Pilar Gerasimo - The Healthy Deviant: A Rule Breakers Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World

Copyright 2020 by Pilar Gerasimo. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover art and interior illustrations by Pilar Gerasimo (www.pilargerasimo.com)

Book design by Brian Johnson, Box 86, LLC (www.box8ighty6ix.com)

Healthy Deviant logotype: Andrei Lodiyr (www.lodiyr.ru)

Just Another Hand Font: Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute

The Healthy Deviant: A Rule Breakers Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gerasimo, Pilar, 1967- author.

Title: The healthy deviant : a rule breakers guide to being healthy in an unhealthy world / Pilar Gerasimo.

Description: Berkeley : North Atlantic Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019032767 (print) | LCCN 2019032768 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623174255 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781623174262 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Deviant behavior. | Self-care, Health.

Classification: LCC HM811 .G43 2020 (print) | LCC HM811 (ebook) | DDC 302.5/42dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032767

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032768

For Dad, who taught us to ask:
Why do we live the way we do?

And for Mom, who taught us to ask:
How could we live more the way wed like to?

De vi ant

n. One that differs from a norm, especially a person whose behavior and attitudes differ from accepted social standards.

American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.

Health y De vi ant

n. One who willingly defies unhealthy norms and conventions in order to achieve a high level of vitality, resilience, and autonomy.

Pilar Gerasimo, 1st ed.

On many occasions over the past few years, when Id tell people I was writing a book about healthy deviance, theyd look at me with raised eyebrows. Then theyd kind of chuckle or grin at me in that way that says, Ha ha, so it sounds like youre up to something fun, eh? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

I didnt have the heart to tell most of those people that I was writing this book for one important (and not wonderfully fun or racy) reason: Currently, we live in a culture that produces more unhealthy, unhappy people than healthy, happy ones.

In fact, right now, the unhealthy-to-healthy ratio is arguably running about a hundred to one. Ill lay out my rationale for that statistic in , but heres one thing I can tell you for sure: If you are currently a healthy and happy person in todays United States of America (or in any one of a growing number of countries now following our lead), you represent a tiny and shrinking minority. You are, statistically speaking, an endangered species.

I know, that is way less sexy than all the winkers and nudgers might have hoped. And if you bought this book thinking it was about, um, something else, Im sorry to disappoint you. In my mind, though, these facts do raise a rather captivating question: What kind of society makes being healthy and happy so difficult that only a tiny, single-digit percentage of its population can hope to pull it off?

The answer is self-evident: A sick society. And within a sick societyone where chronic illness, obesity, drug dependence, anxiety, and depression are rapidly becoming the prevailing normswhat does it mean to be one of the few who bucks those unhealthy odds? It means that you have to be prepared to successfully resist your societys standard way of doing business. You have to oppose its rules and defy its conventions. You have to make all kinds of inconvenient and unpopular choices. You have to become a sort of renegade freakor at least be willing to think and act like one some of the time.

The great news is that this does not require superhuman willpower, single-digit body-fat percentages, buns of steel, or an endless parade of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. What it does require: a willingness to toss some official-looking rule books out the window, to suspend some self-torpedoing beliefs and assumptions, and to begin doing some things differently.

That starts with understanding one basic, disturbing fact: If you arent breaking the rules, youre probably breaking yourself.

Over the past fifty years or so, breaking ourselves is exactly what most of us have been doing. Weve either been following our cultures paths of least resistance (processed foods, sedentary screen time, reliance on symptom-suppressing drugs), or weve been getting dragged along by its punishing health-improvement prescriptions (unachievable perfect-body ideals, fussy diets, overwhelming exercise routines). Or, worse, weve been staggering around, exhausted and inflamed, doing all of the above.

In the process, we have been inadvertently playing into the hands of the very systems that are breaking us down. Clearly, we have to stop doing thatbut rescinding our complicity with the unhealthy dominant culture is easier said than done. Moving away from our societys preprogrammed defaults requires busting out of well-worn ruts, swimming against powerful tides. All of which requires energy, attention, and resilience that most busy, exhausted, chronically overwhelmed people simply do not have to spare.

All forms of social devianceeven the healthy, positive kindcarry unspoken costs and risks. And thats one big, wildly underappreciated reason why, despite their best efforts, the vast majority of people who chase health and happiness in our culture dont ever attain them. Yet somehow, against all odds, a few healthy oddballs manage to pull it off. Some of them even make it look easy. The question is: How?

This book represents my best attempt to answer that question. Drawing on what Ive learned over the course of two decades as a health journalist, as well as my own experience as a lifelong health seeker, I share the unlikely means by which a small but growing number of bright-spot outliers are managing to pull off the seemingly impossibleand how you can, too.