Don‘t Get Healthier

Spokesparrot Noelle eating some bawk-bawk-bawk choy

Most “resolutions” are futile, just as most “advice” is completely bogus. My personal favorites are “everything happens for a reason” - THE most meaningless thing ever said - and the whole concept of “getting healthy.” Please tell me. What does that even mean? (Either one. The vagueness, it hurts my face). We pick a cloudy, non-specific intention like “get healthier” because it sounds psychologically more balanced than the alternatives, like “lose weight.” Speaking as someone who has done both successfully, I have a lot to say. Rant, rather.

The problem with “getting healthier” as a goal is that people are LESS likely to meet their health goals when they choose this as their intention. It has to do with the halo effect. Our culture makes a strong link between ‘healthy’ and:

Sanctimonious

Holier-than-thou

Smug

Critical

Deranged

There are a lot of people who would probably feel more of a sense of genuine welcome at the thought of a religious missionary coming to their door than they would at the thought of a conversation about “health” or “weight loss” or “fitness.”

Especially when we don’t have personal experience with these altered states of being, we find it impossible to imagine what that emotional or mental state would feel like. We can’t even begin to guess at the physical, other than sweat, soreness, and blisters. What story would we tell ourselves? All we have to draw on are guesswork, media representations, fictional characters, and our gut-level responses to advertising images.

We think:

Pressure

Shaming

Impossible

Social exclusion

Ugly

Mockery

Nagging

What about health, though?

My fitness goals are at least half “moving away from” goals rather than “moving toward” goals. I eat in a certain way and move my body a certain amount because I’m deliberately trying to avoid specific inner states. I can’t alway feel that I’m on track, but when I get off track, the physical consequences come at me hard and fast. I get a rapid internal beatdown that demonstrates, once again, that I tend toward certain patterns. Patterns that are in my control should work for me, not against me. I can’t justify being my own worst enemy.

For me, it’s not a question of “healthier” but of:

Four-day migraines

Waking up several times a night with nightmares or, worse, night terrors

If you’ve never experienced a true night terror, it would be really hard to explain why this would be a motivator. Imagine waking up shaking and crying in another room, with no explanation of how you got there. Imagine someone having to pin you to the bed for three minutes because you were thrashing and screaming and you wouldn’t wake up. Imagine your heart rate doubling in fifteen seconds, launching you out of bed and onto your feet like you just touched a hot stove burner. After three years of that, I was humbled. I was ready to do anything to be free.

For the last four years, I was free. Free both of migraines and night terrors. Then, in the past couple of months, I’ve started experiencing alarming symptoms again. Flailing around in bed. Nightmares that last for two hours. Sitting straight up in a panic. About a week ago I got a headache with one of my classic migraine symptoms, jaw cramping. These two conditions don’t have anything to do with one another, as far as I know, but they are both signs that my system is out of whack.

What’s different?

I ate more sweets over the holidays, specifically dessert on two consecutive nights. I ate more in general. The weather got cold and I changed my default fitness habits. My weight crept up a few pounds.

Pop culture would say that I should lighten up, be gentle with myself, and quit caring about social norms or body image. (Assuming that I do in the first place, because I’m a woman, when actually I find body image norms to be irrelevant to my emotional world). Nothing about any of that remotely impacts whether I wake my husband up on a work night because I’m shouting in my sleep, or whether my eyelid starts twitching.

There’s a lot of standard, mainstream “health” advice that I either disregard, find irrelevant, or experience as harmful to my physical state. For instance, I hate coffee, I don’t care for chocolate, and alcohol doesn’t seem to work on me, so I ignore all the articles about their supposed health benefits. I don’t take a multivitamin for two reasons, one, because it’s linked to higher mortality from all causes, and two, because of consistent quality control issues turned up in independent lab testing. What they’re selling on the label is not always what’s actually in the bottle. I’ve tried a high-protein, low-carb diet and it made me feel like I ate wet cement. Not compatible with endurance sports! I gravitate toward strenuous exercise and endurance sports because they work better than anything else I’ve found when my stress level goes up.

I’ve never had night terrors on a night after I went for a run.

Where I’m going with all this is that when we look for “motivation,” the concept of “getting healthier” seems to backfire. When we choose literally anything else, such as “impress my cat,” if we find it personally meaningful, it works. I once coached a client whose goal was to look hot in an evening dress because she knew she was going to see her ex at a New Year’s party. She nailed her weight goal and reported back that she felt really smug and proud on her way home from the party. Worked for her.

Trying to escape a harsh physical reality, like a persistent skin rash, is usually more “motivating” for most people than an aspiration like a goal weight or clothing size. Emotional realities may work, too, depending on the person.

I would suggest tracking your metrics if you have issues with, say, irritable bowel syndrome, sleep apnea, gastritis, chronic pain or fatigue, or any mystery issue. This is especially true if you’ve felt that doctors were condescending and dismissive toward your concerns. Bringing them a health log with specific observations and health metrics occasionally tends to get their attention. It can also reveal patterns that you can observe and correct yourself.

When I started having night terrors, I did a ton of research. It turned out that, at the time at least, very little was known about it. I would have gone to a sleep lab, but I only had episodes about once every three weeks, with a pattern so sporadic and inconsistent that I doubted the lab would catch one in action. I talked to doctors who completely, rudely scoffed at me and told me I just needed to have better sleep hygiene. Nobody said, “watch your blood sugar and quit eating three hours before bedtime” or “stop eating sugar” or “do more strenuous exercise, at least 45 minutes per instance at least five days a week.” Those were the modifications that actually worked. I consider these behavior modifications to be objectively quantifiable and testable. That’s the goal with tracking health metrics.

Not some vague cloud of woo-woo and positive thinking - although I believe in both! When I’m experiencing a real-world, measurable problem that comes from my body, I want real-world, scientific approaches to get rid of it. I don’t want “healthier,” I want something specific that actually improves my life. When I make a resolution about my health, I want to know when I’ve completed it and what counts as “keeping” it.