The End of the Mediterranean Diet (Part 2)

Taking inspiration locally

My grandparents don’t eat a Mediterranean diet by any means. They love butter and cheese. They don’t use garlic and olive oil in abundance. They rarely drink. They eat bread everyday. They live in polluted, disgusting London.

But they’re in their 90s. And although my grandad is fairly infirm now after a stroke 3 years ago, he has bounced back from critical conditions 3 times since then. THREE times the doctors thought it was all over. Hell, he even survived being resuscitated. Resuscitation only works something like 40% of the time in healthy people, let alone a 95-year-old.

And my grandmother is like a member from another species. At 90, she cycled 3 miles twice a day for 3 months when my grandad was in hospital. Also at 90, she joined a Latin class just for fun. She plays in a recorder group, sings in a choir. She looks after her beautiful garden and an allotment.

Together they travelled a lot throughout their lives. They up sticks and moved halfway across the world at the age of 65, not to retire but for my grandad to take up a new job. They made friends of all ages from around the world. They had hobbies separate from each other. They kept a close relationship with their families.

So what’s their secret? Actually, remarkably similar to the assumptions we make about the Mediterraneans. They have a community, they have hobbies. They grow most of their own food, and eat home-cooked meals every day. They have a regular timetable and up until 3 years ago, still did a lot of traveling.

But really, what’s the secret?

To say I’m inspired by them is to put it mildly. But the thing that amazes me most about it at all is that it’s all done completely unconsciously. They don’t know that what they’re doing is good for you. They never did any formal exercise, but they gardened everyday, cycled to work everyday, went on walking and sailing holidays. They spend most of their summers outdoors, even if now it’s just sitting in the garden for coffee and walking by the river together.

So, to sound a bit like a broken record from last week’s post, there isn’t just one single thing that is the sum of health. It’s many many small things done unconsciously, without thinking. It’s just what you do.

You make decisions about your health every single moment. You decide whether to drink water or drink squash. You decide to eat pizza or eat a salad. You decide whether to walk or drive. Have a grande Frappuccino or a single origin black coffee. Meet up with friends or watch TV. Have a house with a garden or an enormous TV. Go on holiday to New York or trek Manchu Picchu. Each decision has a merit of its own. But often one will set you on a trend towards health.

The trick is to make these decisions unconscious. To make healthy living your default. You eat, move, think healthily so often that it’s not an effort. Science can fill its boots trying to prove that these things are healthier. But logistically, anecdotally, observationally, this seems to be the truth.

Ultimately, it’s the small little decisions you make every day that determines your health. Not the fact that you gave up meat or dairy or wheat.

This post originally appeared on medium.com