Becoming a Health Deviant
Your mindset must now see you as a health deviant
Let’s talk about becoming a health deviant in order to optimize your energy, vitality, and overall hormone health.
“Less than 3% of U.S. Adults are healthy, happy, and on track to stay that way.” ~ Mayo Clinic Proceedings and Centers for Disease Control.
One of my favorite books that we share with all of the women we work with is ‘The Healthy Deviant’ by Pilar Gerasimo. In the book, Pilar asks:
“What kind of a society makes being healthy and happy so difficult that only a single-digit percentage of the population can hope to pull it off? The answer: A sick society.
And within a sick society - one where illness, anxiety, and depression are the prevailing norms - what does it mean to be one of the few people who beat those unhealthy odds? It means bucking a lot of your society’s norms and rejecting a lot of its conventional health prescriptions. It also means acknowledging a disturbing truth: If you aren’t breaking the rules, you’re probably breaking yourself.”
This simple truth is that in order to create a shift in your health now you must start to identify as a woman who is a health deviant. You are someone that makes different choices, a woman who believes in the amazing resiliency of the human body.
What is even more challenging is the reality that most solutions to improve health today include symptom-suppressing drugs, surgeries, extreme diet and exercise programs, distraction, self-medication, camouflaging beauty products, and technological devices.
These solutions rarely create lasting sustainable improvement and instead cause women to spend more money, become more desperate, and experience more stress which sets us up for self-comparison with unachievable goals and self-loathing as a result of our perceived failure.
Once women are stuck in the trap of self-comparison and self-loathing it leads to more health problems (addictions, traumas, unhealthy risk-taking passivity, and financial trouble).
You can see how this vicious cycle is not actually affecting positive change. So we must stop this cycle by recognizing the perceptions and beliefs which fuel it as we strive to better ourselves and our lives.
These beliefs and perceptions cause us to stay in the cycle that leads to chronic health challenges:
Newer, bigger, faster, or more is better
Cheaper is better (except when it is luxury, indulgent or exclusive; then expensive is better)
You’d be happier if you were more attractive
You’d be happier if you were rich
Some body types are better than others
You have to fit in, but still be unique
There are a lot of things wrong with you and your body
Money can fix most things
You are definitely at risk for disease
We can’t really know what causes disease
Your disease can’t be cured, you must manage it
Pain is the enemy, dull it or numb it
Diet and exercise might help, but probably won’t be enough
Eat less, exercise more
It’s just your genetics
Only medical doctors can give health advice
You are listening to the wrong medical doctors
Don’t make things so complicated
You are oversimplifying everything
This drug, device, or procedure will solve it
A diet or workout program will solve it
Pay attention to the science
Don’t believe the science
You could do better
You really should be able to do this, it’s not that hard
Healthy people are perfect and have it all figured out
You need to work harder
You really just need more willpower
Wow, is your head ready to explode when you consider all of these messages we receive from our society? This societal noise is what I call resistance.
What looks like a problem of willpower is often a problem of resistance. In order to experience a health transformation most women take the following approach:
Do, Have, Be…
They jump right in to DO certain actions like starting a diet, a cleanse, a workout program, a meditation practice, or start taking a medication, a supplement, or a labwork test with the hopes that this will be THE THING that allows them to finally HAVE an improvement in their symptoms and then they will BE confident and energized.
However, what I have found in my years of supporting women is that this sequence is in the wrong order and it is missing a critical game-changing step. In order to create your life-changing health transformation for the long term you must:
Be, RELEASE, Do and then Have.
The first step is to BE the woman who is energized, clear, and confident about her health. To embody the emotional states of being someone that already has the type of vitality you desire.
In order to identify as a woman that is already living with the type of health you desire, who she is BEing moment by moment…to embody her emotional setpoint…you get to clarify your health desire.
Once you have identified who you are BEing to reach your health goals the next step is RELEASE.
This means it is time to RELEASE the resistance. Remember all of the societal noise described above? The beliefs and perceptions you have picked up over the years of living in a world where less than 3% of U.S. Adults are healthy, happy, and on track to stay that way?
In order to create lasting change in your health, you must release the resistance as a way to move through that noise, to reframe the limitations into new thoughts, new perceptions, and new beliefs that support a new healthy future. If you skip this step you will perpetually be fighting an uphill battle which makes it feel like constant work. This is why there is not enough willpower in the world that will be able to overcome a constant, never-ending battle against all of the societal noise. You must release this resistance in order to sustain for the long-term, in order to ‘maintain’ your willpower.
I have found brain change strategies to be a game-changer in your health transformation experience. The science of neuroplasticity teaches us that we all have neuropathways that are created in our brain from past experiences that shape how we perceive circumstances and give meaning to our current life experiences.
By releasing old beliefs you are able to re-write or change several of the societal noise-resistant beliefs mentioned previously and instead reinforce beliefs that are supportive of vibrant health such as:
I am fully whole and complete just the way I am
My body is resilient and strong
Vitality is my body’s natural state
It is easy to be vibrantly healthy
My body knows how to maximize nutrients from all of the foods I provide to it
I am aware of the perfect balance of nourishment and activity to support my vitality
My body signals to me what it needs and I listen
Many foods support my best vitality
My body is constantly replenishing itself
My genetic expression is enhanced by my daily choices
Doctors and health experts are fun to collaborate with and learn from as I optimize my health
There are many effective solutions available to me as I support my best health
I get to enjoy as much detail or simplicity as is interesting to me
It is fun to learn more science and understanding of how my body functions
I do enough
I am enough
Health transformation is fun
I am on track and enjoying this process
If you jump right into trying to do all of the things, without utilizing these first two essential steps of BEing and RELEASing, it makes the consistent DOing almost impossible.
If you're getting stuck, if you feel like you've tried so many things and something gets in the way, you just don’t have enough willpower to push through, then perhaps you're missing that step of releasing the old societal expectations that are holding you back for the long-term sustainable health.
Maybe it's time you consider becoming a health deviant and start to think about things in a new way. This is something we do with all of our clients. It's an essential piece of long-term transformation and hormone health shifting.
If you are ready for focus, support, clarity, and understanding of what specifically is going to be beneficial for you - I invite you to have a conversation with me or my team just simply book a balance call here and we'll find out what's going on in your circumstance and how we can support you moving forward.