I’ve already talked about the human taste for drama, a characteristic that draws us into all sorts of extravagant and unsustainable announcements and commitments. The inherent weakness of drama as a long-term tool for change is this:
We think that the dramatic and public announcement (“I’m going keto!” “I’m joining a gym!”) will do the work for us. Now, to be clear, we don’t necessarily believe this consciously. If someone asked us, “Do you honestly think that saying you’re going to lose 50 pounds will somehow make you lose 50 pounds?” you’d say, “Of course not! What kind of nitwit do you take me for?” But we’ve all done it, haven’t we? We say, or think, “I have to do something about this! I’m going to . . . “ And the momentum carries us along, for a little while. Once that initial excitement wears off, though, so does our motivation. And what is motivation, anyway? Gretchen Rubin has a great article on her blog about this whole question. Sometimes when people use that word they really mean “desire”–”I want to do so-and-so.” Sometimes it means “reasons why”–”I know why I need to quit staying up late to play video games.” Sometimes it’s a statement of some kind of vague moral impulse–”I should spend less money on impulse buys.” As she puts it, people aren’t really motivated by motivation. That’s a tautology, in which you just go around in circles: “I’m going to do something because I’m motivated to do it and so I will do it because I’m motivated.” As I’ve said myself before, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” That’s what a lot of so-called “motivation” is—a wish. As the estimable Gretchen points out, you need a clear aim and and plan of action, not some vague motivation.
A second human need, whether we like it or not, is for an authority in our lives—someone to tell us what to do. Granted, there is that small subset called “rebels” who push back against any kind of constraint at all, but for the most part we crave someone saying to us, “I know what the problem is and I know what you should do about it.” It’s very reassuring to think that there’s a clear, simple path to whatever it is we want. In reality, life is a whole lot messier than that, with multiple reasons for the smallest issues. We have to learn to be content with gradual or incomplete solutions, but that’s really hard to do.
And the third need I want to address here ties in closely with the one above: the desire for sympathy and respect, to be heard. I’m almost certainly going to step on a few toes here, but it has to be said: Much of the pull towards so-called “alternative medicine” comes from this human need. We have all, all, had the experience of going to a conventional doctor, perhaps our GP or family practitioner, and feeling dismissed and disrespected. There’s no excuse for this happening, but there is an explanation, or, rather, several explanations: the pressures put on this type of doctor (not so much on specialists, perhaps) by insurance companies to see a certain number of patients per day, the frustration of dealing with patients who come in to their appointments having already determined their diagnosis by way of internet diving, and the knowledge that there is no 10-minute appointment and/or prescription that’s going to get at the roots of a patient’s complaint about, for example, being “tired.” That one problem could be caused by:
- sleep problems
- stress at work
- worries over children
- marital difficulties
- lack of exercise
Just to name a few. How are all of those issues going to be addressed in a doctor’s appointment? For the most part they’re not anything that the doctor can deal with anyway. So the patient gets shuffled out, feels resentful, and decides to go to some other type of practitioner, perhaps a “nutritionist,” or a “naturopathist,” or a “homeopathist” or a “wellness counselor” or an acupuncturist, or a chiropractor. (I didn’t put those last terms in quotation marks because there is a recognized definition for them.) What happens? Well, for one thing, there isn’t going to be an insurance company in the room at least for the first four. Some insurance companies now cover acupuncture, and many cover chiropractic treatment, but the insurance procedures are much simpler because there’s just one thing going on at those practices.The rest of these people operate outside the recognized medical establishment and their fees are therefore out of (your) pocket. There’s no big front staff that’s having to be paid for the work it takes to file all those insurance forms. (In many regular medical offices there’s a one-to-one ratio of doctors to insurance staff.) The practitioner is under much less time pressure and can therefore really listen to his/her patients’ stories of their woes.
Now here’s the key point, and I’m starting a new paragraph because I want to emphasize it :
The alternative practitioner has a pre-determined set of tools to apply to every situation.
You go to a chiropractor? You’re going to get chiropractic treatment. He’s not going to say, “You know, I can’t really help you. You need to go to an allergist. Or an endocrinologist. Or a gastroenterologist.” Never, never, never will that happen! While there is some evidence that chiropractors can help with lower back pain (which often goes away by itself, so who knows?), they by no means confine their claims to that one limited area of treatment. (And lest you think that I’m just talking off the top of my head here, let me assure you that over the past 20+ years I have spent literally thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours at various chiropractors’ offices, and while a couple of the practitioners were truly great human beings I don’t now believe for one second that I got any significant benefit from all that time and money. My neck and shoulders are basically in the same shape they were when I started. I would have been much, much better off getting some good physical therapy or massage therapy. I would have spent the same amount of money or less and benefited much more.)
So it is with various fad diets: they tend to fulfill all three of the above human needs. You make dramatic changes in the way you eat, you’re told by a self-styled authority that this is what you should do, and either in person, on some website or in a book you’re assured that your symptoms and problems are legitimate and posses clear solutions. So the diet works—for awhile. But because it’s not based on hard, cold reality it eventually fails. And there you are, worse off than you were before you started.
Up next: the keto diet and why it’s not legitimate for the vast majority of the population. See you then!
Would you like for me to speak to your group in the Denver metro area? Contact me at debi@debisimons.com.