking; it's not socially acceptable in many occasions.

When you're eating a chicken salad and others are eating hot-dogs, it's not uncommon for the hot-dog eaters to wave their hot-dogs around saying, "Mmmmm.. you don't know what you're missing!  Sure you don't want one?  How's that rabbit food you're eating?"

Really?  How about not saying anything?  How about respecting others?  Or maybe simply say something positive, "hey that looks tasty".

I've seen so many people stop their efforts to eat healthy because the peer pressure was too much.  It's like you have to be a closet healthy eater.. don't tell anyone you eat low sodium nutrient dense food, shield yourself from the public humiliation.

That's not good.  Many folks are making an honest attempt to reverse poor health or risk of poor health, and many are trying hard to conquer eating disorders or occasional disordered eating where food is used to deal with stress.  For those trying to overcome these challenges (more than 70% of the population overeats daily), it's overwhelming to also deal with the ridicule for trying to do the right thing, so they stop trying, and their health remains at risk.

For many people being ridiculed for eating healthy isn't pleasant.  Why would it be?

When is ridicule and rejection a positive thing?

Humiliation and ridicule is an unfortunate human behavior.  It's something we have to learn to cope with, but does that mean that such behavior is justified?  I don't think so.  It happens, but when it comes from your family and friends, it carries more emotional impact.  Words can, and often do, hurt.

You would think that making healthy choices would be celebrated and supported, and often it is, but much of the time it isn't.

I think it's weird, and also unconscionable, to put all that effort into slagging someone for eating healthy or exercising.  I think those who do so have their own issues that they don't understand, and are definitely challenged when it comes to common courtesy and respect for others.

Overall it isn't worth succumbing to the trash-talk of others, even though it may feel like that's the easiest way to make to it stop.  If you're finding yourself in this position, it may be time to reflect on who your real friends are, as well as staying true to what's best for you and your health.  Your health is worth defending, and worth making lifestyle changes for.

Do you trick yourself into not exercising?

Your intentions were good and you were initially gung-ho about about getting more active but somehow it fizzled out.  Where did those great feelings and motivating expectations go?

Research on what drives human behaviours is fascinating but is notoriously difficult to design a study that isn't tainted with bias and other scientific control requirements for a good study.

To answer the question I've presented here the answer that seems to have the most scientific consensus is that true emotional and reward association changes did not occur. 

The practical translation is that if you found yourself drifting back to old habits it's because your origional learned, habituated reward seeking is still intact.  The 10 oz steak is still more appealing than the 3 oz steak.  Not exercising is still more appealing than exercising. 

Additionally it may be that healthy eating and regular exercise are still viewed as a form of restriction or even punishment.  Why would anyone keep doing something they thought was this negative and unrewarding?

A common irony that many of you may have experienced personally (myself as well), is that the reward you want to give yourself for having consumed healthy food or participated in exercise is; overeating unhealthy food - the very thing that causes weight gain in the first place.

Burned off a whack of calories the last time you exercised?  What are you thinking about?  How rewarding it's going to be to eat that extra whatever; or how good you feel for having exercised? 

If extra food is still a primary reward provider then that is where we'll end up, especially if we think we've been 'putting up' with arduous healthy eating and exercise.  Ate healthy?  You poor thing!  Terrible that you had to suffer through that.  It's ok though, just reward yourself with overeating.

Feel better now?

That's why there is an approximate 85-95% failure rate in sustaining healthy habits beyond the first few months of trying.

There is an attempt to change actions but a limited attempt to change how we cognitively and emotionally process how our sense of reward and well being is associated with our actions and beliefs. 

Hard to quit something you love and do something you hate.

There are some other interesting human behaviour things that occur where behaviour change is involved.

Study subjects who participated in weight loss studies and were successful in losing weight tend to gain all the weight back after the study is over.  What?  So you're a living example of scientific proof of successful weight loss.  Simply continue living with the same habits you were asked to do during the study and you're set for life.

Seems logical.  Logic is great until emotion screws it up.

Some researchers believe this is due to something called the Hawthorne Effect.  Although there is great controversy over what exactly the Hawthorn Effect is or isn't, the term is often used to refer to how a person is affected by being observed while doing something they feel they are expected to do.

If you're in a jumping contest what else are you going to do other than jump as best you can?  There isn't anything else to do other than choose not to participate.  If you really like jumping you're going to keep doing it after the contest is over.  If you're not into vertical accomplishments the jumping is over when the contest is over.

A possible explanation for weight loss study subjects who regain weight after the study is over is that the only reason they followed the weight loss study protocol is because they knew they were in a weight loss study and that their activities were being monitored and tracked.  The study subjects wanted to apease the researchers.

Because the study subjects had no real internal drive to lose weight for reasons they held as personally important or rewarding, other than the sense of reward they got from appeasing the researchers.. take away the study and you take away the only thing that was motivating the person.

I've seen similar behavior with people who work in the fitness business and with athletes.  As soon as they're not in the business or the sport anymore, the healthy eating and exercise is replaced with little to no exercise and overeating.  This happens during the off-season as well.  Many who are active in whatever tend to gain weight and lose fitness during the off-season and typically lament these negative effects and wish they didn't have the setback to contend with when the next season started.

Weight gain and loss of fitness occurs.  So what's happening here?  We've all heard that consistency over long periods is one of the key predictors of long terms success with continuing to live with healthy habits.

The reward of overeating and not exercising is greater than the reward of maintaining healthy eating and regular exercise.

One of the milestones is the six month mark.  If you can make it through six months of healthy habits with few regressions you have a much better chance of retaining the habits long term.

If this is true how do we have athletes of any stripe experiencing unhealthy weight gain and tremendous loss of fitness within mere months of stopping sport?  Ditto for fitness pro's..

The thinking on this is that so long as you are in the environment where external expectations to perform are placed on you and you feel compelled to meet the expectations of others (rather than mostly from satisfying yourself), you will no longer feel compelled to perform once removed from that environment. 

A person may have tricked themselves into believing that they are into healthy living.  In reality they were into feeling accepted only when they met the expectations of the environment they were observed in.

How's that for a mind-bender? 

Play this out and ultimately a person would have tricked themselves into eventually losing fitness and gaining weight because they were never really into fitness or good nutrition other than meeting work or sports requirements. 

So how do you tell if you're really into it or if you're destined to regress to weight gain and loss of fitness?

If you're fooling yourself:

If you feel that second servings are delectable and what your mind is on during the first plate

If you can't wait to eat desert after a huge meal

If you reason that extra exercise deserves the reward of extra food

If you feel exercise is a necessary evil

If donuts make you drool and broccoli makes you gag

You've made it to the real deal and are likely to succeed long term and not depend on external motivation:

If you feel motivated by exercise alone and not just the possible weight loss outcome

If you look at food as feeding your body the nutrients you need rather than getting full

If you love the taste of healthy food

If you feel strongly about how exercise makes you happy and improves health

If you tend not to feel tempted by overeating or overindulgence in sweets or fatty foods

If you feel that missing exercise or healthy food will have a negative affect on your health and how you feel

If you tend to exercise alone or in groups because you want to, not because you're in an exercise group or on a team