I like to think of myself as a persistent fellow having been through a fair amount of adversity in my life, losing my father at 8 and having cancer at 13, as well as some self inflicted adversity walking from Lands End to John O' Groats when I was 21. Despite this persistent nature I find myself in a constant debate as to whether I should give up on my life's purpose to help as many people as possible to obtain and maintain a healthy lifestyle. It seems no matter how hard I try to convince people that being healthy is a good idea for a long and prosperous life, the way society is built all of that hard work is reversed in an instant with conniving marketing campaigns and highly addictive foods. After 3 years of pursuing this purpose I have come to realise that not only do bad things happen when good people do nothing but that in today's worldbad things happen when good people think they are doing the right thing.
A prime example of this phenomenon is the nation's health. 40 years ago well meaning scientists, researchers and government officials (on the most part) made dietary guidelines that said don't eat saturated fat and cholesterol containing foods because they cause heart disease instead you should be eating low fat foods, whole grains and 5 a day. Food companies embraced this advice and created low fat yoghurt, whole grain cereal and fruit smoothies that allow you to get 3 of your 5 a day in one bottle. These foods sound generally healthy right...wrong! This is what I mean by good people doing the wrong thing. All of these foods are processed concoctions that lead us to eating a high sugar diet with out knowing it, which is actually the problematic part of the diet when it comes to heart disease.
Week in week out I run diet and exercise classes for people in my local area as well as creating videos on my YouTube channel to help people around the world to obtain and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately everything I advise generally contradicts the advice of the government and a few well meaning friends of my clients. My first and foremost advice to clients is to eat real food and my second most important bit of advice is to eat specific to your situation, even when slim friends say they eat what they want and it's all about calories. In the case of the population at large most should be eating a low carbohydrate high fat diet of real foods. The opposite of what the government is currently saying and you may be sceptical but let me remind you that the 40 years of the low fat advice has led to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer rising year upon year. #Logic
Although I don't agree with the current governmental dietary advice I don't think this is the sole reason we have the health problems we have today as education has a minimal effect on eating behaviour. What does have a massive effect on peoples eating behaviour are the choices they are given and 9 times out of 10 they will choose the sugary doughnut over the almonds even when they know that the doughnut isn't going to do them any favours. My point is, if we removed the choice of having unhealthy foods then we wouldn't have the problems would we?
I digress...even with my naive and unrealistic enthusiasm I do find myself rather depressed at times that the nation's health will get worse and worse however much I do to pursue my purpose with bad people doing bad things and good people doing the wrong thing. For me to solve the health problems we have we need to remove the choice of being able to become unhealthy by restricting the availability of unhealthy fake foods, which means strict policy and restructuring society completely...I told you I was naive. This intervention isn't going to happen any time soon so I shall remain on my path to helping the individual go against society who will hopefully pay it forward and when enough people have seen the light we will come out of the darkness to reveal a future that is bright and beautiful instead of dark and dismal :)