Dr. Peter J. Weiss

In my last post I wrote about open­ing my mind to nutri­tional sup­ple­ments.  This awak­en­ing to the poten­tial ben­e­fits of sup­ple­men­ta­tion is part of a larger change I’m expe­ri­enc­ing related to eat­ing. Let me talk more about that today.

Seems like quite a while ago that I read Michael Pollan’s book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” from which I learned a lot about indus­trial food pro­duc­tion.  It wasn’t a com­fort­able expe­ri­ence. I was left with real con­cerns about just how safe and nutri­tious our food is today and also about the envi­ron­men­tal effects of indus­trial food pro­duc­tion.  But what did I do with these uncom­fort­able thoughts?  Not too much — at first.

This is typ­i­cal of many of us.  We hear or see some­thing new, but it’s uncom­fort­able and implies we might need to change.  So we ignore it, sup­press it, fight against it or just don’t change.  That was me.  I accepted the valid­ity of the infor­ma­tion but I wasn’t ready to change.  How­ever, my eyes were opened.  Over time I began to see more and more mate­ri­als cor­rob­o­rat­ing these con­cerns.  Not that any of the evi­dence was new; it was just that my view­point had changed.

Like we’ve dis­cussed before, this is an uncom­fort­able place to be — faced with evi­dence that you’d be bet­ter off doing some­thing dif­fer­ent but not yet will­ing to actu­ally do it.  It’s just human nature, and often the con­flict gets sup­pressed rather than resolved.  For­tu­nately, I didn’t do that.

As part of a gen­eral strat­egy to help me learn and grow, I’ve been work­ing on the abil­ity to accept the dis­com­fort of hold­ing con­tra­dic­tory posi­tions in my mind.  It’s not that easy but it can be done.

What do I mean?  One way to express it is to see both sides of an issue.  Have you known peo­ple who don’t seem to have to choose sides in every dis­agree­ment?  Well, I’m try­ing not to “choose sides” for or against myself — accept­ing that I’m not per­fect while con­sid­er­ing how to be bet­ter.

In this open-minded state I was able to allow new learn­ing to accu­mu­late — knowl­edge about why I might want to eat dif­fer­ently and how I could go about it.  Two more books have helped me here:  “Food Rules — An Eaters Man­ual” also by Michael Pol­lan and “Bet­ter Liv­ing With Whole Foods” by Alexan­der Morentin.  (I rec­om­mend them both).

And I’m now ready to take the plunge into a diet based on whole and organic foods.  It’s excit­ing to be doing some­thing dif­fer­ent — tak­ing actions that will be good for me.

Now I know many of you are smil­ing to your­selves as you read this because you’re way ahead of me on healthy eat­ing.  That’s okay.  This col­umn isn’t actu­ally about healthy eat­ing.  It’s about keep­ing an open mind.

Cul­ti­vate the abil­ity not to imme­di­ately “choose sides” on any issue — espe­cially when it comes to choos­ing to jus­tify your­self and your cur­rent think­ing or behav­ior.  Accept the dis­com­fort.  Keep an open mind.  Just this small step can take you a long way.