Forgiveness —Something we can do to keep ourselves healthy

Many years ago, I read a piece of advice that truly caused me to reflect. The statement was about letting go of petty grievances and of not harboring resentment. It proclaimed that forgiveness is something we do for ourselves, not others. Each of us, in our lifetime, has experienced an assault on our identity or sense of self (pride), or on our body. We feel we must defend our bruised egos, reclaim who we are, and create a sense of fairness and justice by getting even. We expect that to make ourselves whole, the person who perpetrated the injustice must apologize, or in some other way give of themselves in order to "make things even."

To the extent that we must endure such injustices, we feel abused and hurt, and we feel we cannot go on until that wrong is somehow "righted". All the while, however, this resentment is creating a knot within us, something that represents "unfinished business". We carry this extra baggage along with us, perhaps adding additional baggage over time, and then realizing one day that we have a lot of this baggage weighing us down, and it truly does weigh us down.

There is abundant evidence now about how the endocrine system, the regulator of hormones that flow from our emotions, can yield unhealthy consequences over time if we continue to carry this additional emotional weight. It can and does create conditions that lead to increased risk for physical and mental illness. Yet, summoning the strength to be larger than any particular issue is to truly proclaim one's independence and create the emotional conditions that empower the body and the mind. This is often easier said than done because we are so habituated to acting like a victim when we are assaulted. We often forget that there is sometimes more power in "not doing" as in "doing"— in yielding rather than forcing. That is a principle of Taoism.

So, it turns out that one of the most beneficial "fitness exercises" a person can do is learning how to forgive. Think of forgiving as "giving for health and happiness"—our own!

Obesity and Lifestyle Change - Thinking About Activities

In previous posts we have discussed how people use time, their patterns of activity, and how these relate to their well being. These discussions have focused a great deal on how activities influence mood, or how they can serve to reduce stress. Less has been said about how activity influences our heart, lungs, nervous system, bones and muscles and other physiological systems.

I hasten to point out that this is not a post about exercise and physical fitness. The body is a complex system, with many individual subsystems working together to explain that complexity. Ordinarily, we think of the brain as the control center. But we seldom think of the back office systems that influence how the brain works. One of these back office systems is the endocrine system. This system regulates the chemicals in our bloodstream that carry messages to the nervous system. It influences metabolism, tissue growth, development and mood. Scientific discussions about how stress harms the body focus directly on this system of alerting or message sending through hormones. This brings us to the main topic of this post—obesity

Obesity is a significant health problem and it can be described as a kind of banner or symbolic indicator of how activity and lifestyle in the 21st century can influence health in both beneficial and harmful ways. Obesity is an epidemic, and if you visit the website of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), you will see a dramatic illustration of how the incidence of obesity has spread across the country over the past two decades. The data clearly suggest that obesity is not just a regional phenomenon, nor a socio-economic phenomenon. It is a lifestyle phenomenon that is related to how people spend time to consume and expend energy. If you notice in the CDC chart how the prevalence of obesity has spread, states where there are more outdoor opportunities for hiking, skiing and kayaking, or more farming and ranching— seem to be the last places where the obesity epidemic arrived. That suggests environment (and activity opportunity) influences obesity. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. There is another important factor related to weight gain—hormones. Especially hormones resulting from living stressful lifestyles.

Without going into too much detail or repeating information available widely on the Internet, most diets (the usual approach to battling weight gain) fail. Why? Because hormones signal our body to store energy (or calories) so that we can survive famine conditions. These systems are ancient, biological survival mechanisms that evolved over millions of years when humans were hunters or gatherers. Animals in the wild have the same systems, but they spend their awake hours in a quest to find food just as humans once did. They may go for days in their quest for meals, burning more calories than they are able to replenish. Contrast this with the modern life of humans in the U.S. and other developed nations: Going for hours without a meal is often viewed as a starvation diet!

Thus, animal species (including humans) are biologically wired to store calories and resist efforts to expend them. All dieters know that as soon as they begin reducing their food intake, their body reacts by increasing its efforts to hold on to those life sustaining calories. That's what makes dieting so difficult. But food intake is only half of the equation.

The other part is energy expenditure. As modern conveniences are developed, technology becomes our enemy. We move less, watch TV or surf the Internet more, and there is little calorie burning to offset our increased consumption. Moreover, eating itself is an activity, and a pleasurable one. Generally, people would rather eat than work out on the treadmill. Eating is also typically a social activity. When people get together to enjoy themselves and each other, food is often involved.The result is increased body weight. Exercise intentions expressed in New Year resolutions are, well— well intended. But habits and routines are hard to break. People need stimulating reasons to live their lives differently. They need to be motivated to move more and eat less.

But the story doesn't end there. Stress (and there is a lot of that around lately!) produces hormones that signal the body to conserve energy. So metabolism (calorie burning) slows as a result of stress too. Some scientists attribute the obesity epidemic as much to increased levels of stress (and the influence of stress hormones on slowing metabolism) as they do to lifestyle patterns that are characterized by sedentary activities and increased food consumption.

So, at long last, we get to the point of this post about obesity. Obesity is more than weight gain. It is a condition of lifestyle that is affected by factors that have nothing to do with eating. The interesting thing is, these factors involve human activities, and the most natural solutions have to do with the activities people do as they live their everyday lives. If those activities help people burn more calories and eat less, so much the better. But if they give pleasure, reduce stress, and stop signaling the body to store energy, they provide a double benefit. The bottom line: Activity is more than exercise!