Health as a Puzzle
Good health is a complete puzzle to me. I understand the objectives and yet, so far, I seem to miss them and end up eating all this cheese or processed snacks. My head is wired so incorrectly. Basically, I get into loops and I can’t give myself permission to feel good, to take care of myself. I do things for others instead of for myself. What I’ve realized is that health is a direction, an attempt to say, I will go in a given direction. I will move in one way rather than another. But this is tricky because the messages about health are very binary. The messages about health are: One should be a given something physical and material. One should look and behave in a specific way. One should be young, attractive, thin, and free of illness.
Basically, I get into loops and I can’t give myself permission to feel good,
to take care of myself.
In a market-driven society where most basic needs are met for most people — certainly America has a lot of calories to spread around, even if not everyone gets enough of them and many of them are the wrong kind of calories — you start to sell other things, experiences mostly. “You deserve a break today” is a candy-bar slogan. Gym slogans tend to be along the lines of, “You are an athlete; push through it; realize your potential.” It would be very interesting to take candy-bar slogans and put them alongside images of athletes and vice versa. Snickers: You have only begun to realize your true potential.
Snickers: You have only begun to realize your true potential.
In any case, it can be very confusing if you, like me, have a compulsive relationship with food, if your brain doesn’t quite work right regarding health, it can be confusing to deal with these signals because they are deeply internalized in our culture, and they are presented in terms of binaries rather than directions. So right now I am under a lot of stress and I am frankly not headed healthwards. I am eating too many carbohydrates and the wrong kind of proteins and I am also eating many fats that aren’t the right kind of fats. Most importantly I am not tracking my food. I am a semi-conscious eater. And when I am cut off from my supply I become very anxious, like any addict, and I worry.
… it can be confusing to deal with these signals because they are deeply internalized in our culture, and they are presented in terms of binaries rather than directions.
What health means to me is a question of: Am I out of a state of addictive anxiety? Once I am out of that state, am I moving in a direction towards health, by which I mean that my body is flexible and capable of steady and sustained motion. Can I walk for five hours? Right now I could do a ten or fifteen mile bike ride and it would be slow. But could I do fifty miles up to the George Washington Bridge and across to the Palisades? And without anxiety? The key thing is that fifty miles is not “health.” Fifty miles is just fifty miles. I am not headed healthwards right now and I don’t know how to be headed healthwards, frankly, because I am surrounded by calories, I am anxious, I have to attend to the needs of many people, and I am the support for a family of four. My current goal is a kind of survival — not a real survival but to keep the idea of health foremost in mind so that when certain wheels start turning again I will be able to move healthwards once more.
Health is the Chairs and Tables theme for 2015. We pick a theme for at least four seasons and s-l-o-w-l-y release a report on it. For a full list of writers, the editorial team, and more on the subject and themes for previous years, hit open sesame.
