The holidays are a special time for many of us.
It’s a time filled with adorning our homes and stores with reminders of the season, connecting with friends and family, and giving gifts to loved ones.
It’s also a time of an abundance of special food.
All too often, however, the pleasures of the holidays turn into a nagging feeling of guilt and resolutions to lose weight, not eat so much anymore, fit into smaller sized clothes, to start exercising, and so on.
Dissatisfaction with how our bodies look, what they weigh, our body mass index, especially after the holidays, seem to occupy much of public thought. Advertising uses this obsession to peddle gym memberships, drugs, and diet schemes, to mention a few.
The public discussion about the struggle to be healthy centers on how we can change our bodies, and food often plays a role in this. But, there’s more to it. Consider these three examples.
Hotel maids don’t exercise. That’s what Ellen Langer learned when she asked a group of them about this in a research project. After an initial set of measurements, Langer told half the group that what they did for a profession was a lot of exercise. After a month the group receiving no information about how hard they work exhibited no change from the initial numbers. The informed group, however, showed marked changes in their measurements, the kind that would normally be the result of exercise.
Then there’s Kevin Richardson, a prominent fitness trainer in New York, who wrote an interesting paper. He tells of a young man who made remarkable muscle gains by the use of fake steroids, which he thought were the real thing.
And researchers at Yale looked at a creative twist with milkshakes. Two groups were given exactly the same milkshake. One group was told that it was a healthy low calorie shake, and the other group was told that it was off the charts with fat and calories. In actuality, the shakes were in between the two extremes.
Those who thought they were getting the low calorie shake showed no change in the production of a hormone that tells you you’re hungry. Those who thought they got the “indulgent” shake, however, showed a sharp decrease in its production, experiencing a reduced craving for food.
Here’s what I take from these experiments: how we think about food, exercise, or even steroids affects how our bodies respond. The impulse to eat when we’re not hungry begins with our thinking too.
Contemporary researchers are just scratching the surface on how much our thoughts affect our bodies. Yet, this is not a new idea. As a student of the Bible, I have found that Jesus taught this very thing: that food is not the master of our body. He said,
“It’s not what goes into the mouth that contaminates a person in God’s sight. It’s what comes out of the mouth that contaminates the person.” (Matt 15:11, Common English Bible)
This quote can be taken in a ‘religious’ way, but also as a reference to physical health. For me, the main idea is that words and the thought behind them are an important factor in how healthy our bodies are.
What I’m wondering is, if thought can determine our food/weight relationship without the trickery and deception of these experiments. Can we have a healthier body based on an understanding of the mind/body relationship that’s straightforward?
My choice is to recognize that it’s more my thought about the food, than the food itself, that affects me. I’m not saying it’s always easy to change our thoughts, but I’ve found that when I do, the effects can be real and may be more permanent than just behavioral change.
In the meantime, I enjoyed some fabulous holiday food this season without regret.
John Clague is a retired sheriff's office captain, father of two grown sons, and husband. He now works with the media to ensure accurate representation of Christian Science.