When we are healthy and making good decisions, our brain is healthy.
And the converse is also true:
When our brain is not healthy, we are not healthy and we make bad decisions.
I found it shocking (just like the author did) that studies show that as a person's weight goes up, the size of their brain goes down. The brain literally gets sicker and smaller. It's not just extra pounds that can cause the brain to shrink either: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, untreated depression, lack of sleep: all of these things can impair our brain function and cause our brain to shrink.
I really like the part of the chapter that talks about chronic stress. A little stress can be a positive thing: showing us where we need to grow and what needs to change. But living with chronic stress day in and day out takes a terrible toll on our health. Prayer and meditation are great ways to deal with chronic stress and certainly I need to work more prayer and meditation into my life!
My absolute favorite part of the chapter: the part that encourages us to laugh more! I think sometimes we take ourselves so seriously! "A cheerful heart is good medicine" (Proverbs 17:22) was quoted in the chapter and I absolutely love it. I'm sure I've run across this verse before, but reading it in the context of this chapter: it just spoke to me. God cares about joy! He meant for us to enjoy our lives! Really! Sometimes I take myself so seriously, and when I think about God, I'm thinking about what tangible goals he wants me to accomplish in my life, and how best I can optimize my time serving him. Really what I'm thinking about is how I'm "measuring up" each and every day, and He's not measuring! I bet what He'd really like me to do is take time to find joy each day in the blessings He's given me. I'd also be willing to bet that if more of us could mindfully cultivate a "cheerful heart" and a positive attitude, finding more joy in our lives, it would do so much more for our health than even the best medicine money could buy!
I like that Pastor Rick is encouraging us to challenge our erroneous, negative thoughts. What are some of yours? For me, I think I have a lot of thought patterns driven by guilt. I was raised Catholic (no offense to anyone else raised Catholic) but in my experience growing up, guilt was used as a big motivator to change my behavior. So even in my adult life, I find that if I take time to exercise, I feel guilty about not getting something else done, or not spending that time with my kids. If I want to cook a dish full of veggies for dinner, I feel guilty because I know that my husband doesn't like a lot of the vegetables that I like. Instead of taking a few minutes at work to have a healthy snack, I feel guilty that I'm not seeing my patients faster, so I skip eating and drinking water and end up with a headache, starving and end up scarfing down 3 doughnuts that someone brought into the break room. I think a good way to challenge these thought patterns may be to ignore the guilt and see the truth:
When I take time to exercise, I end up feeling better, so I am a better Mom to my kids. Also, I'm modeling a healthy behavior for them, which is just what a good parent should do.
Often I do mix veggies into my dishes (way more often lately) and if my husband doesn't like that particular vegetable, he can pick it out of the dish: much like he did with the broccoli in the beef and broccoli I cooked tonight. Exposing him to different veggies is probably better in the long run. There are veggies I've gotten him to try that he never touched before he met me.
Taking time to eat a handful of walnuts or a half cup of yogurt and some water in between patients means that my brain will work much better for the patients that I see. I doubt anyone will seriously mind waiting the 2 or 3 minutes this will actually take.
I very much agree with the entire section on gratitude and I know what a great impact gratitude can have on someone's happiness and health. My mother actually has taught me a lot about what a miraculous impact gratitude can have on life and health, and she encourages me to share her story. My mom is an alcoholic, and for years she struggled with her addiction. There was a time that everyone in her life (her included) thought she was beyond help. But God lined up a series of events in her life that landed her in Alcoholics Anonymous, and step by step, friends and sponsors in the program taught her to focus each and every morning on gratitude. She learned that what often drove her to drink were a series of negative thoughts. I think negative thoughts are often what drives us to make poor food choices too: (much like my guilt about moving quickly through my patients eventually leads to a binge on doughnuts.) She learned a technique to stop those negative thoughts as soon as she starts to think them. When she finds herself at the mercy of a string of negative thoughts, she stops and starts listing each thing she is grateful for, one by one. My mom is a walking miracle: I have seen her make a 180 degree change in her life over the past six years she has been sober, and I know that learning to cultivate an attitude of gratitude is a big part of that change. I also think that if gratitude can have such a big hand in conquering alcohol addiction, it can certainly help out with stopping other unhealthy behaviors.
I also really like that the chapter encourages us to learn from "failure". Just about any path to success looks a lot like that zig-zag diagram in the chapter: it is a steady upward trend, but along the way, there are little down-slopes, as we have little failures, learn from them and keep doing better. So many times in my teens and early 20s, I would decide I was going on a "diet" and the first time I broke down and ate a fast food meal or some ice cream, I gave up altogether. I'm sure many of us do that. But Pastor Rick reminds us that the path to healthy living is life-long and following the Daniel Plan is like following the GPS in your car. You get off track, and you just take the next U-turn as soon as you can and get right back on track. You WILL still reach your destination this way!
I love the practical tips at the end of the chapter to keep your brain healthy: like practicing self-control daily, getting 8 hours of sleep (guys, this is really important! Make it happen!) and getting omega 3 fatty acids each day. Each day, we need to look at our goals and our list of things we are grateful for. Remember, life is 90% perspective and perception. If we chose to dwell on the positive, positive things will happen.
I was really encouraged by this whole chapter. I think it is really vital. When people think about losing weight or getting healthy, nobody really thinks about stopping to change their attitude or their mind-set, or writing down goals, or negative thought patterns. I think I'll end up coming back to this chapter and reading it over a few more times as I continue to implement the Daniel Plan.
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