Guilt and Health

My friend and I were walking by Health and Wellness the other day, noticing their sign about how getting 8 hours of sleep is best. “HA!” my friend said [paraphrased]. “I’ve been going to bed at 3 and waking up at 7:30 for the past few days – I have too much homework for that!”

Don’t we all? This isn't to criticize our Health and Wellness Center staff, who do so much to help. [We appreciate you dearly!] It's just so difficult to do everything "right" for your health when you have so many demands on your time. Eight hours of sleep every night? When there's a club meeting at 10 o'clock, a couple readings to finish, and you need to get up for work at 7am the next day, it's just not possible. You could skip the readings...unless there's a quiz tomorrow. Or you know the next few days are going to be even more tightly scheduled. Exercise? Same deal. You may have the space of an hour between classes, homework, meetings, sleep, but is it enough time to get your clothes, walk over to the LC, work out and shower - maybe, but you'd rather relax because you haven't had a breather all day. "Proper" diets? Let's say you just got a paper back in class and it's a C when you thought you might snag an A. Now you're starting to doubt whether you've really understood the past month of material as well as you thought you did and are losing confidence. You leave class for lunch and opt for tasty french fries instead of brussel sprouts or salad just to feel a bit better.

Then there's all this language about health, where some decisions are healthy and some are "poor choices". Things are "bad" for your health - helpful if you're talking about carcinogens, but kind of demoralizing when you realize your sleeping patterns are "bad for you". Solutions are provided, but they often revolve around planning your time more efficiently ("better"). Worse is the implication that those who don't take care of themselves are somehow morally deficient. This is pretty obvious in some of the discourse surrounding obesity and exercise, where accusations of laziness aren't uncommon.The issue is more complicated than "turning off the TV and getting off the couch", and it's insulting to everyone.

Instead of needing to plan our time more efficiently, even the most efficient and workaholic among us are still not going to be able to do what we “should” be doing for our health. The world is not organized around health. The modern liberal-arts college, including Macalester, is not organized around human health. Even the pre-med track, Community and Global Health concentration, and related classes are not really organized around health – not the students’ health, anyway, but health as abstracted in academia. [Whether or not it is feasible to make room for self-care at Macalester or in the wider world isn't the scope of this post.]

So where does that leave us? Well, don't feel obligated to feel guilty about your exercising, nutrition, or lack thereof. You don't have to feel like you're a failure or a bad person if you have problems with food - eating too much or too little or erratically because that's how you cope with destructive emotions or low self-esteem or you don't think you're skinny enough or it's just habit or plenty of other reasons. Resist thinking about your personal health in moral terms because you own your body, no one else, and nobody's rights are being taken away when you make choices about how to take care of yourself. If you only use the treadmill once a month and never get any faster or fitter, that’s ok. If you hate running, lifting, walking just for exercise, or gyms in general, I give you permission to never ever take part in your life.

And finally, don’t feel guilty about being guilty. If that’s the only way you can get yourself to eat vegetables or get exercise, then go ahead. (Although hopefully you eventually find a motivator that doesn’t pit physical and emotional health against each other.)

Peace, love, human rights, good health, and happy living!