Day Seventy-Five: Misery Loves...

"You ever notice that animals look like their owners?" My uncle asked me one day when I was visiting him on my summer home from college. "Whaddya mean?" I ask him imagining someone with whiskers growing out of their face as we watch his sleek kitty cat come into the kitchen for some water.

"You see a fat animal, and chances are that the owner is overweight. Notice how skinny my cat is." He replied with a half-crooked grin across his face.

In the 20 or so years since my uncle pointed that out to me, I've started paying attention.

If someone were to seek treatment for drug abuse, not only do they have to stop the addiction...they have to return home and make many changes in their life. Chances are that their friends were all junkies...chances are that they hung around areas were drugs were plentiful...chances are that in their downtime, they didn't catch a movie or get a quick bite to eat - they sat around and got high.

All that has to change.

On the show, "The Biggest Loser", the same thing happens. The food-culture that the person was immersed in, the pantry stocked full of items with preservatives and empty calories...everything that the person knew related to their old habits has to go. They have to replace the items in the pantry. They have to develop new habits and daily routines. Perhaps the most difficult...they have to learn how to adjust back into their relationships having established these new, healthy habits.

This is hard. It can make one feel like they are abandoning their friends instead of just abandoning their old ways.

Misery loves company, and it can be very difficult to break free of the lifestyle that someone once knew. I believe that it is possible to let people know where we stand and ask them to respect that. But, that's not always the case...each situation is different, the people in the environment that one returns to may or may not appreciate that. There is always the case that even just being around the old food-culture proves to be too difficult. When there's fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and chocolate pie on the table calling your name, eating healthy can be almost impossible, especially if the changes are recent and haven't yet become hardwired.

I challenge you to consider your culture. Do you feel that misery loves company, and the culture and environment that surround you hinder healthy habits? If you feel that a food-culture is part of the problem, I challenge you to seek ways to remedy this.