A person running alongside a motorway evokes different reactions. Someone will say, “Good for him, he’s exercising”. While someone else will say, “He’ll inhale so many exhaust fumes. More harm than good is there.”
Running alongside roads does indeed raise questions. Yet, the situation itself illustrates perfectly the radically opposing views on healthy living. This is particularly visible on social media.
At one extreme are people who carefully monitor their diet, sleep, physical activity, the composition of foods, medical test results, and any changes in their bodies.
And there are those who offer numerous arguments for why all of this is almost meaningless. The body is too complex, recommendations contradict one another, the environment is unpredictable, and illness can still occur suddenly.
At first glance, these positions are opposites. One is based on a belief in the possibility of managing one’s health, the other on the conviction that such management is largely illusory.
Psychologically, however, these positions may perform a similar function.
Health as an Object of Constant Control
A person cannot see most of the processes taking place in their body. They can observe their weight, pulse, number of steps, duration of sleep, medical test results, and the foods on their plate or the dietary supplements they take. The condition of their blood vessels, the functional reserve of their organs, early pathological changes, individual reactions to medication, and many other processes remain hidden.
This limitation of knowledge creates anxiety. The body can change without warning. An illness can remain undetected for a long time. Even sensible behaviour does not guarantee that a person will remain healthy.
Against this background, the indicators that are available acquire particular psychological value.
A person begins to perceive following a regimen as confirmation that they are in control of their body. And caring for their health gradually becomes a way of maintaining a sense of safety.
Then a missed workout causes guilt. A deviation from the diet is experienced as a threat. A blood test brings relief only for a while, after which the need for another check appears.
And a person who does not share all of this is devalued with the same intensity with which the very idea of an absence of control is rejected.
There is an obsessive logic in this attitude towards healthy living: if one follows the rules carefully enough, takes risks into account, and monitors the indicators, one can avoid illness, ageing, and the deterioration of the body.
This hope may not be expressed directly. But it reveals itself in the amount of energy invested in control and in the intensity of the anxiety that arises when this control cannot be maintained.
The Rejection of Control as the Opposite Certainty
Opposite position is more sceptical.
The body is a system with an enormous number of hidden parameters. Any intervention affects several processes at once, and an improvement in one indicator may be accompanied by a deterioration in another.
Supporters of this position point out that excessive physical exertion can have side effects, that healthy foods are not suitable for everyone, that vitamins and dietary supplements can cause harm, that weight loss is sometimes accompanied by a loss of muscle mass, and that the external environment contains many poorly studied substances.
There is some truth in many of these observations — universal recommendations really do have limitations. The state of a person’s health cannot be reduced to a few numbers. And a beneficial action does not guarantee a beneficial outcome for every person in every situation.
From this, a more radical conclusion is gradually drawn: since it is impossible to account for all the variables, trying to manage one’s health is, in principle, almost meaningless.
This creates an opposite form of certainty.
A person declares in advance that the body is unknowable, the environment unpredictable, and preventive actions primarily a psychological ritual.
This position also reduces anxiety. When almost nothing depends on the person, there is no point in deciding which risks to accept or which actions to take.
Powerlessness accepted in advance frees the person from experiencing limited responsibility.
Two Forms of the Same Defence
Both extremes help a person avoid the same experience: “My power over my body is limited.”
Obsessive adherence to healthy living turns limited influence into a fantasy of almost complete control:
“If I do everything correctly, I am protected.”
The radical devaluation of healthy living turns the same limitation into the conviction that there is almost no influence at all:
“Since it is impossible to guarantee the outcome, my actions are largely meaningless.”
Uncertainty is replaced with a complete picture of the world there.
In one case, helplessness is eliminated through control. In the other, it is turned into a worldview that removes the need to choose.
Both forms make it possible not to remain in contact with one’s own vulnerability.
Influence Without Guarantees
In a more mature position, a person acknowledges both the possibility of influencing their health and the limits of that influence.
Physical activity, diet, and other actions may affect some risks while creating others. Their consequences cannot be fully predicted.
But this means neither that an action is guaranteed to be beneficial nor that it is necessarily meaningless.
A person may exercise or decide not to exercise, take a supplement or not take it, undergo regular tests or limit themselves to examinations based on medical indications. The choice itself says nothing about how free the person is from anxiety.
What matters is the psychological function that this choice performs.
A less certain position can be expressed as follows:
“I can influence some risks, but I do not know all the consequences of my choice in advance. I cannot eliminate chance, illness, and death.”
This position does not tell a person whether they should run alongside the motorway or stay at home. The decision still has to be made without any guarantee that it will prove to be the right one.
Ultimately, the debate about healthy living concerns more than diet, sport, or medical recommendations. It reveals how a person deals with their dependence on their own body and the limits of their influence over it.
How can we recognise someone capable of tolerating this more complex position?
Hardly by the particular choice they make. Rather, by their ability to make their own decisions without turning them into an absolute truth about health and without demanding that others make the same choice.