Healthcare is Self-Care

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and self-care requires a big dose of self-worth…

Are you someone who likes to think of healthcare as a series of actions provided by others? Medications, tests, surgeries; these are how you manage disease. If you don’t have disease, business as usual until something pops up that needs attention. 

Or are you someone who takes their role and responsibility in their health seriously? You take an active role in your well-being through diet, exercise, stress management, meditation, and countless other steps. At times you may reach out to professionals to improve specific issues or help with an injury but overall you take ownership of your health. My guess is if you are reading this, you fall into this latter group. 

We all have unlimited access to health information. And while it can be difficult to wade through the vast amount of conflicting material, certain fundamental concepts make their way to the surface. 

We should eat mostly real food in moderate quantities. Limit smoking and drinking, avoid excess sugar and processed foods. Walk a lot, exercise hard a little. Drink plenty of water, get plenty of sleep. Try not to stress too badly. You don’t need a doctorate in medicine to understand the basics. 

So why can some people make consistently healthy choices and others cannot? 

Part of our failure is due to a system weighted towards keeping you unhealthy. The food industry and our environment being two of the big ones. This isn’t a damning of everyone involved in these industries. There are many good people trying to help, but the system has gotten so far out of balance that there is nothing they can do within the confines of it. 

Go to most grocery stores in America and attempt to shop healthily. Maybe 20% (and that is optimistic) of what is available could be considered a healthy option. Poor quality food is more readily available, cheaper, and unless you’ve really changed your palette, tastes better. Every restaurant, convenience store and gas station is constantly tempting you with a quick fix or energy bump. I was in the hardware store the other day battling snack temptation just trying to buy some light bulbs. While access to healthy food shifts across regions and demographics, access to crappy food is universal. 

Another area limiting health improvement is our environment. For those of us in the Lake Tahoe region, getting out into nature is…natural. We have a beautiful, relatively unpolluted environment that makes movement and exercise a joy. 

For many, their surroundings do not provide this opportunity. Urban development, pollution, crowding, and a host of other factors can diminish the motivation or ability to get outdoors. This leaves us with gyms or sports to meet this need. While the gym may be satisfying for some, I would argue that the motivation for weights or a spin class will never match that of getting exercise in the natural world. As with healthy eating, not necessarily a deal killer, but another hurdle to get in your way. 

So with the system so rigged against us, how do some people find the willpower and self discipline to stay the course, while most others cannot. It comes down to identity; and identity comes down to self-worth. 

You have to identify as a healthy person. Not want to be healthy, but are healthy, as a realized part of who you are. And in order to truly identify as healthy, you have to feel worthy of good health. Happy, fit, vibrant. What do you feel when you read those words? Are those things you have? Things you want? And if you want them…do you deserve them? Do you really think these are traits you can and will achieve? Or is there a part of you that doubts your sincerity? 

Take a second to perform this exercise (don’t worry, we will wait): 

  • Stand in front of a mirror and look yourself in the eye. If you don’t want to get up, use your selfie camera. 

  • Say “I have a right to be healthy, happy and vibrant in my life. I am worthy of self-love and of feeling good.”

  • Repeat this twice more. 

Welcome back! How did that make you feel? If you answer “great,” then I am guessing you are already healthy, with maybe a few tweaks here and there to optimize. 

But if you answer “uncomfortable” or “sad” or “this is stupid, I’m not going to do that” these are indicators of issues that will impede your health improvements. If you don’t feel worthy of a vibrant life, you won’t identify as a healthy person. 

Now I know some of you are saying, “Wait, I know so and so and they are super healthy but have terrible self-worth.” My guess is that you are equating fitness to health. Physically fit is great, but this is only one aspect of health. In some cases, the most physically fit people are using it as a distraction from the mental/emotional/spiritual work. 

To achieve true health, all the systems have to be in equilibrium: strength, cardiovascular capacity, mobility, digestion, endocrinological, neurological, vascular, mental, emotional, spiritual. All of these need to be balanced to be truly healthy. And that requires a healthy relationship with yourself. 

Identifying as healthy makes healthy decisions easy. You aren’t making decisions that don’t fit your narrative in the hope that you change. You ARE a healthy person, so you make decisions that a healthy person would make. This also takes the pressure off slipping up here and there. You know that you will return to healthy patterns because that is who you are. 

So if you continue to fail at making healthy choices in your diet, exercise or lifestyle patterns, consider switching gears and focusing on the you behind the decisions. Find practitioners that address the mental, emotional and spiritual side of you, as well as the physical. As you heal the parts of you that lead to unhealthy decisions, it will make a healthier lifestyle much more natural and easy to achieve. 

Change the identity and the decisions are easy. You are worthy of good health.

Spencer Cruttenden DC