You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned

The new trailer for the latest Star Wars movie dropped last week, and my inner geek got excited!

It is also a great segue into a post I wanted to write! Double score!

I’ve been listening to a bunch of podcasts of late one of them was with “humble the poet” who is publishing a new book Unlearn. When I heard the title, my inner nerd went straight to Yoda ~ “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

This got me thinking so much about our journeys into health, do we have to add one more thing to our lives or do we need to stop doing (unlearn) something that we thought was helping and health for us?

My experience is the latter in all aspect, structurally, chemically and emotionally.

For me, I vividly remember having “yelling” matches with one of my college roommates about wheat… and I was on the side of eating wheat. As many of may know I had a sugar starch and beer problem when I was in college. I have also fully indoctrinated in the FDA based nutrition and biochemistry “science.” I remember arguing that Wheat was essential … look its the foundation of the food pyramid. Mind you I was pushing 300 pounds (I hadn’t got on a scale in years) and was morbidly obese, but that didn’t stop me from espousing what I had learned was right and natural for us to eat.

Fast forward two years, I unlearned that wheat was essential and that sugar was benign. Once that realization happened, I lost weight effortlessly the back pain that I had suffered from for the past eight years when away and my mental health got better for the first time in a long time.

I can also now talk about unlearning that Crossfit is from the devil and lifting weights is baaaad (said in my best “SNL Church Lady voice” for those of you too young to know what the hell I am talking about google it)

I have had to eat so much crow over the last three years about me joining CrossFit it’s not even funny. I had learned that the types of workouts the CrossFit would program and do would kill you. Which to be honest they have come a long way over the last ten years, and moved away from that model of finish the workout or die mentality. What helped me unlearn that CrossFit was terrible was a few good coaches and an “onramp” where they walk you very “gently” through the culture and ideas and especially the how too of CrossFit. Then the excellence of the programming at my gym is that they give different scales and where you should be for a wight. All those things caused me to unlearn CrossFit is not healthy or good for you.

So my question for you all, is what is that you all need to unlearn, in your diet? In your physical habits? In your emotional habits?

Do you need to take unlearn that eggs are bad? Or unlearn that wheat is the shaft of life?

Do you need to unlearn the limits you posed on yourself physically? Or do you need to unlearn the habit of just coming home and plopping on the couch to watch TV?

Do you need to unlearn that mediation is within your reach and you can do it even if it is just for 5 minutes?

Let me know what you guys think down below!

Until next time make your health easy

Dr. JJ