''There is something wrong with me.''

There is something wrong with me.

Years ago I worked in a Doctors surgery. He was nearing the end of his careers at 68 years old and he was pretty jaded by the system.

In his words. It put selling drugs above serving people and he spent 90% of his time helping the same people who never got better.

He’d served the same community his whole life and seen the same faces week, on month, on year, on decade, deteriorating seemingly with each visit.

A pretty interesting position to be in.

I’ve seen a number of doctors in these positions switch to nutrition or even scientifically disproven things like homeopathy as a response to this revolving door of the same people always suffering with somethings and becoming less and less well.

He’d invited me in to create an action plan to get them to move a little more and eat a little better.

I set about interviewing them and the same thing came up over and over again.

I know I shouldn’t eat XYZ but I get this craving and I can’t stop myself.

I know I should drink more water but I can’t make myself.

I know I should exercise, go to bed earlier, drink less, stop smoking, but I can’t!

There diagnostics for this,

There is something wrong with them.

They are weak willed

They are self saboteurs

And why wouldn’t they think that?

If you look around at other people and see them not struggling with XYZ then it’s not an unnatural conclusion to jump to.

We have become so disconnected from our physiology.

And so connected to our rationality

That when our body, brain, nervous system sends us a message we didn’t want we assume there is something wrong with us.

We hide it, which strengthens it, then we beat ourselves up for it, which strengthens it further.

Understanding that we are always being communicated with by our body and that the communication is a response to the environment is a powerful realisation.

It is literally telling us to investigate and roughly where to look.

Food cravings, tiredness, excess fat, overwhelm, loneliness, stress, anxiety - they aren’t random anomaly, they are cause and effect.

When we locate cause, we change effect.

Simple example,

most cravings disappear when you consume enough animal protein. The craving is telling the body that a need is not being met.

Teaching people this made a huge difference in the clinic as well as my career.