Getting people to change their diet and lifestyle can be challenging. I try to do it every day. I’ve been attempting different messaging, different techniques, and it’s still a work in progress.
What I have noticed is that folks tend to respond when the issues they’re facing are: soon, salient and certain, as Timothy Morton mentioned in his book, Hyperobjects.
Say, for example, someone cannot have a knee replacement due to their BMI (Yes, insurance companies are starting to set boundaries for BMI and surgery approvals). If their knee pain is severe enough, and they recognize that their future likely entails a knee replacement, they will be more likely to engage in these valuable discussions.
This paper might motivate half of you… It turns out that erectile dysfunction (ED) is a strong predictor of cardiac disease. Why? Because ED is a vascular (blood supply) issue. Like the arteries in our heart, legs, and brain, if we do not have enough blood flow we can have heart attacks, rest pain in the leg, and start to develop dementia— and ED.
ED is undoubtedly an issue that is soon, salient and certain to those who are afflicted. What to do? First… move more, move often and occasionally with ferocious intent. Next… fix your diet. As this paper points out… a vegetarian diet is associated with a diminished risk of developing ED. In addition, heart disease, to a point, is reversible on diets like the Mediterranean Diet and other diets of primarily veggies and perhaps some fish. The more you know…
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