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I just got back from China...

I just got back from China where people seem much less obsessed with body image and thinness than we are in the US and yet, oddly, are generally thin! Isn't it ironic that the more obsessed we get--as individuals or a society--with a particular ideal of perfection, the more elusive that ideal becomes? Perfectionism merely exasperates us.

UNC Chapel Hill has a research center that focuses on obesity. Under the leadership of Barry Poplin, PhD, they've determined that we Americans get a huge amount of our calories in liquid form. I've seen so many adolescents, tortured by their seeming inability to conquer their own obesity, just give up. They are obsessed with their own poor body image, yet they act as if they are powerless to address it. Vive mentors and parent coaches advocate a Kaizen approach to changing big problems. Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of small but continuous change--kind of creeping your way toward personal growth, especially in areas that seem to require radical change. The problem with radical change in areas where we're desperate to change is that it simply doesn't seem to work; radical change is too shocking to the system, too scary, too overwhelming, too painful, most of the time, to lead to anything but frustration. For something as innately frustrating as a weight control issue (especially in our body-perfectionist culture), Kaizen can be a much more effective, sustainable, humane way to accomplish personal goals than crash diets or ambitious attempts at exercise.

Anyway, back to Barry Poplin's research...UNC's Interdisciplinary Center for Obesity has published a beverage guideline that offers a great starting point for folks wanting to address their own weight issues, but who may find a wholesale change of diet or a sudden lurch into an exercise program overwhelming. They suggest taking a look at what you drink everyday. It might seem odd for me to be writing about diet on a therapeutic web site, but diet and physical health have a profound impact on our emotional and relational health, and vice versa. So we (Vive) really advocate addressing change holistically and with a Kaizen approach. That means taking small, manageable, persistent steps in multiple areas of our lives, rather than huge steps in one area.

Check out this dietary guideline for liquid intake--what kind and how much--from UNC. Seems to me that changing what I drink would be a much more manageable starting point for caloric control than changing what I eat. This tool is very interesting and could be great for folks looking to begin the process of managing their health and caloric intake.

http://www.beverageguidancepanel.org/

Cheers,

Will

Posted by Michael Behmer on August 9, 2007 2:03 PM | Permalink

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