Personal Core Values, and Food, Weight, Fitness

We did an exercise this week at my Optifast Support Group that started with looking at a long list of terms (such as honesty, integrity, happiness, spirituality, adventure) and circling all those important to us. Then we went through several iterations of narrowing the list and ranking them in importance, until we were left with the three most important to us.

Next, we were to think and write about how those core values impacted our daily decisions, especially with regards to eating and our health. The goal was to determine if our behavior was in alignment with our personal core values.

Comments made by the group were interesting. Most people had health and happiness at the top of their lists. But not everyone felt their behavior was always in line with these values. One man said these values impacted how he treated others, but not always himself. Another man said he hadn’t applied his value of knowledge and learning to health and nutrition, before joining the Optifast program. There was a discussion of whether our values had changed since being on the program, and also a discussion on short-term happiness vs long-term happiness. In other words, the short-term behavior of tracking food or exercising might not bring immediate happiness, but led to long-term happiness. People who are or have been overweight, in general I think, tend to go for the short-term rewards!

For myself, I listed self-respect, health, and fun, in that order. By fun I meant getting pleasure and enjoyment from life. I told the group that although I felt my core values had not changed in the last year, my actions and daily decisions were more in alignment with these values now than they were one year ago, before starting the program.

It’s hard to have self-respect when you have out-of-control eating, or are eating in ways you know are not healthy, whether it’s too much fast food, too much fat, too much alcohol, not enough fruit/veg/protein, too many calories, or whatever. It’s hard to have either self-respect or health when you are making eating decisions based on short-term satisfaction rather than the impact on your body of unhealthy eating.

And it’s harder to have fun when you are overweight and unhealthy – at least I think so. One woman last night said that in doing this assignment she realized that she equated being slender with being happy. We all know, really, that this isn’t true. There are lots of factors in who we are and the lives we live, and being slender won’t change most of them. But on the other hand, I do think that being heavy (significantly heavy) can keep us from fully enjoying life. It puts limits on our life. Either because we physically can’t do something we want to do (hike, ski, dance, do cartwheels), or because we feel stupid and self-conscious doing it. I know that as an overweight person I felt very self-conscious eating, say, at an outdoor café, feeling that others were looking at me thinking, “Well SHE sure doesn’t need to be eating!”

Being above the normal range of weight can affect our interpersonal skills and relationships, confidence at work and outside of work, and so many other things. So I definitely think that, unlike a year ago, my decisions now about how I eat and treat my body are more in line with my values of self-respect, health, having fun and enjoying life. Not always, not 100%, but more in line. 😉

A major disconnect between values and behavior can cause anxiety and depression, even if you aren’t aware why you are feeling that way. Corporations have meetings and retreats where they focus on company core values and how the company’s mission, products and services need to be in alignment with those values. I think it’s  worthwhile to think about our personal core values and how they can and should guide us in how we behave, make daily decisions and in how we treat ourselves.