Break the rules or break yourself. That’s the overarching lesson Pilar Gerasimo has learned during two decades spent covering — and influencing — the health-and-wellness industry. And also through the course of her own life.
“We reside in a society that encourages us to reside in ways that are both inherently unsustainable and unsatisfying,” says Experience Life’s founding editor and cohost of the podcast The Living Experiment. “What passes for any ‘normal’ lifestyle in our culture reliably produces stress, disease, anxiety, and depression. And so i think it’s time we openly challenged those conventions — within the service of better health and a much better life.”
It might seem as if rebellion will be a breeze for someone raised on a communal farm by a hippie mom and a sociologist dad, both of whom taught her that normal behavior was overrated. However in grade school, Gerasimo learned hard way that nonconformity often comes at a cost.
“My sisters and I had homemade lunches and homemade clothes. We didn’t possess a television at home. We looked various and acted different from other kids,” she remembers. “We got funny looks and whispers, and on the school bus, nobody desired to sit next to us.”
The teasing takes a toll. “I learned from an early age that being different made me a target for negative attention,” the 52-year-old former Fulbright scholar recalls. “So, for some time, I tried hard to fit in. But the more I tried to be normal and stick to the normal, approved path to success, the more my health and happiness suffered.
“I’ve realized that being healthy in our current culture is not some easy-breezy lifestyle choice or a simple matter of willpower, diet, and exercise,” she adds. Gerasimo outlines what she sees like a more promising path toward health and happiness in her new book, The Healthy Deviant: A guide Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy within an Unhealthy World.
Experience Life | What is “healthy deviance” and why do we need it?
Pilar Gerasimo | I define “healthy deviance” because the willingness to defy unhealthy norms and conventions in the service of achieving a high level of vitality, resilience, and autonomy.
Going along with what everybody else is doing tends to get you what everybody else is getting, and we live in a culture that creates more unhealthy, unhappy people of computer does healthy, happy ones. A lot more than 50 percent of U.S. adults are chronically ill, and based on a study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 97.3 % of U.S. adults aren’t pulling off even four of the most basic healthy habits required to maintain their health for the long haul.
EL | That’s almost all of us! How did we get here?
PG | There are a lot of intersecting factors that equal to the way we live. One is the influence of so-called authoritative, official organizations. Go ahead and take USDA nutrition guidelines, for example. A lot of public money and resources were invested in publicizing nutritional recommendations that served the meals industry much better than they served many people.
For many years, the guidelines recommended avoiding most dietary fats and eating multiple servings of low-fat dairy and grains, including a lot of foods high in refined flours and sugars. Consequently, we effectively had millions of people embracing a highly processed, high-glycemic, relatively nutrient-poor, and inflammatory diet.
Meanwhile, we were telling people that the easiest method to manage their escalating weight problems was to eat less and exercise more. Again, that happens to be a pretty unsuccessful plan for many people, particularly those who are suffering from cravings, low energy, and low mood as the result of eating a not-so-great diet.
For many, this has created an awful downward spiral. Eating and living “normally” has produced widespread chronic illness and depression. And frequently, the conventional health-improvement, weight-loss, and medical prescriptions have made matters worse.
So people try to get healthier, but the diets and workouts don’t work as promised, and the prescription drugs sometimes do more damage than good. After repeated failed attempts, people understandably get frustrated. They lose hope, confidence, and self-esteem.
Eventually, this leads to a phenomenon known as learned helplessness, where you become so hopeless and bummed out that you simply quit trying.
EL | So how can we break free of that cycle?
PG | I think it starts with building awareness and resilience. First, you have to clearly see what you are up against, and then you need to develop some new-era survival skills. Many involve researching your body’s most basic needs and respecting the lessons wired into our DNA during countless years of living in hunter-gatherer societies.
Because conventional dieting and exercise prescriptions can be such a setup to fail and shame, I often suggest people instead begin with some simple daily practices I call “renegade rituals.” (To find out more, visit “The Way of the Healthy Deviant”.)
One of my favorites is a “morning minutes” practice. It calls for taking the first three minutes once you wake up — before you look at your phone or switch on any media — to do some pleasant, low-key thing you enjoy. Maybe you light a candle, or write inside a journal, or just go outside and appear up at the sky. Take three minutes in the future into your waking state gradually.
There really are a bunch of neurological reasons this works in your favor, but the most basic factor is it gives you a chance to connect with yourself before you’re faced with the outside world’s agenda for you. This provides an important daily moment of self-definition. Additionally, it builds self-efficacy — the belief that you can do anything you set out to do.
EL | How has practicing healthy deviance changed your life, work, and relationships?
PG | It's empowered me to make decisions that serve who I really am rather than complying with other people’s expectations of me. Healthy deviance has additionally made me more willing to stand up for what I believe in, even if it might invite criticism or make others uncomfortable. It has made me feel more motivated to be an agent of change, and much more inclined to see the systemic causes of our biggest health, environmental, economic, and social-justice challenges.
To purchase your own copy of The Healthy Deviant, visit Amazon.com or find one near you at Indiebound.org.