SOCIAL INFLUENCE, HABIT CHANGE AND WHAT’S MISSING! (ISSUE 98)

By Diane Gold

What is it with social influence and habit change? For habit change, it seems very obvious that people like support. And that more people change a habit using a buddy system or enlisting an accountability partner or group. This article will focus on what about groups helps us and what’s basic to success.

THE MOTIVATION WE GET FROM GROUPS

When thinking about social influence and habit change, I think of doing physical fitness like tai chi, going to the gym, going to a weight watch group, going to a rehab center. The function of each of these group activities is motivation of some kind. Let’s look at how the group motivates us.

1) We are social creatures and can enjoy being in the company of others.

2) Because we are the ultimate creatures of habit, a new group setting can be a safer environment than one we have been around when acting out our old habit.

3) We can get courage from hearing that someone else understands us, whether we are talking about drugs, weight loss or anything else.

4) Being with others is a big distraction that can assist us when breaking in a new habit. After all, when we are alone, we are our sole distraction, and the only person on whom we rely; but, in a group setting, we have more social influence keeping us on track.

5) Because we are so impressionable, for the most part, we pick up the habits of others. Therefore, if we are around people who are productive, we will be more inclined to be productive.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

We should note that the group experience is not everyone’s preference. If we look at how Americans spend their time, according to the America Time Use Survey, done by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, a similar percentage of people work out alone as together. But this statistic is not specifically for habit change activity, so I would suspect if there were a time use survey done for people who are changing a habit, there would be more groupies than soloists.

SUCCESS RATE

When we look at the amount of people who go back to their old habits after six months, a year, five years; it can be disheartening. There’s an interesting statistical article from 2004 about how treatment doesn’t work at:
http://www.soberforever.net/currenttreatdoesnt.cfm.

Unfortunately, after writing about how treatment doesn’t work, the article’s publisher contradicts itself by saying its treatment facility has a success rate 30% higher than anyone else.

It is fairly accepted that most people who become residents in rehabilitation centers succeed between 3% and 10% of the time to maintain their habit change. The data at centers is usually compiled without scientific method, and, because individuals only answer survey questions to arrive at conclusive data, it is extremely difficult to maintain study integrity.

SIDEBAR

This fact reminds me of another modality whose studies are sporadic, don’t always use scientific method and are small. It’s how tai chi, which saves lives, does its magic. Studies that involve mind-body answers and compare one’s lifestyle before and after are very expensive. To conduct a nice-sized primary study (one that uses fresh data to arrive at conclusions vs. a secondary study that analyzes and interprets a primary study), it can cost $250,000 and that would be for a small mind-body study.

WHAT’S MISSING?

So, what’s missing from all these programs that include one-to-one therapy, group therapy, peer group therapy, tai chi, chi kung, yoga, massage, sauna, meditation, organic vegan food and more?

I’m going to repeat what makes up a habit: a cue, a behavior and the resulting reward. This habit model doesn’t change. So what are we shooting for?

When we go into a program and do all the therapies mentioned above, we have one purpose. It is to change a habit. This requires that a new system be put in place. To build this, we must change the mind and develop skill and build our foundation. After all, we need to have something to hold on to when our urges show up in order to direct us to execute our new behaviors we have developed.

BUILDING FOUNDATION

Let’s use how tai chi changes us since I have seen it first-hand in many hundreds of people. Any mind-body work or other creative discipline can do it as long as the instructor understands how foundation is built and instructs it starting with the basics.

People think tai chi is for exercise or defense, alone. It’s really for perception change. By doing a powerful exercise as tai chi is, we learn a systematic approach to movement. This system gives us tools to use in everyday life. As we acquire the patience to endure tremendous body exertion, we are learning a tool that works with anything in life. We have the understanding to know that the physical exertion and mental concentration needed to physically execute the movement is teaching us to follow through. And it is showing us we can do it.

This type of training gives us a foundation of skills that can be used to change a habit. They are self-esteem, pride, temperance, patience, tolerance, strength, balance and many more. These are the traits needed for habit change. If a rehab program misses teaching these skills through some type of system, the program participant is left in relatively the same condition as when s/he arrived, only learning a few rote skills which usually fade away, exposing the old habit.

CONCLUSION

We are socially influenced in many ways. When we see lots of people doing the same thing, we are more inclined to do that same thing. I always give the example of helping a fallen woman on the sidewalk. If no one has stopped to help, we are less likely to stop. If someone has already stopped to help, we will be more likely to inquire if we can help (unless we are public servants or feel like public servants and believe it is our duty to protect).

It’s the same if we surround ourselves with people who do not take drugs or drink or overeat or gamble. We will be more likely to accept behaving in a similar fashion, especially if they know we are working on habit change. If we keep repeating a new behavior in place of the old habit at the same time as building a personal foundation, we will succeed. And what’s missing at the start will no longer be missing. We will have developed, not only new behaviors, but a structure within ourselves that will sustain the way we wish to live.

ACTION STEP SEQUENCE

In order to see how easy it is to reach out to another, meaning, to form a group, here’s an action that might be helpful.

1)  Approach someone who is in your life or just someone you meet at the library or supermarket.

2)  Tell her (him) you are doing an experiment and that you need help one time between 6 pm and 7 pm one night this week. (It can be a different time.)

3)  Tell the person that, when you call, you will ask her to tell you how important you are to your mission.
_________

Let us know how it goes.
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FEEDBACK

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has been influenced by group dynamics and seen how others sometimes get trapped. She says,

“Fortunately, I was raised to be very independent. But groups still influence me. Whether we are helped by the group or our own personal way, the one that works is the right one for each of us.

“As for building a foundation, there’s only one way to go about it: one step at a time. Slowly, with consistency and follow-through. As we begin to build upon ourselves, we become very strong. Then we become the social influencers, and nothing more is missing.”

THE ONE SECRET TO HABIT CHANGE: GET IT AND USE IT! (ISSUE 97)

By Diane Gold

There is one secret to habit change. We don’t need to be college-educated to understand it. We don’t have to have been brought up in a wealthy home to use it. It is the same in every country. It applies to every habit. We all know the concept as it applies to daily life. Yet, it’s still a secret.

Before we spell it out for you, let’s look at the characteristics of habit change. We have three ingredients: the URGE, which is the itch or cue that we want to experience a particular pleasurable feeling; the ACTION, which is whatever is done in response to the urge; and the REWARD, which is the glorious feeling of pleasure we get from the action we chose to take after we had the urge.

In order to hear it, we must be ready at this very moment to realize its truth; and that if we don’t make it a priority in our lives, we will go another way. Easiest is best, and that’s upon what this secret is based.

Are you ready? Here it is.
In order to eliminate lots of wasted time from roller coaster habit change work, act within 5 seconds of feeling the urge. And you will have the easiest road ahead. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I am saying this method makes it easier. Simple, right?

Let’s look at a few examples.

Picture the situation where we get an urge to eat cake. We are on a strict regimen not to include cake in our food plan. If we don’t act with instant motion within five seconds of the urge, we have already given ourselves time enough to plan which way we will walk to the cake store, passing an Automatic Teller Machine along the way, since we keep no cash with us to avoid running out to buy food. Oops, we forgot about the ATM card. Or figuring out how to run up an account with the local grocer if we have no cash, if we have remembered not to have an ATM card around.

[Note to self: if not already done, place the ATM card in the safety deposit box.]

If we do act within five seconds, we can dissipate our urge and have one more experience of staying within our food plan.

Here’s another.

Imagine it’s the end of the work day, we are closing up our store and start getting the urge to join all our buddies across the street and drink alcohol. Yet, we know, at this time, we have decided to abstain from alcohol because it does not support us. So, when we feel that craving, we have a choice: we can act within 5 seconds and take a new action that does not involve alcohol OR wait and go drink alcohol, a behavior we already know is not working for us. If the people at the pub are really our buddies, we will see them later, not in the bar.

This urge and this situation have happened to me more times than I can count. My live-in boyfriend had left work early and was always at the bar. So, my mind did its jealousy dance about his having alcohol and fun without me or having more alcohol than I was having. Crazy, right, that I would be jealous of someone else’s having more substance than I? Crazy, but true. Vividly, jealousy green, true.

The only way for me to replace this cycle was for me to act IMMEDIATELY before I thought about alcohol, jealousy, whatever else my crafty mind came up with. If I didn’t act quickly, I’d be sucked into the old habit behavior.

And finally, a last example follows.

Let’s say I had stopped smoking cigarettes for a year. And no one smoked around my job or house. One day, I was taking a walk in the metro area, and someone who was smoking passed me by. I got a whiff of smoke and instantly wanted to smoke. Without instant action, I would be urged to bum a cigarette from that very person. That would start the old familiar cycle of smoking which was the familiar behavior I knew that satisfied the craving for smoking. When I moved quickly and took a different action, I learned how to create new rewards with my different actions, and the urge to smoke went away again.

CONCLUSION

We have a very short window of opportunity in which to execute the one secret to habit change. It’s usually in that five second range that we must act. If we don’t take a new action within that time, we will habitually do our old behavior. And changing our habit will wait on the sidelines another day.

Think about it. What happens when we procrastinate? Nothing new. If we do nothing new to change our habit, we will gravitate toward what we know: our old habit. Most of us know our old habit with our eyes closed because we have repeated it so often.

It requires focus to take a new step. The more we take that step, though, the more it replaces our old action. If we do it once, it’s a novelty. If we do it twice, we see its merits. If we carry it out a third, fourth, fifth time; it becomes more natural, although usually it requires 21 days for the mind to accept the new behavior as becoming a possible replacement.

ACTION STEP

The one action we will take when we feel an urge works for all kinds of habits. It can’t hurt us either. It can only help.

We will drink water, two glasses, eight to twelve ounces each, as soon as we feel our urge to fulfill our old craving, no matter what it is. The act of drinking water dissipates any of the oral addictions biologically, such as eating, alcohol drinking, drugging, smoking. It has the following effects on all habits.

1) It physically dilutes the blood so that the usual amount of substance (food, alcohol, drug) cannot produce the same reward.
Perspective

2) It changes our mental perspective so that we are no longer focused on whatever we were focused on before we drank the water.

3) It changes our emotional status because it has a calming effect.

4) It teaches us a technique we can use almost anywhere), at any time, as long as we are in a place fortunate enough to have freely running water.

5) It is our first habit change buddy, always loyal, never a flat leaver, always faithful.

Do it. It is massively impactful, requires little activity, not much effort other than the effort of doing magic on or tricking one’s own mind. And it works on all the urges to a large degree.

May the change be with you!

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has used the one secret to habit change many a time and would like to see it go public. She says,

“Habits are learned by repeating one behavior, over and over again. If we were Vulcans (from Star Trek) and had no emotions, we’d have no trouble taking the secret step at any time and adjusting our behaviors.

“Because we are not Vulcans and are so attached to our emotions, cravings, urges, desires, passions; each behavior is motivated by many emotions. Thus, we need boldly to move ourselves to the new behavior, whether our emotions agree or not. This takes focus. If we put on horse blinders, we would have an easier time. Although the very idea might diminish our self-esteem, another important emotion; so we don’t use them.

“The secret to habit change is water, two glasses. Let’s make an effort to drink it as a technique of change. It works and empowers, all by itself. Consider it. There’s nothing to lose.”

THE 5 BIGGEST MISTAKES OF HABIT CHANGE (ISSUE 96)

By Diane Gold

What if we could boil down the 5 biggest mistakes of habit change? Could we use them to make changing habits easier? And out of them create the 5 Commandments Of Habit Change?

Everything we read, hear, experience, learn, touch, smell, feel helps in the change process. But we always have to work hard to make change. I have turned myself inside out more than once, and I believe it to be a worthwhile activity.

MISTAKE 1) Look at more than one habit at a time.

In order to succeed, we must focus. We need one-pointed mind.

Remember the quote in The Last Samurai, where the Japanese general tells Tom Cruise’s character,

“Too many mind. No mind,”

when he is training him in the sword? (Go to http://000chi.com to hear the quote.)
Focus On One Habit At A Time

He is referring to our ping pong ball minds. When we look at many things, we lose focus of all of them. When we look at one thing, we are able to focus on it. One Habit At A Time!

MISTAKE 2) Picture the end result instead of the first step.

When learning to change a habit, looking too far ahead is usually a deal breaker. If we are looking at the end result, meaning that we changed our habit; it may look vast, overwhelming, impossible, certainly difficult that it’s quitting time, quitting the process of change, that is.

That’s why we only look at the very first step, whatever that step is for each of us at the moment. The first step is NOT the first step in the process. It is the one step directly in front of us. I realize that this same step may need to be done over and over and over again 25 times in one day. This depends upon how many times a cue, urge, trigger presents itself.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say we decide that when we get the urge to __________, and I am leaving this blank so that any habit can be filled in; we will drink 16 ounces of water. We will also drink water before every meal. Supposedly, it’s difficult for the body to tell if it is hungry or thirsty, so water can fill us up, especially if we have the patience to wait 20 minutes (which most of us don’t) before we __________. Also, the act of drinking the water will change our focus from the ______________ to the water. It may be just enough to allow us not to ____________.

MISTAKE 3) Commit to change our habit forever.

When we decide we will change a habit forever, we are locking ourselves in a prison. To give up an old behavior is not as difficult if we tell ourselves that we might be able to go back to it at some point in the future. It makes it easier to start, and it is not as scary a process. Change A Habit For Today, Not Forever

It’s easier to say,

“I will do this today,”

than it is to say I will never do this again.

So, our change is for today, not for forever. One Urge At A Time.

MISTAKE 4) Stop doing the action that actually worked to get us to change our habit because we think it’s no longer necessary.

 How many times have we thought we had ourselves together, and we stopped behaving in the way that was working for us? We had changed our habit so long ago that we thought we could stop the technique that got us to change the habit?

This happens with the weight loss habit all day long. That’s why people lose weight for a year or five, then gain it back. That’s why substance abusers get clean for 10 years and then start their old behavior.

We can’t go to the track once; we can’t do drugs recreationally; we can’t eat chocolate cake for lunch. Because we will cause the cues to start hitting us in the head again. Kind of like a trigger on a gun that is broken. Every time it is fired, it cocks itself. And every time it is cocked, we have the itch to execute our old habit.

We can’t fight biology. Our habits live inside us, and we can’t take them out of us. We can choose to change a habit to make another dormant. If we stop the new, in most cases, we will revert back to the old way of behaving because it is so natural to us. That is why once we make a change, we have to maintain it for as long as we want the old habit to be hidden.

Here’s an example of how the habit of speaking one way reverts to an old way in a flash.

We speak with the accent of our region. The people around us sound the way we sound, and we sound the way they sound. No one in our region says we have an accent because we all speak similarly.

What happens if we move to a different region? According to our new neighbors, we have an accent. They sound like each other, and we don’t like them. People usually smile about it because we sound very much like the place from which we came. We smile, too.

So we end up living in the new region for about 10 years. And we start to sound more and more the way the people of the region sound. This is not really a phenomenon. It is a combination of:

1) wanting to fit in even if this desire is unconscious. We are human and we like to fit in;

2) learning our new accent unconsciously through continually hearing the new region speech all the time and, finally,

3) making an effort to learn the accent of the region so that we can further call it home.
What happens if our best friend from back in our old region comes to visit? We instantly start to speak the dialect or accent of our old region. In a flash. We go out to town to introduce our best friend, and we are speaking the way we were when we first arrived.

Here’s the explanation.

We learned our original habit, our accent from where we were born.

We changed this habit, partly by choosing to fit in and partly through unconscious, auditory repetition.

We changed our habit back to the original habit in a heartbeat because all our habits are always ours.

We choose a new behavior so as not to express the old habit. When we don’t, our old habit comes out (usually). So we need to be diligent even if we have been doing the new habit caused by the new action/behavior for a decade or longer.

The story about the accent focuses on a habit that is not harmful. And, most of the time, the accent habit situation is harmless. But what about the following scenario?

Imagine a U.S. Senator whose family members all speak street language. She was the only member of the family to go to school. She was raised on “ain’t,” “anyways,” “nucular energy,” “athalete,” “asterik,” “supposubly,” “mischieveeous.” She goes to visit her original home for a week and her entire family speaks their normal street speak to her or with her. Then she comes back to D.C.

All of a sudden, at a dinner with the President, she starts telling a story about her family. She forgets where she is and begins speaking in her old dialect with her old street slang.

People judge people by their speech. And people don’t use slang in the political halls of our government because of it. Bringing out her old habitual speech could have serious credibility consequences since the public must trust her and some of that public equates her speech with her ability to lead. Her constituents might lose trust in her; and political peers might judge her unworthy of her post.

Fortunately, if someone has become a U.S. Senator, she will have a strong foundation in having learned how to speak and know what to speak in front of whom. But the old speech is there like all our old habits.

5) Forget to enjoy the idea of the new action that led to the new habit which is what helped us conjure the power to change.

This does not apply at the beginning of the habit change process. For as long as it takes, we are learning a new set of behaviors, and enjoyment is important but second to doing the behavior without intellectualization.

The ONLY thing that is relevant is doing the new action. Nothing else.

Once we have accomplished doing the new action and have a routine going that includes the new behavior, we can rejoice in the fact that we have begun to change the habit and that we had the power to start. If we forget to be joyful which includes acknowledging ourselves for changing, we are missing out on the joy that can sustain the new behavior.

CONCLUSION

These 5 mistakes create powerful action steps from which to learn. They are simple ideas that, when executed, have much power, much wisdom and many success statistics.

Here are the steps:

ACTION STEPS – THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS OF HABIT CHANGE

1) Focus on one habit at a time!

2) Picture the first step in front of you now! When accomplished, picture the first step in front of you now!

3) Commit to change your habit for only the moment you have an urge or for an hour after it or for a day. Any longer is too overwhelming.

4) Continue doing the action that changed your habit, even if it doesn’t seem as if you need it.

5) Enjoy the idea that we have made the change (further on down the process).
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FEEDBACK

Please leave a comment and LIKE.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has seen the same mistakes over and over when people change habits or make the attempt. She says,

“We can learn as much from our mistakes as from our successes. We may even learn more because we are acutely aware of our falling short of our goals and pay attention so that we can strive to reach them.

“We are fortunate to be able to learn from others’ shortcomings. All living things do. Because we have an emotional and ego-driven minds, it is not as easy for us to take the errors of others as gospel. We are often blinded by egos, unlike our animal friends. If they are blinded, it is usually by the need to survive.

“Let us turn these five mistakes of habit change into action steps. Each one has the potential to make the ultimate difference in the outcome of our goal for habit change.”

DEMYSTIFYING TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (ISSUE 95)

By Diane Gold

Tradition Chinese Medicine needs to be demystified in the United States. Through my years of being around both Western and Eastern Medicine as a music therapist and tai chi mentor and school owner, I have seen lots of confusion when it comes to understanding Eastern Medicine. My purpose is to bring people closer understanding Traditional Chinese Medicine so it can be used with confidence.

My interview demystifies. It is with Doctor of Oriental Medicine, George Love, licensed as a primary care physician in the State of Florida since 1986. He has extensive background in acupuncture, massage, herbology and nutrition. Parts of the interview are in dialogue, other parts in narrative.

DIANE

Can you talk about people’s perception of Chinese Medicine when they really don’t know anything about it. What do you think people see and how can we bring people closer to it?

GEORGE

Number one, it’s called attitude, perception and perspective. We grow up thinking everything American is great and wonderful, and the rest of the world doesn’t know anything. And obviously that’s not the case.

Number two is that anything we don’t understand immediately upon hearing it cannot be good.

And number three, our perspective, is that we live in a country where A follows B, and everything is linear thought.

ATTITUDE

America is a very young country; we don’t know much. Therefore, we have to look at ancient cultures and what worked for them and try to adapt the ancient …

PERCEPTION AND PERSPECTIVE
     … we look at acupuncture, and we perceive that acupuncture is Chinese Medicine. Acupuncture is only one tool in a tool kit that contains at least 14 different tools. The number one tool is the understanding that blood and energy flow together. … The reason people get sick is that blood and chi become stuck or stagnant.

If we look at arthritis or pain or any muscular pain or any digestive pain or any respiratory distress, the blood and the chi are stagnant; they don’t flow. The purpose of Chinese Medicine is to move chi and to move blood. The purpose of chi kung and tai chi is to move chi and to move blood. So, therefore, tai chi and chi kung are actually part of Chinese Medicine.

DIANE

Can you differentiate … between moving chi and moving blood?

GEORGE

Chi moves the blood, and the blood pumps the heart.

DIANE

OK. Great.

People are in the habit of going toward what they’ve heard of, what they know and what other people have told them, social proof. If we’ve been around Chinese Medicine, then we think it’s normal. If we’ve been around only Western Medicine, very often, we don’t understand Chinese Medicine. And we shy away from it thinking we know what it is.

DEMYSTIFYING CHINESE MEDICINE: THE PROCESS

When you’re short of breath, you know when you’re short of breath. (George pants and says,)

“I’m short of breath.”

If you run across the street really fast or … you … run up a flight of stairs really fast, you know you’re short of breath.

If you see somebody sitting in a chair and they’re slumped over, you say,

“Hey, what’s wrong with you? You don’t feel well?”

Or if you see somebody sitting on the edge of their chair, their back is straight and they’re smiling; you say,

“Wow, what’s going on with you? You look really energetic.”

So, it is literally visible if somebody’s chi is strong or weak.

DIAGNOSIS

HOW WE GET SICK: THE CAUSES

So what we want to know is why do people get sick, how do we get sick, and how do we get well?

So, how do we get sick? TRAUMA, INSUFFICIENCY, TOXICITY.

TRAUMA

Either you have a car accident, you fall down the steps, you fall out of a tree, you get run over by a car, whatever that trauma is.

There’s also emotional trauma. So your emotional trauma is abandonment, rejection, betrayal and abuse. Your emotional trauma is anger, avoidance and addiction. Your emotional trauma is your victim story.

TOXICITY

Now we have toxicity from overeating the wrong foods, eating the bad foods or getting an infection.

INSUFFICIENCY

Insufficiency would be not enough love, not enough laughter, not enough relaxation, not enough exercise, not enough water. That would be insufficiency.

DIANE

This sounds very, very simple and something I can understand.

HOW TO GET WELL

GEORGE

So, this is our framework. These are our tools that we need to look at how we get sick.

How do we get well? You reverse the trauma.
Reverse The Trauma

PARTIAL LIST OF TOOLS OF CHINESE MEDICINE

GEORGE

That [which what would reverse the trauma] would be massage, … acupuncture, … physical therapy, … yoga, … chi kung, … tai chi. So there’s any number of tools at your disposal to reverse trauma. Breathing, meditation, internal exercise.

TOXICITY

So toxicity, well, we want to detoxify the blood.
So [for] inflammation or infection, you want to take herbs, or you want to a juice fast, juice feast.

You want to restrict  caloric intake. You want to take herbs that purify the blood or cool the blood. And that’s how we reverse toxicity.

INSUFFICIENCY

And, insufficiency, you want to eat super foods. You want to take herbs that give you energy. And chi kung or tai chi would be appropriate also for insufficiency.

THE REST OF THE LIST OF  TOOLS OF CHINESE MEDICINE

What we call Chinese Medicine, they (the Chinese) call meridian therapy. There’s breathing, there’s meditation, there’s internal exercise, there’s food, there’s herbs. Then there is heat, pressure, sound, magnets, electricity, red light, laser light, suction, scraping, and, oh, by the way, we’ve got an acupuncture pin, also.

In the west, our perception is that acupuncture is Chinese Medicine.

DIANE

Absolutely right. And many people don’t even know the word acupuncture…
To understand that there are all these other therapies that are Chinese Medicine is very interesting. And, it makes people understand how Chinese Medicine came about. Because not everybody needed a pin, and some people needed a pin. And there were so many other ways to move the blood and the chi. And these are the ways of the Traditional Chinese Medicine.     Traditional Chinese Medicine Caduceus

THE DIAGNOSTIC GRID

NARRATIVE

I ask George to complete the diagnostic grid and talk about the categories that make up the diagnostic grid.

GEORGE

OK, we have the emotional, physical, nutritional and energetic. That’s gonna be the rows on the left.
And then your columns are going to be trauma, toxicity and insufficiency.

DIANE

So when I asked you how you diagnose, you said to me,

“You ask why is someone here, or why do you have pain or who is giving you pain.”

I thought that was rather telling …

GEORGE

WHO is the pain in your neck?

DIANE

It’s very true. Pain can be emotional pain and can be caused by a particular being.
So what we talked about today seems like very [systematic] medicine. It doesn’t involve putting someone on a particular medicine and keeping them there without looking at other factors.

NARRATIVE

Traditional Chinese Medicine is integrative. It makes me smile that there is a fairly new Western Medicine specialty: Integrative Medicine. It seems like a bridge to join medicine from the East and medicine from the West.

CONCLUSION

We now have a transparent way of looking at Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is not a mystery any longer. Our interview guest, Doctor Of Oriental Medicine has demystified it. He has talked about how to diagnose by asking, not only why you are there, but who is giving you pain. He mentioned how many tools there are in the arsenal of Chinese Medicine.

We wanted to show how medicine is profound and vast. The connection between Western and Eastern Medicine is the fact that people do want to heal. The person who goes into the field of medicine wants to heal. Sometimes, as in any area, people can get distracted by money, power, fame, opportunity.

It’s all about balance. balancing the finding of a cure with the money expended for drug research or balancing one’s emotional life with work and family.

The information we have offered has certainly demystified Traditional Chinese Medicine. We hope it has helped to outline its backbone in a way such that its systematic approach is easier to see, easier to validate and friendlier to use.

ACTION STEPS

Here are some action steps that may be useful. They are simple techniques that can be achieved with little effort.

1) Consider what you have and rejoice.

2) Pick one thing out that you lack, even if you have some but not enough. George mentioned love, laughter, relaxation, exercise, water, for starters. You might also include music, health, creativity, skill, talent as your item of which you want more.

3) Add this item to your life. If it something like water, drink more (and be thankful for our water supply). For laughter, make sure to laugh at least one time a day more than you do now by reading a joke or looking at a comical photo. It’s up to you as to what you choose. If you need more love, give it to yourself. Go to the local library or cafe and just say hello to someone. Contact usually changes perspective and, often, strikes up interesting communication. Or go make a friend by listening to music in the park.     Massage For Relaxation

TIP

If you have any doubts about the action steps, go watch this: 21 Second Motivational Video.
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FEEDBACK

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She is fascinated by any method that can achieve personal development success. She also loves clearing up misconceptions. She says,

“Medicine is a systematic approach to healing, no matter which approach is taken.

“The discussion of Traditional Chinese Medicine in this article gives an excellent overview of what is its scope, how diagnosis is approached and the vast number of techniques in the tool kit. I am excited with the information provided from the interview and am hopeful it will be helpful in the quest for healing.”

CAN GUT MICROBES HELP WITH WEIGHT LOSS? (ISSUE 94)

By Diane Gold

There is extremely specific evidence that gut microbes have something to do with weight loss or gain. Much research is in process, and a new, amazing breakthrough has just been published.

THE STUDY

On September 5, a new study came out in the journal, Science, where germ-free mice were colonized with gut microbes (called “microbiota” in the study itself) from four pair of human twins. Each pair of twin donors contained one obese and one thin human. The recipients of the fecal matter were sterile mice who had no gut microbes until they were exposed to the human microbes.

Those mice who received the transplanted material from the obese twin became obese. The mice who received the transplanted material from the thin twin became thin. The mice were genetically identical so as to rule out genetic differences.

So far, this research, in its early stages, shows much promise. Not only did it show that the obese donors’ gut matter with controlled diet affected the recipient mice to get obese and vice versa. A big conclusion came out of this: it might be possible to change out microorganisms in an obese person’s gut so that the new microbes could promote thinness rather than obesity.

The researchers fed the mice a low-fat diet, which regular mouse food is. The microbes from the lean twin took over the gut of a mouse that already had microbes from the obese twin. The overweight mouse started to lose weight. The microbes from the overweight twin did not take over in a mouse that was thin.

NEXT STEP

Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon, the senior researcher on the study, from Washington University in St. Louis, called the collection of microbes the “Battle of the Microbiota.” This is what happened.

After the transplants, the mice from each set of microbes, both obese and thin, were put together in the same cage. Mice typically eat each other’s dropping. So both sets of gut microbes were shared, and the mice with obese donor microbes started converting to the microbes from the mice from thin donors. There were sterile mice also introduced into the cages to see which microbes would appear in the gut of the sterile mice. The thin microbes seemed to take over.

One of the research colleagues, Vanessa K. Ridaura came up with the idea of creating two different diets for the mice, based on a national survey of what Americans eat: a high-fat diet with saturated fats and a low-fat diet with the most fruits and vegetables diet. The researchers created mouse pellets of two compositions to reflect these two types of diets. What they found was the mice who were overweight and received food high in fat, low in fruits and vegetables, stayed overweight and kept the gut microbes from their obese human. The thin twin’s gut microbes took over only when the mice were fed the food rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat.

This study parallels the science that shows how low fat and high fruits and veggies are good for you.

FUTURE WORK

Dr. Gordon has said he wants to search out which particular microbes are responsible for the effect on obesity and leanness so that, eventually, people can be given microbes instead of fecal matter. A gastroenterologist, not part of the study, Dr. Alexander Khoruts, University of Minnesota, mentions how this isolating “the” microbe could take decades. He mentions that it would be a lot quicker to try fecal transplants.
To date, just under 500 fecal transplants have been reported for very aggressive clostridium difficile infection with successful results in over 90% of the cases. For obesity therapy, the prospects are hopeful. It seems like the simplest, least expensive, least invasive therapy to date.

NOMENCLATURE

When the study came out two days ago, the New York Times, the paper whose Sunday crossword puzzle my mother could get through without much effort, writer Gina Kolata, used the words “Gut Bacteria” in the headline. Enjoying using the right language, I started this mad dash to check what to call the microbes in our intestine (did you know these biological helpers are also in our conjunctiva [the eyelid inner skin], on and under our skin and in the mucous membrane [in the mouth, nose, gut]?), and I wondered whether this study used bacteria exclusively. Now I know it was a combination of whatever was in the stool.

Phylogenetic Tree Of Life

I kept seeing the words “gut flora” in the brilliant encapsulation with the same title in Wikipedia, also in the L.A. Times’ rendition of the study which was published on the same day and in various other publications. I was confused because I had always used the words that distinguish plants from animals, flora from fauna, by thinking of Bambi, the fawn. Faun, get it? So, to my knowledge, flora was plant matter.

It turns out the words “gut flora” when speaking about our intestinal microorganisms is used although it is phasing out to the correct microbiota, “biota” pertaining to the diverse collection of “micro” or tiny organisms. Flora was probably begun to differentiate the microbes from the exclusive word “bacteria” which would leave out fungi and archaea, other microbes that live in the gut and help us thrive. The New York Times article used the limiting word, “bacteria,” in this article.

CONCLUSION

We are influenced heavily by what we eat. Now we have more proof than we used to that gut microbes have influence on the proteins produced and the processes that contribute to our weight and our appetite. It is important to be thoughtful of what the food we eat does to support or inhibit our bodies and to make changes accordingly.

Here are a few easy steps we might take to protect our gut microbes. Imagine if weight loss were only a matter of balancing our gut microbes, as may be. It seems correct since these microorganisms have so many productive jobs to keep our body functions optimal.

ACTION STEPS

1)   Make more than half the food you eat fruits and vegetables.

2)   Experiment with ingredients in a salad or vegan nori rolls, so quick and nutritious.

3)   Do a few seconds of abdomen circles every day to assist with digestive flow.

4)   Notice how food affects your body, and be good to it. Your bathroom visits will be regular and smell mild if the body appreciates the way you eat. The more vegetables, the better. They nourish and cleanse.

5)   Consider making one new food choice, and commit to it for a week. If you do not feel better or if you get bored, let it go, and make another food improvement. If you do feel better, continue it for another two weeks. If you still feel good, keep the change.

EPILOGUE

These steps are the beginning of changing any habit so that your gut microorganisms can make you strong and healthy. Time will tell about how powerful are the findings in the above scientific breakthrough study.

Wouldn’t it be tremendous if this non-debilitating method of achieving better health could be made available to all who need it!

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She looks for the latest research techniques that can help people curb cravings.  There are so many keys to health that are right in front of us. She says,

“The current science about our own microorganisms in our gastrointestinal tract is vast and growing. It makes sense to me that we can use this micro eco system within ourselves for balance. I hadn’t considered that we could offer each other our good microbes for health, but it’s so logical.

“The ease with which this therapy could help people all over the world is remarkable. I am very excited and await more gut microbe news.”

THE BENEFITS OF FORGIVENESS AND REVENGE (ISSUE 93)

By Diane Gold

We hear the words “benefits of forgiveness,” and we feel all mushy and tingly inside, feeling good about our ability to be good, moral people. When we hear the words “benefits of revenge,” most of us question whether there are any. The feeling of wanting to get back at someone who has hurt us is a natural, human reaction, according to evolutionary biologists, Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, whose research led them to study 60 societies and whether each had the words “blood feud” or “capital punishment” in evidence (as per Michael McCullough’s article, referenced below). 57 out of 60 did.

According to Michael E. McCullough, researcher at University of California, Berkeley, who wrote the article “The Forgiveness Instinct” in Spring, 2008, forgiveness is also a natural, human. He says,

“My research on forgiveness has led me to this unsettling conclusion: The desire for revenge isn’t a disease that afflicts a few unfortunate people; rather it’s a universal trait of human nature, crafted by natural selection, that exists today because it helped our ancestors adapt to their environment.

Since we, as humans, are social; we have developed a code of mores that define what is and is not acceptable reaction to various actions. We have laws that help regulate our actions, as well.

It might seem that forgiveness is an impossible task were it not for the threads of hope that make us human and make us change makers. We are all daughters; we are all sons. We, as parents, have the duty to educate and protect. When someone does something wrong, it is our duty to teach a better way.

But, oh, we are so complex.

As per Martin and Margo,

“Morality is the device of an animal of exceptional cognitive complexity, pursuing its interests in an extremely complex universe.”

What I get is that because of our complexity, we have the ability to choose how to deal with our innate forgiveness and revenge mechanisms.

It’s almost but not impossible to temper our lust for that joyous fire of revenge on auto-pilot. In modern-day society, it is often not a good choice to act on our revenge, other than to experience that momentary rush of personal power. And it’s always a good thing to reveal our forgiveness.

Animals act to survive. Sometimes, we perform a vengeful act to feel satiated, even if we know the act is not necessary and is hurtful. Is our fancy of hate and revenge so important, even if it doesn’t help our circumstance and although it is damaging?

I am not speaking about the need to retaliate in order to preserve our lives or our way of life, no. I am questioning “an eye for an eye” without good reason. I was raised in the “make love, not war” era which developed in response to the loss of international life in an era of war in Vietnam. Eye For An Eye Imbalance

CULTIVATION OF FORGIVENESS

I know that forgiveness trumps revenge (when it’s not about survival). I also know that educating new ways to respond to hurtful deeds needs to be a more common option. It is always more courageous to put out a hand of forgiveness, especially if we have done so one minute ago and been scorned. Always one more attempt at a peace offering is the way to educate and cultivate forgiveness.

CONCLUSION

We have talked about intrinsic traits of our humanity: forgiveness and revenge. With repetition, we can choose how to act. We don’t go around clobbering people who hurt us; we turn toward our laws. We sometimes choose to talk to our attacker about the behavior and its effect on us. We also may choose to educate her. The education process is one of the hardest since, despite our efforts and our honesty, the aggressor who has hurt us may show no remorse and may spit in our face.

It’s so much easier to be charitable to someone who regrets her act, much more difficult to be magnanimous toward someone who laughs at our pain and is happy about causing it. Having the capacity of grace in this instance shows our choice to build meaningful lives. We can walk away, keeping our anger in; we can be confrontational and let our anger out; we can peacefully talk through our anger; we can train ourselves in forgiveness. As recycling cartoon character, Captain Planet, used to say,

“The power is yours.”

Here are some actions that can benefit us. The actions are a process toward becoming more evolved beings. As with all changing habits, we need to repeat the steps in order for them to take effect.

IMPORTANT NOTE

We are going to treat revenge as an addictive chemical substance, one that does not benefit our life or the lives of the community, as if we are addicted to it and are replacing the habit with forgiveness. Yes, we can keep in mind that standing our ground or defending what is ours can protect the survival of our kind and our community. But peaceful alternatives are always a better option.

The lines are not so far apart between taking vengeful action and defending our home. And the lines blur easily. Should we repeatedly act with kindness in our heart, we will see the benefits of forgiveness. We easily can make the better choice and be better equipped to know when we act from bruised ego or from the need to protect our way of life, with work, will and focus.

ACTION STEPS

1) Look for your vengeful feelings, and recognize them as soon as they appear. Applaud this recognition.

2) Reach out immediately and tell someone of your vengeful thought or act. It is not important that most human beings are wired to feel vindictive. It does matter that humans temper their spirit.

3) If appropriate, tell the person who wronged you what s/he did in calm, kind words and how it made you feel. Discuss another option that would have been better for you.

4) Look for the times you have feelings of forgiveness, and recognize them as soon as they appear each time. Be happy, and see how to replace revenge with this forgiveness.

5) Pick one special activity to do when you feel the revenge bug coming on such as dance for a few minutes, jump rope for one minute or call a friend. It must be pre-planned in order to be ready for the moment of decision, to make it useful. This preparation avoids stomach ulcers and regret.

6) Go take the Forgiveness Quiz, based upon Michael McCullough and colleagues’ research scale:

The Forgiveness Quiz

7) Come back to comment at:

http://warriorsofweight.com/the-benefits-of-forgiveness-and-revenge.

Think of all the ways in which we have learned to control ourselves. We can make revenge one of those ways. Think of all the good that comes from forgiveness. We can consciously pump it up.

Let’s get started now.

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

As of late and because of the climate of our world, she has been looking at whether environment or nature is the cause of forgiveness and revenge. She says,

“It would be easy to say we could work on our behavior and then, in generations, if we gave good example and showed forgiveness and not revenge, the latter would go away.

“No! It’s in us for survival reasons. As humans with high thought process, we CAN realize when revenge is for survival and when it’s only for ego. We can temper ourselves. That’s why I equate forgiveness and revenge with any habit of substance, emotion, gambling or ice cream; it will always be there, but doesn’t always require an action.

“We have choices, and, because of our “exceptional cognitive complexity,” we can make great ones. Let us all team together to step toward enhancing our forgiveness in substitution for our revenge, when possible.

“We’re all connected, so let each of us take part in working the benefits of forgiveness and revenge.”

READING FOOD AND SUPPLEMENT LABELS: HOW HABITS FORM (ISSUE 91)

By Diane Gold

When we read food and supplement labels, habits form. We become more aware of what we are putting into our body. Or do we?

There are so many ingredients in one product that the habit of reading labels must go along with doing research on what we read, if we wish to understand them.  I have been studying labeling of foods since the mid-1970s when I began studying a philosophy that includes meditation (sound yoga) , a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet and a good clean moral life. I read every label and contacted every manufacturer of anything I ate or drank, and I would pass that info on to my fellow philosophers. My purpose was to eliminate meat, fish, poultry from the diet. I was surprised at how many ingredients and processes were withheld from the consumer. Not enough has changed since then.

FTC

I recently called the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to question the wording on a label. I was excruciatingly shocked to find out that the “FTC can advocate on our behalf only if there is a pattern of abuse, rather than a single incident,” which means they cannot help us if we, as individuals, or people fewer than a group action find something wrong. The FTC looks for patterns of wrong doings. So, individual reports of inaccuracies remain unchanged.

This meant that the dietary supplements I called about did not fall under the purview of the FDA (Food And Drug Administration) that does not oversee dietary supplements, and I, alone, was not quantity enough to be heard by the FTC. So, nothing got done, and the product I called about continues to have an inaccurate label, since the FDA doesn’t regulate supplements and the FTC doesn’t regulate single complaints.
This is one of the many ways that the labeling system needs improvement.

THE SOURCE

What is also quite surprising to some is that manufacturers do not have to disclose what an ingredient is made from, as long as they acknowledge it exists in the product and someone, somewhere has tested it and it is GRAS (generally recognized as safe by the FDA).

WHAT THIS MEANS

Any ingredient whose source could be from animal, plant, synthetic sources might be from any of those sources at any time, the label does not specify. When a company discloses the source of each ingredient, it is showing respect to the consumer, in my opinion, and doing what all companies should be required to do.

Example One: Take the alcohol in the common soy sauce, for example. It can be made from animal fat, plant substance or it can be man-made. If we choose to stay away from animal products, we won’t know whether there is animal in it by the ingredient name only. If we have an allergy to certain plants, we may not even know we are ingesting the allergic substance due to incomplete labeling practices. And, then there’s synthetic alcohol. That leaves the ingredient “alcohol” open to any number of methods of alcohol preparation.

Example Two: Let’s look at companies that use lecithin, enzymes, mono and diglycerides, L-cysteine without identifying whether these come from animal, plant or synthetic sources. With these types of labeling techniques, much information is left out. In the case of soy lecithin, if all companies are not required to disclose genetic modified seeds, the ingredient easily can be made from modified seeds.

THE HABITS THAT FORM

Aside from the fact that we have been raised to buy food products in packages, the labels of those products don’t tell us the source, and the materials used in the manufacturing process are not required to be disclosed. We accept this and make it a standard in our buying habits.

We have been raised with produce that is waxed. There is no requirement for disclosure of this process, nor is there a mandate to tell us whether the wax is petroleum-based, animal, bee or plant-based, all for the purpose of maintaining moisture and eye appeal.
We have been raised not to expect ingredient labels on household products, paints and adhesives. This means that the fact that almost all our paper bags are glued with animal parts is not labeled as well as what is in the paint on our walls, the adhesive for our plumbing.

We have developed the habit of cheering when labels must disclose something additional, such as whether something is GMO-free (whether a product contains genetically modified organisms) or not. Shouldn’t disclosure be the norm and not the exception?

TO SUMMARIZE

1)   We accept an incomplete labeling system.

2)   We buy items that do not identify the source of ingredients.

3)   We buy items without knowing the ingredients used in manufacturing, processing or preparing, both in produce and packaged goods.

4)   Because we get a certain amount of information, we don’t ask manufacturers for more specific labeling.

5)   When we do call a manufacturer and talk to the customer service rep, we accept what these reps tell us with no written proof.

6)   When we call a manufacturer and talk to the customer service rep about ingredients, we accept it when they say they don’t have any further information.

7)   We accept that manufacturers, in general, do not have written agreements with their suppliers to get ingredients from specific types of sources, that is, animal, plant, synthetic, organic.

ACTION STEPS

In order to upgrade the way that we eat, research and show respect to ourselves, here are some action steps to change habits that will be of permanent benefit to the way that we eat, feel and read labels. Check these out:

1)   Read labels and notice all the habits that you have regarding them. This noticing may be done over a period of time.

2)   Write down what you would require in a food, supplement or drink label to have, either to yourself or by commenting on the website.

3)   Ask your grocers lots of questions about their wares, and be gracious about saying that you will wait for an answer. When the grocers say they don’t know and ask that you call the corporate headquarters of the store you frequent, call the corporate entity, get the name of the reps you speak with and notice how long it takes someone to call you back, or if you get a call back at all. Notice whether the answer they give is complete.

4)   Ask questions of your fruit and vegetable managers. Then follow the steps in 3).

5)   If you are very inspired, write a note to your local newspaper reporting your experience about how knowledgeable your local grocers and fruit and vegetable managers are. The more people talk about the topic, the more quickly we shake our old habits. The more we share our interest in this topic, the more responsible the entire chain of people involved will become.

6)   Talk to friends about labels. Remember not to go on a complaint fest. But, do inform them of your inspiration to be accountable and help others be accountable by requesting food and supplements whose labels disclose and whose ingredients disclose sources.

CONCLUSION

Now that we have looked at some of the habits that reading labels develops, it is easier to change them.

Back in the 1970s, we learned about “subliminal seduction” in psychology class. This refers to any media that lures us into doing a certain behavior or thinking a certain way through repetition of words, audio or visual cues.  According to University of Michigan, this mind-persuading data began in the 5th Century, B.C.

When we read food and supplement labels, let’s be diligent and live by what we find. If we don’t know someone’s name, we ask. In the same way, when we don’t know an ingredient, we can ask.  This way, reading food and supplement labels will begin forming the habits that are right.
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FEEDBACK

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has studied the labeling system since the mid-1970s. She says,

“The more we list on a label, the more testing and accountability is required by the food producer or manufacturer. The label size has to grow to fit the information on it. This is an excuse many producers give for not supporting full disclosure of their product. Many also hide behind the “proprietary ingredients” banner when it does not apply.

“It’s my hope that there will come a time when every ingredient’s source will be listed on every label and that suppliers of ingredients will be required to certify said source, that the term “natural” shall be removed from labels so that consumers are not duped and that nutritional data listed on labels shall identify which company measured it and the last date of measurement.

“I would have all produce wax labeled with wax source, any type of pasteurization process such as the steaming of raw almonds revealed on the label. I’d even require farmers to divulge which animal products, unprocessed chemicals they put in their soil during the cultivation of their food and whether they use GMO seeds. I don’t know would no longer be an acceptable answer from anyone in the industry.

“It is my mission to encourage people to be more demanding of the information they receive about their food. Until the labeling system is truly upgraded, be bold, ask questions, do research. And let the habits we form from reading food and supplement labels be those that support our lives.

HABIT MASTERS; WE ARE (ISSUE 90)

By Diane Gold

Habit masters, we are. During our forming period, we don’t think about it, often. Once the habit is formed, we don’t think about it either. Unless it impedes our lives.

Both habits and mastery require many lessons. They are both learned behaviors that require extreme repetition. Habits are responses we cultivate as a reaction to a certain feeling, urge, itch, trigger, craving. With repetition, these responses become semi-automatic behaviors that become part of our infrastructure until we change them. Mastery is a state of prowess developed through repeating any skill set.
Wouldn’t that make us habit masters?

COMMONALITY

So, here’s the habit infrastructure as we know it: urge leads to behavior leads to reward. We feel an urge. We do something about the urge. Our behavior gives us a reward. (Such as right now, sitting here, writing, in a doctor’s office near the health food¸ my trigger was writing the word “craving,” believe it, or not. My behavior will be to go get a frozen vegan pretzel product which is one of the only processed foods I allow myself, with lots of control so that I don’t do it every week.) My reward will be the realization of my own drooling for a pretzel (unless I decide to temper the urge by drinking two glasses of water, to quote my own advice).

When we get the same urge over and over and do the same behavior to answer the urge, isn’t that actually mastering the management of that urge? In some cases, this “management” supports our positive life style. In others, the habit burdens us or diminishes our effective productivity.

Obviously, when we hold a door for someone because we want the reward of being seen as or seeing ourselves as humanitarians, this is a great habit. When we get the urge to eat sweets, such as cookies or cake, and we answer that call by eating a whole bag of cookies or an entire cake; we may increase our weight, tax the body’s ability to healthily process glucose and develop the loss of urge control: a non-supporting habit.

When we drink alcohol on New Year’s Eve, that may be considered a harmless ritual, unless we learn to repeat that ritual over and over again several times daily.

When we eat snack foods that are made of fake food, we are cultivating a habit that is not good for our health. Unfortunately, often times, snacks are purchased because they fill us up on a severely restricted budget. Even more dismaying is that children will learn to eat poorly because their families cannot afford properly nutritious food. Or do their families not even know the ills of junk food because they, themselves, were raised on the same snacks?

WHY SNACKS

When we are young, many of us have been given snack foods for various reasons. Here are the more common reasons why:

1) Our families want us to stop demanding attention from them, so they bribe us into complacency by feeding us snacks, which often cause hyperactivity so we become more demanding.

2) Our parents, not knowing the pollution in snack foods, want us to be happy and want to show they love us, so they let us eat snacks the way their parents were raised.  And, chances are, parents raised before the 1980s,  did not begin in-depth food education in their early childhood education.

When I went to school, which was in the 50s and 60s, we made chocolate pudding or Kool-Aid in school as part of our cooking class. Sadly, nutrition was never part of the lesson, other than a tomato was red, it was spelled t-o-m-a-t-o and it was a fruit. (An Oxford Dictionaries review stated why the tomato is a fruit and I realized that the green pepper [or any color capsicum] “grows from the ovary in the base of the flower,” so just like tomatoes, are actually fruits, but used as vegetables in cooking.

NOTE

Starting with the Millenial Generation (Gen Y) – that is everyone born from the early 1980’s and afterward, will have access to more appropriate eating patterns than any generations before. There will also be more creative ways to eat well on less money because of global awareness due to global communications technology.

3) The most frequent reason people eat snack food is because healthier food is more expensive.

FACT

Just the other day, I spoke to a seventy-something who was the legal guardian to a child under seven. She received some $16 a month in food stamps, and the child received $29 for the month in food stamps. True, the woman was supposed to be receiving child support from each of the child’s parents, which was why the food assistance allotment was so low, but each parent was not able to contribute. There are companies that make little snack packs of processed food knowing the financial constraints exist more often than not. And they take that to the bank.

THE HABIT

Whether we repeat our training, we learn, whether it’s riding a bike, learning to walk, learning to swim, answering our food urge mechanism by eating snack foods, answering our alcohol trigger by drinking to excess; we learn well how to immerse ourselves in the habit.

It is said by scientific reporting that we don’t forget our habits; they are always there. Bike riding and swimming are two great examples. We still have those skills even if we take a thirty year break. Or, let’s look at drug use. People who take a thirty year break from taking drugs will be the first ones to tell you the habit is there; they are just not exercising it for the day.

Habits don’t go away. We are habit masters.

ACTION STEPS

The skills used to develop a habit are focus, repetition and follow through. These are the skills needed to change a habit, too. Of course, passion is involved in the original learning and should one choose to make a change.

Once we master one path to a habit, developing a new habit is not foreign to us; and it will be easier to develop a new one.

With that said, here’s the set of steps:

1)   Identify a skill set you have.

2)   Recall the amount of training you needed to learn it.

3)   Identify a habit you have.

4)   Recall all the times you repeated it to develop it.

So now that we have proved these major similarities,

5)   Pick a habit that you want to change.

6)   Focus on a new behavior to the old urge.

7)   Repeat the new behavior the same time every day or several times a day.

8)   Be consistent.

9)   Write about it so that we can post it or not (your choice).

10) Notice what keeps getting in the way, if anything.

11) Write about it and contact us.

12) Keep working it until you are experienced at the habit change.

CONCLUSION

If we have followed these action steps, we will have a habit to put with all the others. We are, again, the habit master.

The trick, as I have found it, is to notice that, if we leave thinking out of it, we can accomplish mastery. We can tell ourselves that we will think later, since we are too busy acting.

Our mission is in front of us, shielded from distraction. Once again, we will become habit masters.
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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has worked with many people as a teacher and has had the opportunity to see the way that they proceed towards a goal, whatever that is. She says,

“Although there are many people out there who say one group is different from another and one person is different from another, these statements have merit. We look different. Our personalities are different. The societies we choose may be different. The way we raise our families may be different. The pain we have suffered at the hands of some other group is different.

“What turns out to be the same is the way we work as human beings. our infrastructure. No matter what, when we feel an urge, we choose a way to behave even if that choice develops a habit without control. Makes me wonder how the prejudice habit actually began.

“The same is true for matters of the heart. We are similar within a realm. We all act with or without jealousy, we act with some brand of morality and we all cry when we are hurt. We all want to be loved, recognized, respected and important to some cause. We all pursue what is important to us.

“So I conclude that we are more the same than anything else. If aliens came to invade the planet, we would all work together to sustain humankind.

“Which is why I say we are habit masters, well trained in what we have repeated a lot. This doesn’t vary from person to person. The technique to change a habit varies slightly from person to person. But if we stop distracting thoughts and do the task at hand, we become the same as our sisters and brothers of other tribes and masters of our habits.”

HEALTH CARE COSTS: STATISTICS AND SOLUTIONS (ISSUE 89)

By Diane Gold

Health care costs make it difficult or impossible for all Americans to afford the services they deserve. After surprising a young college student friend of mine from India over the fact that everyone in the United States does not have all the necessities, I decided to look into health care costs.
Health care costs make it difficult or impossible for all Americans to afford the services they deserve. After surprising a young college student friend of mine from India over the fact that everyone in the United States does not have all the necessities, I decided to look into health care costs.

Isabelle Wachsmuth of the Evidence Informed Policy Network at the WHO (World Health Organization) strategizes by saying,

“Solutions cannot be fragmented [to be effective].

“The number of initiatives in health are multiplied exponentially and are growing without coherence and convergence and continue to strengthen the various conflicts of interest and competition between the different actors. It is therefore not the reflection of collective and collaborative intelligence, which [is] necessary for the survival of humanity.”

This powerful statement recognizes the need for collaboration and the limitation of focus on competition. Our article, today, will look at the United States, some statistics and suggestions for possible reduction in cost. Ponder this: could pooling the resources of all health care organizations lower health care costs?

ACTION THOUGHT

So let’s give this quote some serious thought and take note. We could share our discoveries, from now on, so that everyone can benefit from each of them. Unfortunately, sometimes, keeping our information proprietary so that we, our company and our country can benefit, economically and politically, is part of our employment contract or ego driven. It often slows down or disables access of the scientific magic discovered to those who can’t pay for it at the proprietary price.

HOW MUCH WE SPEND

According to the National Center For Healthcare Statistics, NCHS, part of the Center For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC), which falls under the domain of the US Department Of Health And Human Services; as of 2010, we, Americans, spent $2.6 Trillion for health care. That’s $8,402 per person. This doesn’t mean each individual took $8+ thousand dollars out of her pocket to pay for health care. It also doesn’t mean that some of us haven’t paid one-and-a-half times for individual health insurance cost alone, not including the health care and prevention services we have to pay for, over and above what the insurance covers. And, if we include dietary supplements as part of prevention, rather than as part of our food budget, we can add between $50 and $100 per month per person.

WHAT OUR SPENDING MEANS

We spend 17.6% of our money on health care according to the NCHS 2012 report of 2010 stats. This means that, if we make $20,000 a year, we spend 17.6% $3,520, on health care, right? And that if we make $100,000, we also spend 17.6%, $17,600, on health care, right? It is obvious that this is not possible with our present system. We are not billed on a percentage of what we earn basis. We are billed based on the national accepted rates for services. So this means that, according to the national average, if we make $20,000 or $100,000 per year, we pay $8402 for health care.

This ends up being 42% for the person who makes $20,000 and 8.5% for the person who makes $100,000. What’s wrong with this picture?

HEALTH CARE, THE HUMAN RIGHT

Although about 1/6 of our income in the United States goes to health care, how can we maintain that health care is a human right if some people can’t afford it? Or do we consider health care a privilege? And, if we step off our continent for a moment and look at the fact that the amount I pay for health insurance per month could pay for the health care of 15 people in most African nations for the same month, or in the Congo or Burma, for 45 people.

Yes, we have public assistance programs for those who qualify. What about the many who have more than $2,000 in the bank so they don’t qualify? (This requirement may change as of January 1, 2014).

OUR MEDICINE

We have the best medicine in the world, the best clinics, the best medical advisors, the best equipment. The cost for access is large, so not everyone has access. Shouldn’t they?

COMPARED TO OTHER COUNTRIES

The United States has the highest percentage of money of any country spent on health care. We pay $8402 per year per person, on average. This is 17.6% of our purchasing power. Other developed countries come in at 9-11%.

DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

According to National Health And Nutrition Examination Services, a part of the CDC, in a measure of 5,000 random people in the United States over 20 years old from 15 communities; a 2004 study showed that 52% use supplements, 35% take multi-vitamin/multi-mineral supplements., 24% take antacids. That could indicate a country full of stress or eating issues and diligent calcium supplementation at the same time.. In all categories, the over 60 set uses more supplements than any other age group.
The bottom line, though, is that the supplement industry brings in $20 billion a year. Would food education starting in kindergarten reduce our need and thus reduce our spending? Or could food education increase our use of supplements and reduce our need for medical treatments?

POSSIBLE ACTION STEPS FOR CONSIDERATION

I am certainly no expert in the field, yet I care deeply that health care be a human right to every person. I have compiled a list of possible action steps that could reduce health care cost dramatically.

1) Create an institute whereby each member commits to donate 10% of her time at the job she currently has to people who cannot afford medical care or treatment they don’t rack up a life-long medical debt. Members would include general doctors, specialists, surgeons, nurses, clerks, radiologists and hospital staff.

2) Write government legislation that requires physicians, using allopathic, osteopathic or Chinese medicine to give 10% of their time to people whose insurance does not pay for services or are not on public assistance with income levels under a certain income level determined by number in household for one year of their first 10 years in that job. Encouragement to continue this act of giving would be strong, but it would not be required.

3) Create an new association of hospitals and medical facilities that would deem as a requirement for employment 10% of an employee’s time at no compensation for the first year or more.

4) Restructure the preventive services for which insurance companies reimburse. I, personally, have had two careers, music therapy and tai chi instruction, that are not yet insurance reimbursable. Each of these modalities makes a biological difference, in many cases. If these methods were listed as accepted modes of prevention, much money on pharmaceuticals, recurring anxiety, balance issues and residential care could be saved.

5) Teach the benefit of preventive services, whether they be mind/body, exercise or nurturing, from an early age. Consider requiring continuing education credits necessary to renew our driver’s license. These continuing education credits would reflect time spent utilizing a preventive modality, any kind. Doing prevention reduces sickness; no one argues with this one.

6) Create a network where preventive service providers agree to donate 10% of their services at no charge.

7) Create a group of real estate moguls who will donate 10% of their profit from land that houses medical facilities for the first year or ongoing.

8) Create a group of hospitals that donate 10% of their facility revenue.

9) Write government regulation that requires property owners to donate 10% of their profit from properties that house medical facilities for the first year or ongoing.

10) Create a group of fitness clubs/gyms who will donate 10% of their membership to people who cannot pay for their own membership.

11) Require that any individual who utilizes the 10% plan services donate 10% of her time (if physically able) to tutoring people in literacy or some other crucial skill according to a chart that would equate skills donated with tutoring.

NOTE ABOUT DOCTORS

It is important to consider that, if the fees for doctor services are reduced by regulation, fewer people may want to become doctors and we will have fewer American-born doctors. The doctor population in the United States per 1,000 people (2.4) is under the average (3.1) for member countries in the Organization For Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD) according to a report from PBS NewsHour of October 12, 2012.

Further, tax incentives could be offered for anyone involved in the 10% gifting.

CONCLUSION

Health care costs are high due to fees for medical personnel, cost of equipment and facilities, intricacies of technology, cost of research. Because we are in the habit of wasting instead of conserving, we spend more than we have to – in time and in money. When we are ill, we like to see beautiful offices, rather than cheaply appointed office space with cracks, old paint and the smell of age. Sometimes, we even equate the ability of a professional staff with the grandeur of an office. As employees, we want to be paid for our work, and we should be.

If we structure it properly and only 20% of the people involved in the health care world take up one of my suggestions, imagine the avalanche of good will it would create which would cause others to join in. Each of us would contribute, and we could begin to reverse rising costs. We’d be on our way.

The action steps above are an infrastructure of what could be done to control the cost of health care. They would certainly be a solution. The steps that suggest regulation are only food for thought and not meant reduce our right to thrive from profit and since enabling habit change works best through personal choice. The idea is to shift the responsibility of reducing health care costs to all of us.

This process is not going to work if we don’t make a human move. And the purpose of these suggestions is. It is to make us a tiny bit responsible for reducing health costs.
Let’s pick an action step and start now to show that rising health care has a solution.

SPECIAL NOTE

What if every place the action steps mention 10% were replaced with 1% of our time? Now that we entertained 10%, 1% would be easy. We have to step up to make the change. Let it be now.

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FEEDBACK

Please leave a comment and LIKE.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition.

She has been in and out of the health care field, as music and recreation therapist to differently enabled adults, as director of creative arts therapy to a day care program and through teaching tai chi and having to explain to people why tai chi is not yet insurance reimbursable. She says,

“The hand of prevention is reaching out to our generation. It is time we grabbed on and took it.

“There is scientific proof that we can diminish our health care costs and ethical concerns if we do not. Let us be diligent on behalf of all people so that we can work to creating available medical treatment through the reduction of health care costs.”

ARE YOU LIBERATED? AND WHAT THAT MEANS FOR HABIT CHANGE (ISSUE 88)

By Diane Gold

YOU ARE LIBERATED

“You are liberated,”

was the response I got when my student asked me my age, and I told her with no hesitation. She then responded that she doesn’t share her age. Her withholding her age is part of a social more that is, in my opinion, holding us from being liberated.

Hearing these words brought back a whole series of memories starting with a story my mother told me about her childhood. Now, I know that I have always been an explorer and that if a rule or tradition didn’t make sense to me, I always questioned it. I was encouraged to do so by both my parents.

Let’s go back to my mom. She was extremely free, meaning that she didn’t live by societal rules that were empty, prejudiced and thoughtless. She was ahead of her time, realizing her self-worth as more than a housewife and a mother. She was a great example of the Women’s Liberation Movement that was prevalent in my youth in the 60s, even though she was not from that generation. And she passed it on to me.

So, let’s backtrack to when my mom was one-year-old. (This photo is not my mom. Because of her free spirit, I believe she would laugh if she saw this representation. This photo is used with lots of love and memories of nurturing.) She told me that she loved to see a plate break on the floor, that she would laugh with abandon at this phenomenon. Maybe it was the excitement of seeing the pieces scatter. It was a favorite activity, nonetheless. And my grandfather used to buy her plates so that she could knock them off her highchair so that she could laugh and be free. Yes, he was liberated, too.

My grandfather was a great fan of the second-hand store, which we now know as the thrift store. I got some of my most precious toys from his jaunts to this type of store. Apparently, this is the kind of store from which he bought plates for my mother to break. He was encouraging of her happiness and thought this would make her a free and happy human being.

Most parents would discipline their children away from this type of behavior at this young age. Of course, at some point, my mother was taught that plates are for eating and not for throwing. But the freedom she had in her formative years surely affected her. I firmly believe that this type of childhood education allowed my mother to be the free and happy spirit she was.

I did not throw plates, but I was encouraged to be my own person, ask questions about anything for the purpose of becoming a productive and liberated person. I can’t swear that my parents were thinking of the word “liberation” when they were raising me. They just saw no need to teach me to be seen and not heard as was and still is a popular method of child-rearing. Personally, I think this method can repress a child’s spirit and disable a child’s curiosity. Respect for elders and familial hierarchy can be taught in many ways, but free speech, in my opinion, should begin at the earliest of ages.

This leads me to the idea that when people are repressed due to upbringing, they tend to end up with less than even temperament, such as bossy or submissive. These traits usually cause some sort of life tension.

OLD-SCHOOL CLARIFICATION

Let me clarify that many people raised in the “be seen and not heard” old-school philosophy are successful, happy, shining and wonderfully balanced. There are, however, many of us raised with restrictions every time we turn around, such as don’t speak unless we are asked a question, always be available as a servant to our parents, all friends must be researched for family stature and then brought to the house for approval; we are often stressed, repressed and depressed because of it. Certainly, we are rarely liberated and feel the pain of not being trusted.

I’m not suggesting that all parents should buy plates for their kids and let them toss a plate from the high mount, the highchair. I’m also aware that there’s no proof this plate activity had the huge influence on my mom that it could have since this event does not have a control subject meaning we had life-long data on another subject of my mother’s age who wanted to throw plates and was restricted from doing it. My mother was one of the most balanced human beings I ever met, and her father assessed the wonderful laughter that came from this plate activity as good for her.

NON-SUPPORTIVE PARENTS

Many parents, due to frustration, money problems or runoff behavior from their parents, may not treat us well as children. These actions certainly shape us and affect the way we see the world. They do not have to define us.

RESULTS

For those of us who wish to keep what we have been given in our upbringing,  this is our choice. We have to notice whether it is hurting us or not. I am the first one to say that traditions which are the habits of our family or tribe can be bolstering, rooting, unifying. However, if these habits or the perceptions from these habits hurt us, action would be a good choice.

THE LIST

Here is a sample list of habits developed from society or upbringing. These may or may not support our lives. When there is anxiety attached to any of these, action may be in order. Action is liberation.

1) We hide our age because we will be judged by it. Unfortunately, society does judge us by age. Revealing age out loud helps us adjust to it. It also can reduce the amount of judgment initiated about such a superficial trait.

2) We don’t speak up due to our self-image. This usually has to do with the fact that we are younger, older, the minority sex in the group, the wrong sexual orientation, a woman whose place (in in someone else’s mind) is in the home, the wrong nationality, religion or socio-economic level.

Today’s New York Times talked about scientific studies of how people who lived in poverty in their early years maintain the scars of this experience their whole lives and live shorter lives as a result. Unless they address their feelings.

3) We maintain a stance of submission. When we have been encouraged to be silent and non-assertive or when our families have ridiculed us, we have not worked at our assertive selves. Much like debate class prepares us to speak up, speaking out as children gives us the experience we need. If we have not been encouraged to do so, the repetition necessary to learn to be assertive may be missing. And, often times, it is easier to stay with what we know. Even if it eats at us.

ACTION STEPS FOR LIBERATION

1) Define one of the habits you have that causes discomfort. Do so by writing it down in a one or two paragraph statement. This can be solely for you, so there is no need to hold back.

2) Once you have the habit defined (let’s say, for example, that you don’t speak because of past negative reinforcement), go to the mirror in the morning and say to yourself,

“I restrict myself from speaking because my parents told me I wasn’t a good speaker. This is totally incorrect. I am a good speaker, and I am a valuable human being.”

3) Repeat this mirror behavior in the evening and alone, possibly when you are in the bathroom.

4) Repeat this morning and evening mirror work for a week.

5) If you have successfully completed a week, write a paragraph about your new found comfort with yourself. This paragraph is not dependent upon whether you feel the comfort level or not.

6) Read the paragraph in the mirror. An example paragraph might be,

“I certainly feel confident in myself. I can read this paragraph well. I know the more I read it, the more comfortable I will become. The more I feel good about my ability to speak, the smoother it will sound. The smoother it sounds, the more I will want to speak more openly. The more I speak more openly, the more ability I will obtain. I am a good speaker, and I am a valuable human being.”

7) Read this paragraph once or twice a day for a week.

8) If you have succeeded at reading for a week, add a week.

9) If you have succeeded at two weeks, add a third week. Feel free to change the paragraph that you are reading.

10) Know that you have taken the step has become your new habit.

CONCLUSION

When we are held down by our habits, whether from the constant memory of a family member or a bully saying we are worthless, or having to act like a Cinderella servant,  we repetitively are trapped experiencing the same feelings over and over again. We take on habits we don’t even know we have, and they form us.

Sometimes, we don’t realize we have them until we are passing them on to our children. Only then do we recognize how influential our childhood was and how impressionable we were to have kept a habit that does not positively support our life.

There is always time to change a habit. The beginning only takes one step. Just as the mind can be liberated in one thought, it is the one step that starts the process. If we are not liberated as we read this and we choose to be, we can liberate ourselves now by taking one step. We must be patient with ourselves since our habit was not made overnight. We must repeat the step until it becomes familiar. Slowly, the step will become the habit, and the reward will be there.
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FEEDBACK

Please leave  a comment and LIKE.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition.

She has always believed it is almost as important to free ourselves inside as outside. There are ways to proceed that can make it easy. She says,

“It is devastating for people who do not have their physical freedom. But, for those who do, it is important to work on our inner freedom. Through small, continual steps, we can have this. No exclusive technique or direction is needed, only that we work on ourselves in some way. A little bit every day.

“This work can be done in honor of those who do not have their physical freedom and in hopes that we can all live with some freedom, inside and out.”