My Healthy Predictions For 2010

In keeping with blogging tradition, I feel compelled to write something scintillating about where I see the industry going this coming year. After all, it is New Year's Eve!

I'll start by referring you to a post I just completed on my brand new blog Body Mind Freedom.

My girlfriend read it and remarked that it contained little that was upbeat.

So, feeling a little like Scrooge Mac Duck saying "Bah Humbug" to the Christmas fairy, I started to ponder why I was such a sour puss and whether it was time to get excited again.

And before too long it came to me.

I think the health, fitness and weight-loss industries need a major wake-up call.

If you've read even a smattering of my posts over the last year, you'll already know that I am saddened at the lot of personal fitness trainers and nutrition professionals.

These well-intentioned individuals are little more than low-level cogs in the antiquated machinery or our respective health care systems (USA and UK).

And I make no apologies for the fact that I think these systems are operating on borrowed time. People are getting sick from a host of preventable diseases and our solution is to plug them in, medicate ... and foster further dependance, suffering and inbalance.

All of which needs to be paid for by someone. Increasing load, less bucks ... something has to give.

But I digress.

Here is a quick summary of what might change in 2010: Nothing! Nix! Zippo! Not a thing.

If it is broke ... don't fix it!

We will continue to get sicker, sooner. But actuaries will refute this with statistical proof that average age expectancy is up, so nothing is rotten in the state of Denmark.

We will continue to abrogate our responsibility to ourselves for our own state of well-being. After all what are health care systems and insurance companies for?

We will continue to ignore the obvious benefits of organic foods in spite of the science. Science, like accounting, is malleable ... and money always talks.

Besides, no-one likes to feel naive, so the dissidents have an easy sell in a recession.

We will continue searching for magic bullets, quick fixes and super-foods. Isolation will lose none of its lustre. People will not see that a supplement is the ultimate refined food.

And the formal status quo will continue to endorse its existing set of sacred cows.

Then we will wring our hands in frustration that our kids are becoming fat and diabetic. We will endorse hugely expensive programs to show them how to get outside and play again.

But health and safety fears will still encourage kids to wear helmuts and check for allergies first before using sticking plasters (elastoplast). Really!

We may rue that politics and legislation trump common sense and foster paranoia ... but we will do nothing. Except tell people to participate in the process, so they too can change the world (or at least have a licence to complain).

On a positive note (see, I listen to my most ardent critics), some people will keep digging and refuse to succumb to the inexorable tide of media conditioning.

These enlightened souls will relish responsibility and choose to embrace the notion that the best health insurance is getting healthy and living a healthy lifestyle.

These special people will be my inspiration.

Thanks for all your kind support in 2009. May this next decade bring you the happiness you deserve.