The only inevitability in natural systems is change.

I also write this with my right foot wrapped in an ice pack. Were I to unfurl this ice pack, I’d see bluish-tinted skin spanning the tips of my toes to my cuneiform bones, as if Vulcan blood pulsed in my veins. My left foot matches. I am wearing dusky sandals.

A few days ago, while warming up for a barbell complex with an empty 20 kg bar, I momentarily lost my focus and let the Olympic weightlifting bar — which spins in its sleeve — drip from my fingers and smash across both bare feet, crunching metatarsals and sesamoid bones between iron and hardwood platform like a potato chip panini.

There are two morals here.

First, don’t drop barbells on your feet.

Second, use heavier weights.

Had I warmed up with even a 0.5 lb plate on the bar, I could have thrown it from my full height and it still wouldn’t have scrunched my tootsies. Hell, had I been working the big-girl plates, I could have dropped it then dived underneath like a mechanic working on a car.

I offer penance to St. Mark Rippetoe, St. Dan John, St. Mike Burgener, et al.

At least this is how I choose to interpret the situation.

I’m lucky. Nothing seems broken. I remain unrepentant about doing most of my lifting in bare feet. After all, it took me 15 years to drop something on them. As Homer Simpson said regarding Krusty the Klown’s vow to spit in every 50th Krusty Burger, “I like those odds.”

As I hobble around, I meditate on the quality of life experienced by those who have not cared for nor appreciated their ability to move. Getting to the bathroom is an expedition (and it involves stairs — oh horror!). A revolving door provokes deep anxiety.

Lose the ability to move and you lose nearly everything. Barring unforeseen accident and/or disability, this is about 95% within our control.

Stay moving. We are like sharks who must keep swimming or die.

In other aging-related news, these days two things that are not doing much of anything — swimming or otherwise — are my ovaries. Yep, I’m effectively perimenopausal. And let me tell ya, it’s a helluva ride.

Let’s get some facts out of the way, because like me you may not have known that such a thing can occur to you in your 30s. (Menopause? That’s for people’s moms, right?)

Hormones are pulsatile, which means they’re typically released in little puffs and bursts, like tiny chemical farts. Some toot their teeny horns on a regular cycle, such as a day or a menstrual period. Others respond to stimuli such as light/dark, food, stress, etc.

As you age, your hormones may start blipping and blopping a bit more randomly. They may go up or down in a general average direction, but that’s average if you look at it over, say, a decade. From day to day, you could swing wildly between low, normal, and crazy-blast high.

This means that in your 30s, 40s — or even for a few unlucky folks, in your 20s — you could easily experience symptoms of hormone fluctuation as your estrogen and progesterone go wacky. And these symptoms may not correlate to a one-time blood test, which simply measures the level of hormones available at a single given moment, not over the course of time.

Thus, you might experience the following joyous events:

• waking up in the middle of the night feeling like a steamed dumpling
• puffing up like a balloon, especially in your lower belly
• the sloshing sound of epic water retention
• mood swings: crying jags, major anxiety, paranoia and apprehension, crabbiness, general psychosis
• brain fog, trouble remembering stuff like what the hell is Brad’s wife’s name, what is the word for those orange things you eat, and oh by the way where the hell am I?
• GI changes: digestive problems, bloating, new food intolerances
• changes in your libido
• headaches and migraines
• the sudden appearance of a few extra pounds, again often around your  midsection
• your boobs deflating and going south
• heart palpitations and feeling like your skin is crawling with ants (apparently this is known as forMication, which is less fun than forNication, just FYI)
• “phantom periods”: all the cramps, all the PMS, same monthly cycle, none of the red tide action (bonus: saves on Tampax!)

As with the unbroken foot, I’m lucky I didn’t suffer all of these things. But I sure was a crazy, bloated, crying, paranoid bitch for a while until I figured this out.

I’m fucking pissed.

I’m not pissed because my ovaries (or possibly something higher up the command chain) have decided to check out early. That’s their business. I always was a bit precocious anyway.

No, what I’m pissed about is this: Despite being a so-called “expert” in the field of women’s wellness, I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS. Nobody does. Nobody, that is, except the millions of women who are sweating, crying, bloating, and wondering WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON AND WHY IS MY BODY POSSESSED?

In 2006, my periods started going wacky, suddenly appearing every 2-3 weeks. This was accompanied by what seemed like hypothyroid symptoms. I felt like my skin was vibrating and my whole life was on fast-forward. I’d wake up at 4 am, eyeballs sproinging open like the guy in A Clockwork Orange, as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on me. (This, I learned later, was from an adrenaline rush to free up glucose once cortisol checked out of doing its regularly scheduled overnight job. Thanks, stress!)

Food turned to the proverbial ash in my mouth. My weight dropped to 104. I hadn’t been 104 since I had my wisdom teeth out and sucked Tylenol and chicken broth smoothies through a straw for two weeks. My sternal ribs looked like a rickety ladder. The only thing I miss about this time was that my pullups kicked ass.

I visited my doctor. Everything seemed normal. She shrugged, unconcerned about the sudden exuberance of my cycles. “Frisky ovaries,” she said.

I imagined my ovaries like Mexican jumping beans, doing an acrobatic, tap-dancing version of La Cucaracha on my uterus.

Fast forward to 2009.  I am sitting in a new doctor’s office, no longer underweight — indeed, feeling rather like a PMSing walrus — wondering why my periods have, after their initial spate of Rockette kicks, suddenly gone MIA. The new doctor, thankfully one who actually gives a shit about things like actual medical diagnoses, says three words: premature ovarian failure.

She looks at me with gentle eyes. I can see her figuratively reaching for some kind of caring informational brochure like So, Your Ovaries Are Lazy Skanks.

“So…” she says, “this means you cannot have children.”

“Really?” I say, with great excitement. I am, in fact, thrilled at this bit of news.

“Yes… umm…” she continues, soldiering on bravely with her shpiel, “many women find this somewhat traumatic…”

“No,” I squeal, “this is fantastic!”

“…and so, we recommend counselling to deal with the — what?”

I pump a high five. “Now my mother will finally get off my case about not having children!”

Doctor wrinkles eyebrows. Writes me a prescription for estrogen cream.

I finally fill this prescription in summer 2010. My pharmacist is one of those middle-aged Eastern European battleaxes that you find in bra shops, the kind that barge into the changeroom, flinging aside your flimsy privacy curtain, to grab your tits and pronounce judgement on them. She squints at me over her half-moon glasses on the gold chain. Her voice is approximately 130 decibels.

Her: IS THIS PRESCRIPTION FOR YOU?

Me: Yes.

Her: THIS IS ESTROGEN.

Me: Yes, I know.

Her: WHY ARE YOU GETTING THIS?

Me: Because I need it.

Her: WHY DO YOU NEED THIS ESTROGEN? PLEASE SPEAK INTO THE MICROPHONE AND LOOK DIRECTLY INTO THE BRIGHT BLARING SPOTLIGHT.

Me: I apparently don’t make enough of my own.

Her: YOU ARE TOO YOUNG FOR THIS.

Me: No shit.

Her: THE VAGINAL APPLICATOR IS IN THE BAG. NOTICE I SAID VAGINAL APPLICATOR. NOW EVERYONE WILL LOOK AT YOU AND FEEL ACUTELY AWARE THAT NOT ONLY DO YOU HAVE A VAGINA, YOU INTEND TO PUT SOME MEDICINE INTO IT.  I AM ALSO MAKING A JUDGING FROWNY FACE AT YOU AND YOUR VAGINA. YOU’RE LUCKY I DIDN’T GRAB YOUR TITS. HAVE A NICE DAY.

Me: *grabs bag, runs away, desperately grateful not to suffer scrotal acne or explosive hemorrhoids*

Over the years, working with clients, I have come across many women who are also pissed. Except in their case, they’re pissed because their bodies let them down. Mean bodies! Lazy bodies! Stupid bodies!

“I can’t believe I ended up with Type 2 diabetes,” says one, usually a diehard couch potato type. Really? You pumped sugar into your body for five straight decades and you’re mystified?

“My body is letting me down,” says another, usually a type-A ultramarathoner CEO type, whose body is merely a sniveling hunk of meat to be tamed. Really? You live a high-stress life, don’t sleep, work 100 hours a week, hammer the bejeezus out of yourself with ever more stringent physical abuse, and when you aren’t complaining about what a lazy ass your body is, you’re telling it what a piece of shit it is… and your body is letting YOU down?

“I hate my body,” says a third. Who even cares who this one is, because it’s approximately 600 million of you. Well guess what, your body probably hates you back for years of loathing.

Actually, no, although you probably deserve your body’s hatred, it doesn’t. Because that’s the thing about your body. It loves you like the best mother bear in the world loves her Gerber baby cub — with a fierce, visceral, snarling love that will do anything to protect you. Boy, are you friggin lucky.

If you’re mad because you’re over-fat, feeling cruddy, out of shape, riddled with aches and pains, etc. etc. you should start by taking a good, hard, honest look at how you’ve treated that ever-patient container of yours.

• What have you fed (or not fed) your body?
• How do you rest your body? How long do you sleep every night, and how well? How do you still your mind and give it serenity?
• What chemicals do you put into your body? What industrial-pharmaceutical products do you eat, spray, inhale, bathe in, or smear?
• How do you move your body? Do you move it at all, or jam it into a chair or car for several hours?
• Do you let your body out to play in its natural environment? Do you see sunlight or greenery, or breathe fresh air, or feel the change in temperature every day? How well do you match your schedule with the cycle of the sun?
• Do you say nice things to your body? Do you high-five it when it comes through for you? Do you high-five it just for existing and being a marvellous triumph of engineering?
• Do you subject your body to a constant cacophony of sensory overload and stress?
• When was the last time you wrapped your arms around yourself and gave yourself a big smushy hug? When you patted your tummy and felt its softness happily, instead of hating it for not being a hardened washboard? (Seriously, when the fuck did “washboard abs” become a goal that otherwise reasonable and intelligent women pursued? Evolution is laughing in your face, ladies. Suggest revising goal to “squatter’s ass”.)

Why, in short, should your body perform for you? Have you earned that performance?

Really?

If you can read this list and — in good faith — say “Hey, I’ve done a darn fine job, and I still don’t feel well,” then you are indeed entitled to be a bit grumpy about the state of affairs.

But most of you will have gotten stuck on point #1, mouths agape, drooling Froot Loop crumbs. Admit it. Hey, we’re all works in progress.

This isn’t about blame, of course. Most of you are also pros at self-blame (which is often part of the problem in the first place). It’s about taking responsibility and accepting the inevitability of change.

Maybe there are factors within your control that shaped the outcome. Maybe not. Shit happens, after all. But was it really random?

When I was first diagnosed, I racked my brain, scampering towards self-blame, as many women do. Did I eat too much? (Maybe.) Too little? (Maybe.) The wrong things? (Doubt it.) Did I train too much? Not the right way? (No, squats are almost never wrong!!) Was I too stressed? (At the time, yes. Now, no.) Was I too lean? (No.)  Should I get fatter? (I tried. Didn’t help.)

But blame is useless. It’s a narcissistic exercise. If self-flagellation were helpful in achieving life goals and meaning, wouldn’t nearly everyone be perfect? Blame immobilizes us in a snake-biting-tail cycle of helplessness and shame.

Responsibility, on the other hand, is extremely useful. Responsibility is about responding — moment to moment, dynamically, as the terrain of life shifts. It’s response-ability. It’s action-oriented. What bag of shit has life just handed you, and how can you make it stink less?

The best you can do is make the choices that give you the most options. Poor choices limit my options. Good choices expand my options. Then I am prepared to face change in the best way possible.

In June, Toronto was rocked for three days by G20 protests and riots. On Saturday, June 27, I walked down Queen St. West, one of my familiar haunts, to face a line of riot cops, just to see what it was like. At that point, it was much more like a rock concert, with riot police standing in for the stage, bored-looking hippies standing in for the headbangers, and iPhones standing in for lighters during the power ballad.

I left when the tear gas threatened. About 10 minutes after I walked away, a car was set on fire by the spot where I stood. I watched the ensuing footage on Saturday night, goggle-eyed and slackjawed as the rain poured down and cops poured into the streets. Neither let up. The next day, police rounded up hundreds of people — protestors and bystanders alike, boxing them in and then shoveling them up.

Shocked Torontonians watched the footage (or were among the nearly 900 people swept up in mass arrests) and said, “This is not my city. This is not the city I know.”

Well, it is.

It is your city. It’s just different now.

On Sept 5, I found my first two gray hairs.

Change is inevitable. And you’re gonna have to deal with it. Roll with it, give yourself the best chance possible, and try to have a sense of humour about the pharmacy lady.

KB:

Could you do me a solid?

I need someone to supervise my nutrition.

Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous.

Frankly, it felt ridiculous.

Here I was, Dr. Krista, gentle creator and longtime tender of Stumptuous.com, coach to hundreds of women as part of the Lean Eating program, emailing my buddy Kyle to ask — really sort of beg — him to check whether I was eating my spinach. Luckily for me, Kyle wasn’t just some random dude, but an awesome nutritionist and a helluva nice guy.

Still. I mean, c’mon. What’s up with this?

Excellent question. One that I tried to answer for months and months. Given that I was the “expert”, what the hell was I doing when I took second helpings at dinner? When I got slack about skipping the odd workout now and again, or having a little extra hit of frozen banana? (God I love that shit.) When, in the vortex of a hormonal tornado like a befuddled airborne cow whirling across an Iowa cornfield, I ate the bag of Xmas gift chocolate in one go? (DO NOT ADVISE REPEAT DO NOT ADVISE.)

Well, as it turns out, self control and “willpower” is a limited resource. Use it up on other stuff, and you’ll find it a lot harder to keep things together as the day progresses. It dawned on me that I was expending so much intellectual and emotional energy monitoring all my little ducklings that I ran out of it for myself.

I discovered that this was, in fact, not unusual among my fitness industry peers. I found strength coaches and personal trainers who hadn’t trained in ages. I found nutritionists who counseled clients by day and binged by night. I found life coaches who secretly angsted about their own life choices. (Same deal in academia, by the way: I remember profs who were so busy teaching that they’d barely even cracked the spine on a trashy novel since VC Andrews was popular.)

Sure, you could say this makes us all hypocritical assholes, but a more charitable interpretation — and one that’s borne out by talking to these folks — is that they’re utterly worn out and exhausted by giving and giving and giving to their clients.

A good coach, trainer, teacher, or nutritionist, you see, gives a shit. We really do. I have literally lain awake at nights, worrying about So-and-so: will her shoulder get better? will he quit smoking? will she have another overeating episode and beat herself up? I truly care whether you are eating your vegetables, and every time a client does her first pullup, an angel gets its wings.

All this organizing and fretting and reminding — all this caring — seems to take its toll. We care about our clients and end up caring less about ourselves.

It’s not that we end up like The Dude in The Big Lebowski, wandering around supermarkets late at night in a bathrobe looking for the makings of a White Russian. “Not eating well” for us might mean 5 servings of veggies a day instead of the usual 25. “Not working out much” may mean we’re still more active than the average North American. (But then again, a corpse may theoretically be more active than the average North American.)

Yet we do find less energy to supervise our own nutrition and fitness journeys.

It’s not that we don’t care. In fact, every day that goes by and our hard-won abs recede into our doughy flesh like eroding sand dunes in a flab desert, or we start to debate substituting frozen banana for hot romance, our image of ourselves as superninjas dies a little bit more.

It’s more that we run out of gas to manage. We exhort our charges to eat more kale, over and over and over, and when we get home — fuck it! No goddamned kale!

(Actually I love kale, and believe it or not I even crave it. If you’re in Toronto, check out Live‘s rainbow kale salad; it is the shizzle! I’m eating kale as I type this! My body is alive with antioxidants!)

Just because you can do something yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

I can make pretty, extremely OCD spreadsheets, but I have an accountant. I can use a shovel but I prefer to pay a nice young man to hack the dying cedars out of my lawn. I scrub a mean bathtub, but I consider hiring a cleaning person to be some of the best money I ever spent. (I’ll ask my accountant if I can write this off as “mental health costs”. Feminist labour theorists, rest assured that I pay an excellent, equitable wage and treat the occupation of cleaning with the immense respect it deserves.)

The first thing KB said to me nearly made me cry. I was waiting for him to berate me for being such a loser, such a hypocrite, such a screwup. I was waiting for him to lecture me about eating too many carbs at the wrong time of day, loving chicken pate in the Biblical way, or my attachment to chilled fruit. I was waiting for him to say Yeah, I noticed, chunky monkey. Instead, he said: Forgive yourself.

Forgive myself?

Wow. *sound of far-off gong*

This guy is good.

You see, despite a strong eco-friendly deodorant, apparently I was radiating the stench of “I’m a classic Type A middle-class white overachieving disordered-eating self-critical perfectionist stress case” for several kilometres around me. In my earnest enthusiasm to be All That I Could Be, my increasingly strident pursuit of self-control had simply worn me out. It hadn’t made me any better or smarter or well-behaved.

At that point I kind of dissolved into a puddle of pent-up self-flagellation. Upon receiving the command to forgive myself, the puddle slowly evaporated into a noxious vapour, which then dissipated molecule by acrid molecule… until after a few weeks, it disappeared altogether. I was reborn. Relieved. Re-invigorated.

It dawned on me that everyone needs a coach. Even coaches.

We cannot see ourselves from all angles. While we should be mindful of a need to seek approval or validation from others at any cost, there is tremendous value in seeking external feedback — if that feedback is honest, compassionate, informed, and caring. We need a kind friend to tell us gently, “He’s just not that into you.” We need mirrors to tell us our skirts are tucked into our pantyhose. We cannot know ourselves in totality simply via self-analysis, even though we think we can.

I don’t know whether it’s the Protestant work ethic or liberal individualism, but we have this stupid idea that we all have to be martyrs, soldiering on bravely and alone, handling our bidness valiantly by ourselves. But think about it — when the state realllly wants to punish criminals, what does it do? Locks up them by themselves. We are social beings. We need social engagement to thrive. And part of that social engagement is, as I have come to realize, accepting guidance from others — even in areas where we are supposedly “experts”.

Upon receiving my marching orders from KB, I got to work immediately, feeling enormously relieved. Managing this was now someone else’s job. All I had to do was follow instructions and accept correction where necessary. Every week, I’ve nailed it. I no longer had to expend energy in excessive self-administration; I could simply follow the program. I didn’t need a drill sergeant or hand-holding. I didn’t need a shrink. I just needed someone else to care.

And guess what? I feel great. My pants are getting loose. I’m kicking ass in my workouts. Most importantly, I don’t feel like a screwup. I feel like a normal human being who just needed a bit of support.

I’m a DIY type by nature, and I don’t like to make a fuss. Asking for help was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But — along with hiring a cleaning person — it was also one of the smartest.

By the way, if you’re in the same boat, KB can probably get you to forgive yourself too. Check it out — Kyle Byron Nutrition. Tell him Stumptuous sent you.

Tips for working with a coach, teacher, and/or trainer

I’ve worked with hundreds of clients, as I’ve said, as part of my own practice and the Lean Eating program. Here are the tips on being a good “coachee” that I’ve gleaned by observing which clients succeed and which don’t.

1. Find someone with good credentials and experience. (See here on how to choose a personal trainer.)
2. Make sure they’re a good “fit” for you in terms of their personality and approach. You don’t always have to love them, but you should respect them and understand what they’re talking about.
3. Shut the hell up and listen. Do not tell them all the reasons you cannot do what they ask. Entertain the possibility that they probably know what they are talking about (if you successfully did #1.).
4. Remember that what you were doing before was not working. If what you were doing was working, it would have worked. If they suggest you do something other than what you were doing (remember, the thing that didn’t work?), try that new something.
5. Give things time to work. Be patient and persistent.
6. Ask questions where you need to. Get informed. Understand. But don’t second-guess.
7. Follow instructions. If you’re in physical therapy, do your rehab exercises. If you’re being coached, do the exercises. Follow the meal plan your nutritionist gives you, or the exercise program your trainer gives you. I know! Crazy! It works!
8. Do not bullshit us with excuses or crap justifications for not doing stuff. Either you want to do this or you do not. If you do not, that’s fine, just don’t waste both our time. If you do want to do this, then see #3 and #7.
9. Recognize that a good coach will push you outside your comfort zone. This is necessary for growth. Sure, you might not need a drill sergeant screaming in your face, but you should occasionally feel a little bit insecure and apprehensive.
10. Look for the evidence in your results and experience, not your assumptions. Work with your coach to decide on measures of observable progress.
11. Allow yourself to feel foolish, even stupid. Then get over it. Don’t become defensive or ashamed. Your coach, if s/he has experience (see #1) has probably seen everything. If not, s/he knows better than to laugh openly at you. If you can get over your fear of looking and feeling stupid, it’s amazing what you can accomplish. Be open to the learning process by allowing yourself to be vulnerable, rather than putting up egocentric barriers to ensure your apparent coolness.
12. Once you both agree on an outcome, then forget about the outcome and focus on the quality of your process. The outcome will arrive on its own time. You are responsible for your process, though.
13. Be a mature adult. Don’t act like a rebellious teenager, passive aggressive debutante, or whiny baby. Don’t turn the coaching relationship into some Freudian melodrama. Accept responsibility, grow up, and be an active, engaged participant in your own change.

The inhabitants of this land were lean and sculpted. Their skin was firm and blemished neither by the zits of youth nor wrinkles of age (nor that weird zit-wrinkle combo — like, what is that even about? make up your mind, skin!). Their ass cheeks were heavenly spheres betwixt which no flatus had ever egressed. Their abs were serrated blades upon which no flab nor dimples perched. These divine citizens wore hot pants Rollerblading and tiny swimsuits to do their laundry, and lo, it was good.

Their sturdy jaws were set with abundant, gleaming white Chiclets. The good citizens of Buffland used these Chiclets to masticate their four-to-six daily servings of lean protein and green vegetables, which they enjoyed at all times. They never deviated from this ingestion of aminos and antioxidants because they were a better, stronger, more in-control species than our slothful, gluttonous human race.

There was only one problem with this magical land.

It was complete. And utter. BULLSHIT.

I am about to lay some heavy duty stuff on you, possums. Now, you may be feeling real smug, because, like, you know that magazine are airbrushed and stuff. But do you believe it? Have you seen it step-by-step? Let me help.

OK, fine, we all realize Photoshop is involved and mainstream media eats a plate of ass. Hello, 1985 called, they want their feminist media analysis back. I know, I know.

But let’s talk about something more insidious. Look at your fitness role models. Look at the men and women who seem to have their shit together, are always perfectly lean, and never have a bad hair day. (Powerlifters, you can be excused from this discussion. Ha ha! I kid!)

What if I told you that many of these deities who look sleek and shiny on magazine covers or on the physique stage, or even the hotstuff trainers at your gym, had a big, fat secret?

That when the camera is off and the lights go down, those hotties get in their car, drive to the 7-11 and grab a 1 lb bag of M&Ms? That after the contest or the shoot, they gorge themselves to the point of pain on junk food? That they make 3 am runs to Taco Bell, or raid their refrigerator, swirling a block of butter in some brown sugar, or spooning in some ice cream with the laser focus and frantic speed of a meth-head surgeon and then afterwards feel sick and shameful? That they’re then shitting and puking and purging and exercising and starving that food off their bodies? That just like you, their diet ends in disaster as their bodies, ever more iron-willed in defense of homeostasis, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of Doritos?

Krista, you say. Surely you exaggerate. These are things that, say, misguided teenage girls do, or perhaps overweight lonely cat ladies who wear muumuus and read romance novels with unicorn bookmarks in them.

I only wish.

But biology is a bitch. The mechanisms that control eating behaviour are stronger than your pathetic attempts to delude them with fake foods. The exquisitely sensitive machinery that analyzes every last molecule that you send down the plumbing knows your game. Your brain may be fooled by the Splenda or the low-carb bread, but your digestive system is all like, “Oh honey, puhlease” before it sighs and sets about sorting the triglycerides into their allotted compartments or upregulating Poison Control to deal with the toxic sludge you just dumped in there in the form of diet soda. Your body will roll its eyes and go along with your little “I’m going to be so gooood” game from 7 am till 7 pm, and then the gloves are off — and said ungloved hands are shoving your face into a jar of peanut butter.

Combine the bitch goddess of biology with an environment saturated with stress, addictive food-like substances, and precisely delineated yet entirely false visions of “perfection”… and you have perfection all right — the perfect storm of disordered eating and self-loathing.

After working with nutrition clients I started to notice a funny thing: for many people, there was in fact an inverse relationship between socially accepted ideals of “fitness” and happiness.

Which is to say, the leaner and buffer many people got, and the more their bodies matched the mainstream norm, the unhappier they were. The more they binged. The more they purged, often through increasingly vicious exercise regimes rather than the old-school “open up the digestive sluices”. The more they restricted their food intake, whittling away and obsessively recording calories and carbs and choices. And the more they felt they “failed”.

Got your body fat down into a healthy range? Great. Go for lean. Got down to lean? Go for ripped. Got down to ripped? Go for “lipodystrophic wasting disease”. I want to see eye sockets, people!

Meanwhile, the folks who started out at, say, 300 lbs were just thrilled when they could breathe a little easier, get out of bed pain-free, and take a nice trundle around the block. If they tried a new veggie, or cut back on the soda, or their belt felt a little looser, they high-fived themselves.

This is, of course, the opposite of what you’d expect.

You’d expect that the fine citizens of Buffland would forevermore play beach volleyball gleefully, wear horizontal stripes fearlessly, and/or have ongoing instances of nice, tidy sexual congress. You’d expect that once their toned thighs or rocklike pecs had been accomplished, Bufflanders would close the door on the inconvenient chapter of their lives that involved cellulite, fried chicken, childbearing, and gravity, never to open it again. They’d be fit and perfect and eat kale. And that would be that.

You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’m not sure I’ve met a less happy group of people in my life (in the sense that “happy” would imply a deep, heartfelt satisfaction with the immediacy of one’s existence) than people who approached having “perfect” bodies, where “perfection” was defined entirely by an aesthetic ideal that defies most ordinances of nature, such as mortality, midsection squish, or menopause.

Literature majors, let’s double check: Poignantly contrary to what was expected or implied? Check! Yep, we have irony.

What’s the problem here?

The problem is what it takes to get that “ideal” body.

What it takes to get from “fit normal” to “magazine shoot” requires such a tremendous cost that your sanity usually goes into debt. There are a lucky few who can take their body to extremes of performance and aesthetics, and do so without becoming a rabidly bipolar beast who alternates between the highs of self-induced restriction and the lows of self-induced gorging. (High-fives to you, sirs and madams, I salute you. You are rare and unique creatures, and you should probably consider having your brain and metabolism examined for scientific purposes.)

Most folks are not so lucky. Scratch the surface of many “fitness pros” who buy in to the commercial industry and you’ll often find disordered eating and self-harming behaviours.

Talk frankly to a fitness or bodybuilding competitor about where they go and what they do after the shoot or the contest. It probably involves Baskin-Robbins or Pizza Hut or Cinnabon and the word “epic” may be used. Ask the tautest tush at your gym how s/he feels about him or herself. If they are speaking honestly, they will tell you that many of their days are preoccupied with thoughts of how to acquire, prepare, and consume food, as well as thoughts of all the body parts that are not quite good enough yet. Look at the hormone profile of these shiny young things and you may find elevated stress hormones, depressed sex hormones, and the blood cell counts of a chronic disease, for the gentle citizens of Buffland are often starving and shaming and stairmastering themselves into oblivion.

And it’s not restricted to pros. Anyone who ventures into the serious pursuit of aesthetically based fitness ideals, and/or who marinates in the malodorous stew of the fitness-industrial complex — even just a little toe dipping– is at risk. Male, female, old, young, smart, dumb, expert, newbie, nobody is immune.

What a fucking tragedy this is.

Scott Abel is one of the few throwing out the bullshit flag on this with books like The Other Side of the Mirror and his posts about metabolic damage. (Check out his April 2010 piece Sometimes Falling Feels like Flying… For A Little While)

So what’s the solution? Should we all just give up?

No. Going face down in the KFC Double Down does us no favours either.

If I like fitness and health, do I immediately turn into a narcissistic, self-destructive jagoff?

No, of course not. I wish more folks would love fitness, nutrition, and health… at least I wouldn’t bore so many people at parties by talking about how awesome it is to drag a sandbag around, and how many things you can make out of broccoli.

Use fitness, health, and nutrition to live better, and to engage more fully with life, not to withdraw from it, be angry with it, avoid it, or be afraid of it.

Does this mean we should all be “beyond caring” how good we look?

No. We have eyes for a reason, and sexual attractiveness is important to our species.

But. The disordered eating, behaviours, and mindset rampant in the industry have very little to do with true joy, visual pleasure, and/or sexiness.

When you are starving, self-obsessed, narcissistic, compulsive around food, avoiding social occasions because you can’t have your special kibble or because you think you still look too fat in a bathing suit, when the hormones that control your happiness and horniness are MIA because your body thinks it’s about to die from scarcity and is shutting the system down, that is not joy or pleasure or sexiness.

My solution is this. Focus primarily on what your body can do, and how you feel inside it. It is OK to want to be beautiful. It is OK to want to look hot nekkid. But understand what is real and normal and sane. Shoot for “fit normal” as an ideal and beyond that, focus on living wellness and an authentic, honest, loving relationship with your body (which includes, by the way, eating real food).

When you eat, ask yourself what your food is doing for you, not whether someone or something is allowing (or preventing) you eating it. Ask yourself how much distress this project prompts in you.

When you work out, feel the pleasure of your body moving, and the thrill of emergent power, not how many calories this is burning.

Are you going towards joy or away from it? Understand that drastic restriction, control freakery, and rigid rules will always come back to bite you in the ass, whether that’s an hour from now or a year from now.

Are you present with this body of yours? Aware? Mindful? Thoughtful? Are you caring for your insides — all your insides — mental, emotional, and cognitive? Do you bullshit yourself? Tell yourself lies? Yell at yourself? “Should” yourself?

Does every choice you make say “Yes, I will love and nourish you, self”? or do your actions really say: “I hate your guts and I will do everything I can to beat you into submission”?

———————————

One of the best meals I ever had was a grubby-looking protein shake made out of a smorgasbord of green veggies and fruits. I drank it out of a Mason jar.

I did not love it because it was virtuous, or because of its calorie content. I loved it because I drank it at the sixtieth kilometre of an 85 km bike ride, and it was sweet and nourishing, and gave my body what it needed to keep going. I loved it because I drank it while sitting on a park bench looking out at Lake Ontario, knowing that my tiny legs had pumped those pedals all the way around the shoreline. The question of my legs’ aesthetics was not at that moment even on my radar, beyond my brief notice that they were grease and mud-splattered. (Sexy.)

At that moment the veggies and fruits were my friends, nutrient powerhouses that would protect me from harm. I chose them because of how they made me feel: strong, joyous, energetic. Getting back on my bike I felt like my seven-year-old self with the streamers on the handles, riding the sparkly banana seat, thinking, “Wheeee!”

This is what the citizens of Buffland want but will never have. No matter how fantastic your ass is, if you don’t feel “Wheeee!” at least some of the time… and if your eating has become more like religious penance… then it’s a darn good sign that your soul is seriously out of shape.

Recently I’ve been checking my head a lot and having what the self-helpies call “breakthroughs” or what stoners might call “Like, wow, man”. It all started with a trip to Hawai’i. Boy did I need a vacation at that point. Now, my life’s been a whole lot more chill since I dumped the rat race (and by the way, happy second second birthday to me!) so I was just busy, not the teeth-jangling stressed I used to be. But nevertheless, I’m a busy bee, so I was, well, busy.

First couple of days in Hawai’i were tough. No, wait, bear with me.

We were on Kauai, at the very north end, near the terminus of the only road in the area, which pretty much ended in a cliff. This is a rural, fairly isolated area. The road washes out periodically. There are only a handful of locals, some taro farmers, and a few mainland escapees who probably don’t want to be found. Plus Pierce Brosnan, so the locals said.

Oh, and this guy, who walked around the local town with about 9 tiny dogs dressed in grass skirts.

Anyway, there’s nothing to do there except sit on the empty beach. Great, in theory.

But for the first couple of days, I couldn’t hack it. I had to be, I felt, doing something. I had to be productive.

The funny thing about places like Kauai, where Nature is large and in charge, is that modern conveniences are present but feel largely irrelevant and idiotic. I had internet but Facebook seemed even more pointless and stupid than ever, although I half-heartedly uploaded a few photos. I tried watching TV a couple of evenings while flash rainstorms lashed the cottage, but in the context of such dramatically diva-esque Ma Nature, its tinny banality was intolerable.

One is, in short, forced to confront the reality of one’s existence. And slow the fuck down.

I adjusted. In the mornings I got up and sat on a log for half an hour to watch the sun come up as I drank Kona. At night I sat in a lawnchair and watched the glittering stars appear. I got acquainted with the kind of patient do-nothingness that shapes the lives of people who are truly content.

I walked the abandoned beach barefoot, foraging coconuts, which I then smashed open on rocks, in true Paleo style.

Behold! I have slain the mighty coconut with my pointed stick and smashy rock! Also notice my squat depth! And scary mean face!

And I started to realize that perhaps I was, in my “other life”, at times still shoveling to nowhere — being busy and “productive” for the sake of being busy and “productive”, while not actually producing anything valuable.  Now, obviously, it’s good to be busy and productive sometimes… but not all the time.

I had forgotten how to do nothing.

Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had a million dollars?
Lawrence: I’ll tell you what I’d do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.
Peter Gibbons: That’s it? If you had a million dollars, you’d do two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; ’cause chicks dig dudes with money.
Peter Gibbons: Well, not all chicks.
Lawrence: Well, the type of chicks that’d double up on a dude like me do.
Peter Gibbons: Good point.
Lawrence: Well, what about you now? what would you do?
Peter Gibbons: Besides two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Well, yeah.
Peter Gibbons: Nothing.
Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
Peter Gibbons: I would relax… I would sit on my ass all day… I would do nothing.
Lawrence: Well, you don’t need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he’s broke, don’t do shit.
–Office Space

This might seem silly, but ask yourself: How often are you simply alone with yourself? No TeeVee, no interwebs, no music, no distractions? Simply present with yourself? Aware?

For some people, such a reality is simply too distressing to contemplate, and thus they self-medicate with food, addictive behaviours, and other distractions or emotional anesthetics. And busy-ness.

Which brings me to the subject of expectations.

I’m in the business of expectations these days as a nutrition and fitness coach. People come to me expecting that I will help them get in shape and feel better. And I do.

But what is interesting is how people conceptualize this project, and the expectations they have for themselves.

For one thing, it seems like everyone can quantify their expectations.

• They know what % body fat they want.
• They know how much they want to bench press.
• They know what size pants they want to wear.
• They know the number of their “pack” as in, “I want 6-pack abs” or (modestly) “A 4-pack would be fine”.

They also know the time frame in which this will occur. 4 weeks. 8 weeks. 12 weeks. It’s almost always “weeks”, not “months” or “years” or “I don’t know; I assume time will unfold as it should”. Sometimes it is days or even hours: “I weighed myself tonight and I was 1 lb heavier than this morning! Am I broken?” (No, you just ate food.)

Yet folks do not seem to have clear expectations of how they will accomplish this magical number, nor what they need to confront in themselves in order to do so. They rarely expect life’s obstacles, which are generally quite expectable considering that most of them happen to us with striking regularity: kids, job, commute, weather, having PMS, and so forth. Nor do they expect their own habits, most of which happen every single day. They’re probably not even sure what to expect once they have achieved this special number.

They do not expect, in other words, reality.

Perhaps more distressing is that folks are marinating in expectations of another sort. These expectations are almost always imaginary but no less real. These are the dreaded “shoulds”.

Ask yourself if this sounds familiar.

• You worry. A lot. About what? Whatever. Will you get a good job? Will you get a better job? Does X like you? Do you look fat in these pants? Anything and everything is fair game for worry.
• You find yourself saying, “I’m stressed out”. But you don’t live in a war zone; you aren’t getting beaten up by street thugs; your roof hasn’t caved in lately. You’re just… stressed. About… whatever. (See bullet 1.)
• You lie awake at night thinking of things you haven’t done.
• You lie awake at night thinking of things you have done, but wishing you’d done them better.
• You feel like one mistake equals big disaster. You ate a cookie? Idiot! What a screwup!
• You pick apart everything, especially your body. Too thin. Too fat. Stupid nose. Straight hair. Hair too curly. Etc. You can diagnose the 101 ways in which you do not look like a cover model. In excruciating detail.
• You use words like “grotesque”, “horrible”, “disgusting”, and the like to describe your body.
• You know exactly what you think you should look like — what weight, what height, what perfect boob circumference. And you don’t look like that.
• Did you go to the gym yesterday? You didn’t? You loser! You really should!
• Did you go to the gym yesterday? You did? Did you beat the living shit out of yourself? I hope so! You have to batter that body into whimpering submission. This is Sparta! Better skip breakfast just in case.
• How much protein did you eat yesterday? Enough? Can you tell me down to the gram? I hope so because you should be logging that shit, along with every gram of carbohydrate you were piggish enough to plow into your gob.
• Phew. You’re wiped. How about a coffee and a fatburner pill? A Ritalin? Prozac? Effexor? Crap, now you can’t sleep. Have an Imovane or Ambien.
• Why aren’t you there yet? Why aren’t you CEO? Married? A perfect mother? Where are your balloon tits and shiny Chiclet teeth? You’re 25; shouldn’t you speak three languages? You’re 45; shouldn’t you keep that perky ass like Demi Moore?

Ask yourself: Do I even know what the hell “OK” looks like? Or am I drowing in fear, worry, anxiety, and “shoulds”?

I look around me now and see a lot of women who are driven as hell. They don’t know where they are going exactly, because the destination is largely fictitious. They are out of fuel and running on fumes; their bodies are crying out in distress with adrenal dysfunction, chronic fatigue, disordered eating, and stress-related illnesses. Nevertheless they are determined to white-knuckle the steering wheel of that bus right over the cliff.

If they’re fit women they have a very clear idea of how they should look, and most of them don’t look like that. They probably look like lovely, normal women but that ain’t good enough. I heard an elite athlete recently say that she had always hated her legs. Her legs were stupendous. Her quads could crush carbon into diamonds. But her legs did not look like some imaginary starved sylph, so in her mind they were a testament to failure.

All or nothing, baby! If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!

I know these feelings, because I was once there too. The more you “screw up”, the more rigid your rules for yourself become. The more you worry, the more you try to impose order on the world. Of course, the more you do this, the worse it gets. Rules and expectations. Defeat and failure. More rules and expectations. Worse defeat and failure. Lather, rinse, repeat until everyone hates being around you and you are a crashing bore.

The expectations of “fitness” are more insidious than the simple expectation to be skinny. Being skinny is pretty straightforward. You’re just skinny. End of story.

But with modern fitness-industrial culture, “fitness” is very, very complicated and specific. You can’t just enjoy “going outside for some fresh air” or “throwing a ball around”. You have to focus on body parts and stand on a vibration plate and “bring up your medial delts”.

Funny thing is, this world is mostly imaginary.

Look around you. What do you see? Do you know any women who are actually 12% body fat? Do you know any women who’d leap on stage in a bikini and high heels? Do you know any of these legendary creatures who are amazing mothers, driven career women, lusciously taut and muscular, perfectly pleasing daughters and BFFs — and not insane or heading for a nervous breakdown? Sure, they probably exist… somewhere.

Yet it’s not as if you’re surrounded by the Next Stage in Evolution — you’re probably surrounded by normal, statistically likely out of shape people, so frankly, even engaging in regular activity of any kind already puts you ahead of the pack.

Have you ever noticed that images of commercial fitness models rarely look all that fun? And how many of them seem to be shot in skeezy hotel rooms? Or how often a “come hither” pout strays into “I’m feeling constipated” in the visual lexicon?

Bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman is given oxygen backstage during final judging rounds at the Mr. Olympia, to combat the effects of severe dieting and dehydration. Photo by Zed Nelson from the Love Me series (www.zednelson.com).

Is that what you want? Is that your dream?

Purposeless self-punishment is not productive discipline any more than self-flagellation and shame brings you closer to God.

Ask yourself: What would “pretty good” look like? What would “slow down” look like? Who expects you to do all this shit? To be all this shit? Who is, in other words, The Expecter?

• Your friends? They’re probably thinking about themselves.
• Your coworkers? They’re probably thinking about fantasy football and stealing pens from the supply cabinet.
• Your partner? S/he probably (hopefully) thinks you’re awesome the way you are. And s/he wishes you would see that in yourself.
• Your kids? Depends. If they’re under 10, they probably think you’re God. If they’re 10-20, they probably think you’re an idiot. If they’re 21 and need help setting up a mortgage, they probably think that you’re not so stupid after all. In any case, they don’t notice your abs.

The Expecter is you.

A narcissistic, self-focused you. Yeah, beating yourself up is still pretty self-centred, even if it gets disguised as a public service.

What do they think of ME? What if someone sees ME like this? What should I be doing? I am so bad! I hate ME! Me, me, me!

Pull your head out of your ass and get over yourself. So let’s say you get those abs or that bench press. Let’s say that magical number appears. Then what?

Are you going to be happier than some nutty guy with a ukelele and 9 small dogs in grass skirts? Ask the Magic 8 Ball… signs point to “no”.

Let’s say you don’t measure up. Then what?

Someone who may be paying attention (probably not) may be slightly disappointed for a microsecond. There may be mild inconvenience. Or not. Probably not. Ouch! Your abundant and highly specific self-loathing didn’t change the universe! That hurts!

The sun still came up regardless of whether you made partner at 35… and if you allow yourself to do so, why not sit on a log with a nice warm mug and simply enjoy a moment with the real you?

How to get off the hamster wheel? Why, the Fuck It Way, of course!

There are two ways to get rich:

1. Make more money.
2. Desire less.

–Tshirt seen in Hawai’i

Why not start things off right with an awesome Stumptuous 2010 calendar?? HELL YEAH!!

OK, Stumplady is putting on her prognosticatin’ pants and giving youse the Predictions for the Decade.

1. You will fail at your New Year’s Resolutions this year — and every year — unless you figure out the real problem and focus on the process, not the product.

Why are you out of shape? Why are you poorly nourished?

It’s not “willpower” — it’s the current structures and systems of your life.

Your relationship with your body mirrors your relationship with the other domains of your existence. Your body reflects your current values and priorities as well as your environment — social and physical.

• Fix your surroundings and relationships.
• Bump fitness and nutrition up the list of values and priorities.
• Find the limiting factors that are holding you back, and remove them.
• Examine the structure of your physical environment and daily routines to find the elements that sabotage you (or help you).
• Get away from soul-sucking people, things, and situations. Go towards people, things, and situations that bring you joy and give you energy.
• Question your underlying assumptions about how this whole project works and why it matters.

Not saying you have to solve it all, but if you don’t address the root cause of whatever’s bothering you, you’re doomed to fail.

Another fitness writer talked about a woman he knew who planned lavish, indulgent, junk-food meals while she was “on a diet”. In other words, this is a temporary fix, and then things will be magically different and I can engage in poor choices with impunity. Nuh-uh. It doesn’t work like that.

Be brave.

Get some big garbage bags — real or metaphysical — and start throwing shit out, whether that’s energy vampire people who don’t support you, crap “food” that poisons you, or assumptions and mindsets that are fundamentally self destructive.

Question everything until you peel away all those onion layers to find out why you are in the situation you are in.

Hint: it’s not because you eat carbs.

2. Everything will be two diseases.

My theory is that in fact all diseases are the same disease, and there are really only two kinds.

• diseases caused by a foreign pathogen or external accident — parasites, viruses, a safe falling out of a window on to your head, etc.
• autoimmune diseases, where your body attacks itself

Dig this shit: in the last decade-ish, we have discovered that the following health problems (and by no means is this an exhaustive list) have autoimmune features:

• cancer
• heart and cardiovascular diseases
• diabetes
• gastric esophageal reflux disease (GERD), aka heartburn
• digestive problems, including inflammatory bowel, celiac, leaky gut
• autism
• mental illness
• neurodegenerative disorders, e.g. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s
• obesity
• skin disorders such as rosacea, eczema, and psoriasis as well as acne vulgaris

My theory is that the autoimmune list above signifies that everything is the same disease.

And often, disease #1 can become disease #2.

For example, a viral or bacterial infection can trigger a cascade of events where the immune system starts beating up on itself. For instance, this is how death often occurs in respiratory infections — it ain’t the virus or bacteria that gets you, it’s your body’s response that makes you drown in your own lung butter.

Or, an injury can trigger chronic pain that does not disappear when the physical damage does. (Back pain sufferers, you know what I’m talking about. Your spine’s tissues have long forgotten about the actual owchie but your brain is hoarding the memory of that pain like a cat lady hoards old newspapers.) Speaking of that, we will become more insightful and sensitive about dealing with pain, and regard it as a complex mental-emotional-physical event.

As my judo teacher likes to say, It’s all the same fucking throw. (Our class is somewhat… informal. Kano wept.)

In other words, the fundamental principles and features apply — and if you have one thing, you often have other things too, whether you see them or not.

The body is a system — a very complex, self-regulating, sensitive system.

Think about it. Let’s imagine your body as a neighbourhood.

It has roads and railways — let’s call those blood vessels and our GI tract. It has a communications system — let’s call the electrical lines nerves and the postal system our endocrine system. The plumbing is our lymphatic system. The houses are our organs.

What happens if a road gets blocked by construction?

• There’s a big snarl-up at the point of blockage
• Everything gets diverted
• Regular systems can’t work as well — the mail carrier has to change the route; messages may not get delivered as well
• Digging under the road screws up the plumbing
• The people living nearby can’t sleep because of the construction noise and horn honking; they bitch to their neighbours and write crabby letters to the local paper
• Etc.

One little road blockage affects the entire neighbourhood.

• Do you really think your liver doesn’t notice if your heart is clogging up with tiny chicken wings and beer bubbles?
• Do you really think your blood vessels all over your body don’t care if there’s a nasty chemical running amok in the plasma?
• Do you really think you can sneak that shit past your digestive system while it’s looking the other way?

No, my friends, the body is a very chatty, gossipy, omniscient being. It knows when we’re sleeping. It knows when we’re awake. It knows when we’ve been bad or good etc. It’s like Santa and God together.

3. We’re going to realize that stress literally kills us.

Sure, we know stress is bad. But did you know that physical, emotional, and mental stress can actually rearrange your DNA?

Problem is, modern life is more stressful than ever before, and it’s showing no signs of abating.

A global high-tech world means that along with the usual woes that have always plagued humanity (food, shelter, getting out of bed in the morning, getting and maintaining sex, mean people with pointy objects and thundersticks, malevolent power-grubbing bosses, etc.), we have new ways to stimulate ourselves, to which our physiologies (see #6) have not yet adapted.

For example, chronobiology will show us how the natural cycles of life — daily and seasonal rhythms — can be disrupted by our current structures such as shift work, artificial daylight, etc. and how this affects our metabolic health, including nutrition and exercise.

And multitasking just makes you worse at stuff. You think you can talk on your cellphone, read a map, juggle a coffee, and whip down the freeway, but you can’t. In fact, you’re doing badly at all of those things.

Speaking of coffee, your 4-venti-a-day habit is probably frying your adrenal glands.

Adrenal fatigue became the buzzphrase of the late 2000s. While it’s not yet recognized as an official disorder by the medical community, it makes sense that there’s a continuum between “total adrenal explosion” and “happy adrenals”, just like there are subclinical manifestations of several metabolic disorders.

Natural health practitioners are pointing out that just maybe all that stimulation isn’t so great. (See #10.)

In the next 10 years, we’ll start to see the long term effects of over-stimulation by chemicals. ”Fat burner” supplement consumers, are you paying attention? Or are you too distracted by the xanthines slamming into your adenosine receptors?

4. Our tummies have brains.

Say hello to my leetle friends!

And boy are they pissed.

The GI tract, long ignored as a poop-filled garden hose, is getting its revenge. The enteric nervous system and the rich, diverse microbial colonies of our gut may in fact be responsible for much of our immune system and  subconscious sensory activity.

Celiac disease now affects 1 in 100 people. Food intolerances are on the rise — whether this represents a higher rate of diagnosis or incidence is hard to know, but I’m guessing a bit of both.

We’ll start understanding the havoc that we’ve wreaked on our tummies with the Western diet in a more profound way, and autoimmunity of the gut will become understood as a fundamental component in a variety of other health conditions. (See #2 above.)

And by the way, the liver will replace the heart as the disease organ du jour. We focused a lot on heart disease starting in the 1980s. However, disordered liver function underlies an immense number of metabolic diseases, and in a sense it’s the canary in the coal mine. Put your money on the liver as a key player, while the heart’s disease celebrity career is going the way of Vanilla Ice’s.

Gut instinct, indeed.

5. The lipid hypothesis will go the way of Jazzercise.

You’d be tempted to think that Gary Taubes was the first to throw the bullshit flag on the twin statements of “Dietary fat makes you fat” and “Dietary fat makes you diseased”. But in fact, scientists were figuring this out in the 1920s and 30s.

The lipid hypothesis — the idea that dietary fat makes us fat and sick, and that we can perceive this disease state by looking at lipoproteins, and that we should all live on statin drugs — will die. Statins will be the new Vioxx but we’ll only figure this out when we wonder why our muscle tissue is dissolving.

Saturated fat is not the enemy. Nor is dietary cholesterol. Humans evolved to eat this stuff. However, they did not evolve to eat high fructose corn syrup, Frappucinos, and Ho-Hos. (See #6.)

Viva pork belly and organ meats! (But make them organic and pasture-raised. See #7.)

6. Evolutionary biology will become a guiding force in helping us understand ourselves.

We are, after all, animals. Our physiology is 10,000 years old or more, and we’re closer to yeasts than we’d like to admit.

Yeasts exposed to sugar age just like humans do. Less sugar = longer life.

Once we understand ourselves as hunter-gatherer hominids, a lot of stuff makes much more sense.

Our diseases (see #2) come largely from trying to do 21st century things with 10,000 year old bodies. (See #3.)

Epigenetics will become big news. We smugly thought we figured it out when we figured out DNA.

As usual, every time we say “Well, that’s the end of that question”, we find out we were wrong. (Why don’t we learn? Well, maybe arrogance and the desire for completion is also part of our DNA.)

And here, by the way, I don’t mean evolutionary pop-psychology of the type barfed up in mass media, e.g. “Men like to go in their cave” and “Women like potpourri because it reminds them of gathering berries”. I mean, like, real science with actual evidence and stuff. Pop-psych simplifies and stupidifies the world; real science makes it more complicated and interesting.

7. Farms will become both more and less personal.

Industrial conglomerates will continue to expand and dominate the food systems.

But a devoted and growing group of food fighters will continue to advocate for small farms, organic methods, and local food production and distribution systems.

There’ll be more chemical shit on the shelves, but consumers will also have better access to CSAs, pasture-raised meat, organic foods, and farmers.

People will start asking more inconvenient questions about where their food comes from, but unfortunately, food manufacturers will continue to distribute their nutritional napalm into new and vulnerable markets. (See #11.)

And then, things will just get weird.

8. Aging will continue to be a key focus for medical research.

The Boomers are shuffling into senescence, so there’ll be a lot of money thrown at research into age-related diseases.

We’ll come to realize that a lot of “normal” aging is simply disuse and neglect. We’ll realize that many chronic diseases are connected, and ultimately part of the same underlying phenomenon. (See #2.)

People will expect to stay active and sexy with a good quality of life. They will not go gently into that good night.

This will lead to some pretty awesome bionic replacements, major advances into understanding cellular damage, a plethora of invented medical conditions and “cures”, and us having to contemplate Hugh Hefner still gettin’ it on.

Unfortunately we won’t put as much attention into making sure kids don’t die early from inactivity and poor nutrition (see #9), and aren’t whacked out on drugs that fry their little brains (see #3 and #4).

9. Healthwise, the U.S. will implode.

Sorry guys, but no matter what happens with that healthcare plan, the Titanic has hit that iceberg and you’re rearranging deck chairs.

• An entire swath of generations is now obese and developing serious metabolic diseases.
• Those 45-odd million uninsured folks aren’t going to get better overnight.
• Children are walking around with type 2 diabetes and heart disease, stoned on Ritalin.
• A growing population of seniors and the working poor are going to food banks.
• Farmers are living in poverty, and much of the available cropland in fertile areas is drying up or saturated with chemicals.
• The food regulation and industry lobbying system means that manufacturers are allowed to produce and distribute utter garbage for the populus to consume (and then produce ridiculous offenses such as high-fructose corn syrup commercials); pharmaceutical companies can advertise their wares to all and sundry.
• The US scores poorly on many key indicators of overall health, such as infant mortality.

Between well-established social determinants of health such as the economic recession and unequal distribution of resources (see #3), the health-crushing geography of suburban life (and the housing crisis), atrocious food (see #7), the aging population (see #8), etc. your country is in big, big trouble.

I am always desperately saddened by the tales that Americans tell me of their healthcare system, and the delusions they hold about the rest of the world. (Death camps, people? Really?) I am still haunted by the boy who did not seek help for a broken wrist because he could not afford it.

Don’t worry, the rest of the world is catching up to you in many respects, but you’re leading the pack, and you’re the only affluent industrialized country without a centrally administered public health care system. Congratulations. You’re killing your citizens.

10. The idea of “___ resistance” will emerge.

We already know about insulin resistance, which is the inability of our glucose transport and storage systems to work properly when they’re constantly flooded with insulin and glucose from a prolonged high-carbohydrate diet.

We’re learning about leptin resistance, which occurs in obese people whose bodies no longer respond well to the effects of the hormone leptin.

We’ll start to realize that continual hormone imbalance is bad news. Like parents tuning out a screaming toddler, our body downregulates systems in order to accommodate receptors that are overloaded.

11. Nutraceuticals will be big news, big business, and often a big pile of bullshit.

We’ll learn, as Hippocrates instructed, to make our food our medicine and our medicine our food.

Except instead of interpreting this dictum correctly — that we should eat well and treat each meal as an opportunity to nourish and repair our bodies via Nature’s gifts in whole foods — most folks will simply turn to chemical-laden “vitamin waters” and acrylamide-laden French fries with “cancer fighting” chemicals, helpfully produced by large corporations looking to disburse more low-cost garbage into the collective gullets of the populace.

This is like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, but saying “It’s OK, because the hammer came with an ice pack and a roll of bandages!”

If a manufactured product advertises its health benefits (low fat! low carb! high in calcium! trans-fat/cholesterol free! balances your Q zone! aligns your cosmic vibrations!), 99.9% of the time you should not eat it.

For one thing, label claims themselves can be very misleading. (More examples)

For another, label claims may have absolutely nothing to do with the real problem. I ate a whole lot of high-sugar, low-fat Fig Newtons and Twizzlers when I was low-fatting my way up to 50 lbs overweight. Sure, they were actually low-fat. But in that case, so is a sugar cube.

Oh, and I keep rooting for curcumin (a compound found in turmeric) as Supplement of the Decade. I think this is the decade!

Over to you, 2010s! To quote Principal Skinner, “Prove me wrong, children! Prove me wrong!”