How our words shape our experience, and why diets don’t work

Have you ever noticed how the words you use to describe an experience eventually replace your actual memories of that experience? For example, I ran the New York Marathon last year. When I got back home, people asked me how it was, so I described it to them. After I told the story a few times, it became fine-tuned, and I settled on the most interesting bits to tell people, and the best words to use to describe those bits.  Eventually, this description became so well rehearsed that whenever I think of the New York Marathon, I think of my edited description, rather than the actual experience.

In other words, the words I used to describe the experience became a shorthand for that experience. Rather than digging out loads of memories, my brain is somehow taking a shortcut and playing the edited highlights instead.

The trouble is that these edited highlights are not just a shortened version of events - they are skewed in the particular way that I had chosen to relate the experience to my friends. For example, I left out the boring bits. I downplayed some of the agony. I focussed more on the fun and excitement.

So the words we use to describe our experience not only become a shorthand for that experience, but they can start to define and shape the experience as well. This happens not only to our memories of the past, but to our experience of the present as well.

And that is why the language we use when talking about our experience, behaviour and goals is so important. Take these phrases commonly repeated by people watching their weight:

• “I’ve been good, I deserve a treat”
• “I’m not allowed to eat that”
• “I can’t eat that, I’ve been too naughty this week already"

What do these statements have in common? They’re all childish language, implying the existence of a parental figure who allows and forbids certain foods, rewarding good behaviour with treats and punishing bad behaviour. The funny thing is, in most cases, this parental figure does not actually exist. It’s just a metaphor.

But how does this metaphor operate and what impact does it have upon people who use it? A parent is, of course, responsible for what their child eats. So an adult using parent-child language when talking about their diet is metaphorically relinquishing responsibility for their own eating choices. And this in turn can have serious consequences for their attempts to reach their target body weight.

Metaphors aside, unless you really are a child, then you and you alone are responsible for the choices you make about what you eat. No one else forces you to eat anything. It’s not McDonald’s fault if you eat junk food. And it’s not the fault of an international conspiracy if you consume sugary snacks and drinks full of high fructose corn syrup. You make all those choices yourself.

And it’s not naughty for you to eat calorie dense food, anymore than you’re being good when you eat healthily. Because ultimately you’re in charge, and you experience the consequences of your actions. No one else. Something is only “naughty” if there is a parent figure to tell you off. And something is only a “treat” if there is someone to reward you for “good” behaviour. And there is no such person.

I was discussing this with a friend recently who wants to lose weight. I explained how I choose to eat chocolate on one day a week, because that balances my love for chocolate with my desire to maintain low body fat. She said that was my treat day, and when I explained it was not a treat, she just laughed and said I was “playing with words”. To her it did not matter what I called it.

And of course, I am playing with words, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. In my New York Marathon example, I showed how the words I used to tell my story not only became a shorthand for that experience, but they came to define and shape my recollections of the experience itself.

And this happens with my experiences in the present as well. The language I use to describe what I choose to eat has a profound impact on my diet. By avoiding framing my choices in parent-child metaphors, and instead focusing on how I proactively balance my different priorities to work out what is the right thing for me to eat, I’m shaping my experience in real time, and equipping myself with the self efficacy that I need to stick to my goals.

iWatch, the quantified self and the worried well

(image via 9to5Mac)

It seems almost inevitable that Apple will launch an iWatch later this year, and most pundits agree that “the quantified self” will be the main theme of this new device. An emerging tech trend, the quantified self connects wearable devices with online services to provide continuous monitoring of a user's health and fitness.

This new category has seen some growth, with devices such as Nike’s Fuel Band, Jawbone’s Up and Fitbit generating plenty of press coverage and modest sales. But as with tablets and smart phones before, Apple’s entry into the nascent category could redefine its purpose and massively broaden its appeal.

I’ve been involved in health and fitness tech for many years, both as a user (tracking my runs on Nike+) and as a developer (I co-created Reps & Sets, the gym logging app for iPhone). So I know from personal experience the tremendous potential that exists for using technology to support people in their health and fitness goals. 

But there’s something about quantified self products that troubles me. We often lazily bundle “health and fitness” into a single phase, but they are in fact two distinct things. After all, you wouldn’t get medical advice from a personal trainer any more than you'd ask your doctor to help improve your bench press.

Quantified self products cross the line from fitness to health, and in so doing, they pander to the “worried well”: those whose only symptom of illness is their anxiety that they may be sick. Oddly, as medical science has improved our health, this anxiety has steadily risen.

Be careful what you measure

As any self help book will tell you, it’s best to focus on what you want, rather than on what you don’t want. Fitness tracking products focus on positive goals. The best ones highlight our achievements and progress, providing us with encouragement and motivation to continue.

Quantified self products, on the other hand, medicalise us, tracking metrics such as blood sugar and blood pressure. These kinds of data may provide insights to qualified medical professionals, but will offer little meaning to the average user. Instead, they encourage us to anxiously obsess over inconsequential fluctuations in our body’s normal functioning.

In other words, the quantified self encourages us to look for problems rather than to look for progress.

Looking for problems can create problems

There are two main problems with this. The first is false positives. Health screening can be a highly effective intervention, but it doesn’t always follow that we should screen for every possible kind of sickness. Some types of screening result in high levels of false positives - where a healthy patient may be told they are sick and undergo unnecessary, unpleasant and sometimes risky treatment. Ultimately, scientists must study the data to determine whether the benefits of the screening for a particular disease outweigh these risks. 

No such determination is made with quantified self products. Instead, healthy individuals are subjected to endless ongoing tests for no apparent purpose, and presented with results that they are not qualified to interpret.

The second problem is the vicious circle - the kind of negative feedback loop you can get into when you obsess about your health. The anxieties created by worrying about non-existant health problems can result to very real stress-related health problems. As a result, the worried well may over time become the worried unwell.

Track your fitness gains, not your health problems

As a former cancer patient, I know what it’s like to have every aspect of your health monitored. Chemotherapy is not fun. But fortunately for me it was effective. Now I choose to focus upon the benefits of successful treatment, by pushing my body as far as it can go in terms of my fitness. And that’s what I choose to measure: the progress of my fitness.

Of course, my health is more important to me than my split times on a marathon. That’s why I still go for regular checkups at my hospital, who do all kinds of tests. But I prefer to leave the quantification of my health to qualified medical professionals who I trust.

The skin I live in: a 7 year journey

As my latest round of cancer treatment is coming to an end, it has prompted me to reflect upon the mind-body journey I’ve been on.

I’d had rashes all over my body for many years, without realising I had cancer. But in 2007, I found a big lump in my groin, went to the doctors and was diagnosed with cutaneous t-cell lymphoma with mycosis fungoides - a kind of skin cancer.

At that time, I was overweight, unhealthy, stressed and depressed. Cancer seemed like the last straw.

The doctors wanted photos of my rashes, so I was taken to the medical photographer. Standing half naked, with my arms out stretched, my gut hanging over my boxer shorts and my skin covered in lesions, flaking away onto the floor as he took pictures, I felt ashamed.

Four cycles of chemo later, the tumours in my lymph nodes were gone, but the rashes remained and continued to deteriorate over subsequent years.

While my skin was getting worse, my health was otherwise improving. I’d never done any exercise in my life before. But the experience of going through cancer treatment had inspired me to get fit, so I started running and weight lifting. I became very interested in fitness and I even became qualified as a personal trainer.

But by 2013, my skin had worsened so much that I was starting to look like the Singing Detective. I was shedding the top layer of my skin like a snake and I had to stop running because it was just too painful to move. For the second time in my life, it seemed like things were coming to a gloomy end.

Fortunately, however, I was referred to a new consultant who prescribed photo-chemotherapy: a combination of drugs and ultraviolet light treatment. (Essentially high-tech sun beds). Treatment has given me a deep, even, all over tan. It’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed a side effect of cancer treatment. And more importantly, it has worked. My skin is looking better than it has done in over 15 years.

I’ve now got just one more week of treatment to go. My cancer in remission, my skin has cleared up, and my hard work at the gym is finally starting to pay off. Who knows what the future has in store, but right now, this is a pretty special moment for me.

I'm now looking forward to going on holiday to Greece in May with my partner, Martin. It will be nice, for a change, not to feel ashamed of my skin on the beach, and it will give me chance to top up that tan.

Time is never wasted when you're doing what you love

When ParalympicsGB's Jody Cundy was disqualified from the C4/5 1km time trial last week over a problem with the starting gate, he was denied the opportunity to compete in an event for which he had put in four years of arduous training. And in the heat of the moment, he said some things that he later regretted and apologized for.

One comment he made at the time was: "I've just wasted four years of my life." In the circumstances, his frustration was understandable. But when he'd had a chance to cool down, he got back onto his bike, saying "I guess I'll have to do another four years now because there's a kilo title with my name on it. I want it back."

There are no guarantees in life. We can't always expect to achieve our goals. And sometimes the obstacles we encounter along the way are unanticipated, unreasonable and insurmountable. But that needn't stop us from having goals and striving to achieve them.

We should do what we love and love what we do. If Jody Cundy loves cycling, then it's never a waste of time for him to ride his bike. Time is never wasted when you're doing what you love.

And a goal is only as good as the structure it creates. If the structure is good, then the goal is worth pursuing, but if you don't have any appetite to do what it takes to achieve the goal, pick another goal instead. Because you'll spend far more time training than you will relishing your victory, even supposing that you do succeed.

Life is about the journey, not the destination.

Why I'll always support Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong was a role model for me throughout my cancer treatment. I kept reminding myself that he had undergone chemotherapy, just like me, and then gone on to win the Tour de France seven times. I can’t describe how important this was to me. It gave me hope that there would be a future for me after my treatment was complete. And it made me aspire to be strong, like Lance.

In his autobiography, “It’s not about the bike,” Lance explained that when he was presented with the stark reality of how tough his chemo regime was going to be, he felt confident because it was a physical challenge, and he said that “as an athlete, physical challenges are something that I’m good at.”

The idea of being an athlete captured my imagination. It couldn’t have been further from who I was at the time – I was not remotely sporty. Far from it. I was unfit and very overweight. I'd never run further than 400 meters in my entire life. But I wanted to be strong like Lance, and I wanted to know that if I ever had to face something like chemo again, I would be ready. I wanted to be an athlete who was good at physical challenges too.

After successful chemotherapy treatment, five years later my cancer is still in remission, and I’m fitter, healthier and happier than I have ever been in my life before. I took up running and weight training. I lost 42 pounds, and then put on 14 pounds in lean muscle. I’ve given up alcohol. I’m always in training for my next marathon, and for the first time in my life, at the age of 40, I have a six-pack. From never doing any exercise, I now do a 2 hour workout every day, and I’ve recently become a qualified personal trainer.

And it's all thanks to Lance. His seven Tour de France wins were victories for cancer patients and survivors everywhere, and no one can take them away from him or from us.

Update:

Well, I was wrong about that last bit. They did take Lance's victories away from him. It's quite a blow to discover that our heroes are in fact all too human. Lance Armstrong has now admitted that he lied, and that he did in fact cheat. There is no justification for this behaviour. The strange thing is though, that apart from the past paragraph, everything else in this blog post remains the truth. 

What Lance did was wrong. No excuses. It's also true that his actions helped a lot of people in dealing with cancer. This is not a justification or an excuse. It's just another fact. Which I think just goes to show how complicated the world is. Few things are black and white. Bad decisions can have good consequences, just as well meaning intentions can sometimes have bad consequences. 

I'm really disappointed that a hero of mine turned out not to be the saint that I thought he was. But then, perhaps that's my fault for idolising him in the first place. Now, with a clearer perspective, I see a complicated individual with both good and bad intentions. I suspect though that at the end of the day he'll leave the world a slightly better place than it was when he arrived. And perhaps that's all that any of us can hope for.

The art of running well

There are many schools of thought on how we should run. Some say we should run barefoot, and land on the balls of our feet, while others say we should run heel to toe. Some say we should push our shoulders back, while others would prefer to keep them loose...

Over the years, I've come to realize that our running style is just as personal as our handwriting. Everyone is an individual and everyone has their own unique way of running. Even top athletes, (like Paula Radcliffe and her nodding head,) have their own unique style.

But while no two running styles are the same, I have concluded that there is still one reliable yardstick for judging a good running style, and it is this:

When you run, make everyone you pass wish that they were running too.

If we truly believe that running is a good thing, then we should embody the benefits of running whenever we run, so that others get a real sense of it, and want some of what we've got. And while there may be as many different running styles as there are runners, I've found that there are still some key characteristics that are always present in this style of running:

1. Smile: let everyone know how much you love running by getting your smile on every time you put your running shoes on;

2. Relax: allow your limbs to flow in an easy and graceful way;

3. Focus: zone in on the experience, exist in the moment and become one with your running;

4. Connect: when you're running, you're a part of a global family. Other runners are your brothers and sisters. Say "hi" to them as you pass.

If you want other people to get the same benefit out of running that you do, don't just tell them how great it is. Show them. Embody the essence of running. Be the change.

We are all body builders

In my gym, there are many guys with big muscles. They have consciously chosen to sculpt their bodies in this way. An act of will on their part has resulted in their bodies taking a particular form. Maybe they wanted bigger arms, so they worked on their triceps, deltoids and biceps. Maybe they wanted a six-pack, so they worked on their abs. Whatever their goals, they tailored their workout programme like a precise recipe to achieve the body shape they desired.

We don't always get to choose the shape of our bodies, of course. Sometimes people are born with bodies that are not as they would wish. Sometimes events that are outside of our control change our bodies against our will - like an accident or even violence.

But for the most part, I believe that we all choose the shape of our bodies, even if we don't consciously realise we're doing it. Every curve, every crevice, every blemish, every bulge. The shape of our body is the cumulative result of all the choices that we make in life. Our thoughts result in actions. Our actions result in consequences. These can be profound consequences to our body. They may lead to greater well being, or to disease. It's our choice.

As such, our bodies are physical manifestations of our thoughts. So we are all body builders. For the guys in my gym, their bodies are articulations of their dreams and desires. For others, their bodies might be articulations of fears, insecurities and doubts.

I used to cripple my own body with anxiety and stress - the sickness in my mind inevitably led to sickness in my body. It's all one system, after all. Now, as I've learned to take responsibility for my thoughts, I've taken control of my body. I choose to have a runner's physique. I have adapted my body to support me in the sport that I love.

As we realise that we are all body builders, we become conscious of our thoughts and take responsibility for our bodies. As we realise that we are already building our own bodies, we can consciously choose the direction that we wish to take.

What body have you chosen?