Developing Willpower
Recently, two very disturbing reports about type II diabetes have appeared in the press. Since insulin control and function are among my priorities, both as an individual concerned with my own health and as a professional helping others to lead healthier lives, these articles were of interest to me.
The first article reported an incredible rise among teens in the incidence of type II diabetes (non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus), a disease once seldom seen in people younger than 40. While poor food choices certainly play a role in this development, the researchers identified lack of exercise as the primary cause of the increase of the disease among the young.
The second article was a report from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) suggesting that if current patterns continue, one in three children born in the year 2000 will develop type II diabetes in their lifetime. That is an increase of 300 to 500 percent over current rates (the current rate is 6 to 12 percent of the population). For African-Americans and Hispanics, the numbers will be nearly one in two. Right now, many Native American tribes are facing rates of one in two members with diabetes, so it can only get worse.
Diabetes Prevention
Three primary factors contribute to the development of type II diabetes: heredity, diet, and activity level. There's not a lot we can do about the genes we inherit, but we are not bound by our heredity. Biology is not destiny. The other two factors, however, are completely within our control. In fact, most of us already know everything we need to know to avoid insulin resistance (often referred to as syndrome X, or metabolic syndrome) and diabetes.
As a reminder, here is a brief list of habits to cultivate in order to avoid diabetes.
· Exercise. Even as little as two hours of walking a week has been shown to have a positive impact on glucose disposal. Even better, get moderate exercise several times a week and lift weights in at least two of those sessions.
· Avoid sugar. As much as possible, stop eating sugars of all sorts. When buying packaged foods, if an ingredient ends is the suffix -ose, it's a sugar. Packaged foods contain many forms of sugar (corn syrup, sucrose, fructose, dextrose, maltodextrin, molasses, and many others).
· Avoid white flour. White flour contains only empty calories that raise insulin levels while providing no nutritional value. In fact, white flour has been stripped of whatever goodness it had in its natural state and is absolutely worthless as a nutrient.
· Limit saturated fat and avoid trans-fatty acids. Both of these forms of fat have been shown to increase the risk of diabetes.
· Lose weight. If you are overweight, and more than 60 percent of Americans are, getting down to a healthy weight can reduce the risk of diabetes. In fact, if one is overweight and has diabetes, losing weight can return blood glucose levels to normal and reduce insulin resistance, often eliminating the need for medication.
These are all pretty simple goals to set and accomplish. One thought may help. Holistic health and exercise coach Paul Chek advocates the 80/20 rule. If we can adhere to these goals 80 percent of the time, the other 20 percent isn't likely to cause much harm. Obviously, more than 80 percent compliance is better, but we shouldn't beat ourselves up for those times when we slip or it just isn't possible to eat perfectly clean meals.
The Hidden Variable
If most of us know how to avoid diabetes, and yet more than 60 percent of us are overweight, there must be a variable here that the medical establishment is missing in its attempts to help people live healthier lives. The hidden variable is willpower. Before you accuse me of simplistic thinking, let me explain.
According to psychosynthesis founder Roberto Assagioli (a student of Freud and contemporary of Jung), there are three types of will: strong will, skillful will, and good will. Good will refers to aligning our will with what we know to be good and true. Skillful will refers to using our will to achieve a goal in the most efficient way possible (like using 20-minute sessions of high-intensity interval cardio instead of spending an agonizing hour walking on a treadmill). Strong will refers to having the inner strength to carry through on something we want to accomplish.
Most of us can work with skillful will and good will when it comes to our health. For many, it seems the strong will is more difficult. Consider the following exercise from psychosynthesis:
Choose one of the following pointless behaviors and do it for ten minutes. Use a timer or a stopwatch, or keep an eye on the clock, but make sure you do it for ten minutes.
1. Untie and retie your shoes.
2. Stack a few coins, unstack them, repeat.
3. Stand on a chair, or facing the wall, doing absolutely nothing.
4. Pour a bottle of vitamins on the table, put them back in the bottle, repeat.
Not so bad, right? Try doing this once a day for seven days. If that is easy, try doing it four times a week for a month. I encourage you to try this exercise and record in a journal any thoughts or feelings that come up for you, including how those feelings relate to any problems you might have with the strong will.
If you can do this exercise, you can exercise enough to avoid diabetes. You can also adopt one dietary goal at a time, make it a habit, then add a new one. Within a year or two, your risk of diabetes will have fallen dramatically.
I'm not saying this is easy. The psychosynthesis exercise is a place to start, but many of us have to overcome inner wounding, bad conditioning, and/or social pressures if we want to live healthier lives. A good therapist (or the exercises in a good book, like Molly Young Brown's Growing Whole) can be of great help for some of the work. A personal trainer or a nutrition and fitness consultant also can help.
At the bottom line, it's just you inside your skin, and only you have the strength of will to choose the life you want to live.
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