The Status Quo

One of the biggest problems that I face in my work is that many people react to the mere mention of change with loathsome thoughts and feelings. People tend to get stuck in certain eating and living habits which have benefits that they enjoy, such as favorite types of meals which happen to be fattening, and enjoying relaxing at the end of a working day instead of doing exercise. Its unfortunate that for many people it takes a buildup of a lot of negative influences in their life to start to be open to change, or enough of a good incentive to be lured into change.

This is a problem in an individual sense, in that if a person living this way does not intervene with their lifestyle their weight and risk of poor health are likely to keep growing indefinitely. The loathsome thoughts and feelings are a negative influence to improving this scenario, but is there a bigger picture influencing this?

What I notice is that a great part of the problem is our food and exercise culture. What is considered normal for the average Australian is a life without any exercise, high consumption of processed foods, high consumption of meat and animal products, and a much smaller relative consumption of whole plant-foods.

In most cases, except for the current youngest generation, it all starts in primary school. The canteen is full of meat pies, sausage rolls, sandwiches with white bread and jam, sugary drinks, sugary ice blocks and hot chips. Exercise is really only related to sport, and if you don't like sport then there is no mention of exercise for the sake of exercise. For many, this continues all the way through high school and later life.

Some scary statistics of our country include:

- Approximately 60% of Australians do not exercise at all.
- Approximately only 20% of Australians exercise enough to protect their health.
- Australia has some of the highest rates of obese and overweight people in the whole world.
- 86% of Australians do not eat an adequate amount of vegetables each day.
- 46% of Australians do not eat an adequate amount of fruit each day.
- The average Australian consumes 30% too much saturated fat, related to consuming too much meat and animal products.
- 1% of Australian women aged 15-49 consume the recommended intake of folate, a crucial nutrient during pregnancy.

When you look at health statistics, this starts to paint a scary picture:

- The most significant predictor of chronic disease second to smoking, is lack of physical activity.
- 1 in 3 people in Australia die of heart disease, a lifestyle related preventable disease.
- There is building research evidence that a high consumption of meat and animal products increases the risk of cancer.
- Some researchers believe that 60-70% of the influences to cancer are preventable and lifestyle related.
- Australian and other Western countries have the highest rates of type-2 diabetes and cancer.

Considering that regular aerobic exercise is a powerful protector from heart disease, and only 20% of the population are likely to be exercising enough to enjoy the full protection, its not surprising that 1 in 3 people will die of heart disease.

You may argue that the problem is not quite as bad as I make it seem, however as I alluded to in my previous post on nutrition ( http://thehealthmind.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-favorite-health-food-shop-fruit-and.html ), other parts of the world that live very differently to us have far better health and a fraction of the chronic diseases that we have in the West. Provided that they have their basic needs met for health such as hygiene and available medical services, they also often have very long life expectancies. As soon as they migrate to the West they pick up the same disease rates as us, so its not their genes that are protecting their health.

Enough of the grisly talk on death and disease. When considering the food, exercise, and health culture (or lack of) in Australia, do you really want to be part of the status quo? When someone suggests to you than an unusual amount of exercise and rabbit food (whole plant-foods) is going to help, is it such a shock and burden when everyone else around you are part of the lifestyle disease epidemic? Is it really worth getting angry and outraged to be asked to live differently to what seems normal, and to what you are used to?

Time to look around you.




Practical tip: Make your own mind up. Decide what is best for you regardless of what everyone around you chooses to do, and regardless if its threatening to their way of life. You need to decide whether you want to be part of the status quo or not.

When starting to increase your amount of exercise, make it manageable and enjoyable. Keep it regular and build yourself up. You don't need to go straight to running marathons.

When trying to improve your diet, investigate low-GI foods for weight loss. If you want to have better health, try to meet the 5 vegetable and 2 fruit a day guideline for a start.



Alex Budlevskis
Exercise Physiologist
Rozelle Total Health