Making healthy decisions can be a difficult process. The reasons for this, given the state of our modern world, are plentiful. For one, there is the sheer amount of information surrounding the types of decisions that one would deem healthy or unhealthy – should we be consuming more or less fat? More or less carbohydrate? More veggies or more meat? The answers – well, it depends on whom exactly you ask, and it becomes a problem as each individual works to find the answer that seems to work for him or her.
To make matters more difficult, it is clear that amidst this sheer volume of information, there is a large quantity that is outdated, flawed, or just plain false.
The result: an individual seeking to be healthier must fight through this mountain of information, sorting through the various levels of quality while their health is on the line.
This is a problem, amplified by the fact that it has never been more important for an individual to have the skills necessary to navigate the world making healthy decisions. As our markets continue to be flooded with industrially processed foods and our days are spent in sedentary and stressful environments, the health of our population continues to decline and the dependence on modern medicine continues to grow.
This is why I developed The Reprogrammed Systems Approach to Poor Health and Modern Disease – to help you, an individual seeking to be healthier, with a process for understanding what a healthy decision looks like for you. Let’s look at an overview of this process, including:
- How you can use it to get started right away making healthier decisions
- How you can use it as a lifelong process for continuous improvement
Problems with the Traditional Model of Health Programs
The traditional model of any health-based program (dietary, exercise, etc.) is that it starts with an individual (or group) that works to understand a particular problem, possibly experimenting with a few potential solutions, and when one works, that solution is adopted and marketed to other individuals. Once this specific solution is marketed as a specific program (a diet, exercise plan, etc.), any willing individual may then work to understand that specific program and make decisions aligned with it.
Now, this is a great approach when it comes to solving a specific problem: ask a question, propose solution, try solution, collect data, and repeat until your data tells you that you have a good solution. Then, anyone can take that solution and use it for themselves – and, if the conditions are the same, the same results will be achieved.
However, there is a significant problem with this method when it comes to the health of the population, and this problem is the incredible variability between individuals on this planet. This variability comes from a number of sources, including our genes (which we all have adopted based on our lineage), the health of recent ancestors, the current state of our own body’s health, and individual life experiences.
Because of this variability, even if a particular program works for a set of individuals, this may or may not mean that this particular program will work for you. So, even if a particular program can lead to success for some individuals, there is no telling whether or not it will work for you.
Now, there’s a second problem with this approach, one that I walk you through here. The short version:
A problem with current approaches to teaching health-based principles arises with the oversimplification of complex material into conceptual models or philosophies that any individual can understand. Once the complex material is simplified into a basic model or philosophy, the individual is expected to go out on their own, making decisions throughout the day aligned with it.
This is a problem because, even though a particular solution may be accurate in a general sense, the application of that idea (as the specific behavior) often ends up in decisions that are just plain unhealthy.
As an example, we can all understand the idea of calorie balance as an approach to weight loss. As we are told, to lose weight we must create a calorie deficit. This is a fact, drawn straight from the first law of thermodynamics. But how do we take this concept and apply it as a specific behavior? Will we reach our goal by:
- Eating less at a particular meal?
- Eating less fat in every meal?
- Exercising for longer and harder?
- Adding in additional calorie-torching exercises?
The answer? Well, it depends on whom you ask.
The correct answer – the one that will work for a particular individual? Well, it depends on the individual!
And that’s a problem. Because if one individual has one particular answer for another individual, that answer may:
- Be a good answer for making that particular individual healthier
- Be a good answer, but not for the health of that particular individual
- Be, overall, an unhealthy option for most individuals
So, what does all of this mean for us? Do we throw out this approach entirely in the name of another that may work better?
Of course not. Instead, we examine what works well using this approach, understand why it is inadequate to effectively produce results in all individuals, and expand on it to make it even better. At least, that’s what I did when developing The Reprogrammed Systems Approach, and I’m here to tell you exactly how it’s going to work.
But first, let me give you a brief background on the type of problem we are dealing with here so you can better understand why this different approach is truly necessary.
The need for a new approach
The traditional approach to addressing poor health and modern disease tends to be insufficient because it does not reflect the nature of the problem at hand.
What is the nature of the problem, you ask!
The problem of learning to make healthy decisions for an individual is complex, dynamic, and non-linear: that is, it is a problem that involves numerous variables that interact in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Moreover, these variables change over time, such that what could be the healthy decision at a particular time may change, even for one specific individual.
To address such a problem, it is necessary to go further than simply defining a few items, understanding their impact on specific variables within a group of individuals, and drawing conclusions based on this small set. There are always more variables at play – more than we could possibly understand – and these variables are going to impact different individuals in different fashions.
Let’s look at a couple popular examples to understand this:
One currently popular philosophy for healthy living is to eat a plant-based diet. This means avoiding meat and other animal-based products and instead choosing foods that come from plants. This philosophy is based on a data set that points to negative impact of animal-based foods and the positive impact of plant-based foods.
Upon examining the data myself, there is a great deal to support this model. There are indeed many negative effects of animal-based foods on specific markers of good health, and there are many positive effects of plant-based foods on markers of good health.
So, should we ditch animal-based foods and instead consume only plant-based food? We could… or we could keep looking at the entire set of data. Let’s look at a second example.
A second currently popular model for healthy living is to go low-carb. The general idea is fairly simple: carbohydrates elevate insulin more than any other macronutrient, which means their consumption puts the body in a state of energy-storage as opposed to energy utilization. Going low-carb (or even more, going keto), means that an individual is minimizing insulin production and put into a longer term state of energy-utilization.
Given this model, an individual may choose to consume fewer plant foods as they tend to contain more carbohydrate while consuming more animal-based foods.
So, what do we do? Do we avoid animal products in the name of plant-based foods? Or do we “go keto,” embracing fats of all kinds while avoiding carbohydrate, including carbohydrate-rich plants. Or, do we attempt to bo both and embrace a plant-based keto diet?
As we can see, the more philosophies we add in, the more complicated it gets to find a diet that is deemed “healthy” by different diet-camps.
So, what are we to do if we want to create a healthy body for ourselves?
The Reprogrammed Systems Approach
My answer to solving this riddle is the following:
Given that each individual is going to have various levels of success depending on the model they decide to adopt (plant-based, low-carb, calorie counting, etc.), we could decide to skip right over the step that is developing specific programs that tend to work for some individuals. What I mean is, we could skip the marketing and the promised results, and stop at the point where the data tells us everything, asking:
What exactly can we know about what is a healthy decision based on the total amount of information known to us at this time?
Now, I will be the first to admit, this is a difficult question to answer. As I have already explained, healthy decisions are going to look different for everyone.
And yet, it turns out there really is a good answer, if only we take great care while looking at the total data set – that is, take care to claim only that which works for everyone, ensuring we do not go down any rabbit holes with anything too precise.
When this is done, there are three key principles and practices that are revealed that work for the human population.
The idea then is to apply these three practices
Now, before we finish up, there is one more step here. And it’s important, so pay attention.
The thing is, you aren’t a population: you are an individual with specific genes, life circumstances, and preferences. Moreover, you may have specific needs that may not be met with something so general as three broad practices. You may need more, and if that’s the case, then there is a bit more work to do.
Fortunately, we already have a method for this problem. As discussed above, there is a particular method for examining solving specific problems, and that method is to work to understand your particular problem, experiment with a few potential solutions, and when one works, adopt that solution into your life.
Taking this all together, this is what I will teach you with The Reprogrammed Systems Approach:
- How you can get started, right now, making healthier decisions based on key principles that work for the human population.
- How you can improve upon these fundamentals given a process for understanding how specific foods, exercises, and other decisions impact the health of your own body.
Ready to get started?
I have two items for you:
First, I ask that you take a few moments to understand how possible it is for your body to become healthier if only you can find a way to make the healthy decision.
Then, I ask that you continue reading on about how exactly The Reprogrammed Systems Approach plays out.