Harm Reduction

I cooked this meal today; fried chicken tenders fried the traditional way and couple it with a spinach salad and air fried sweet potato (actually yams but eh) fries. On first thought, many may feel as though the health benefits of air fried sweet potato fries is negated by the fried chicken... In reality it depends on how you view it. First and foremost, since I follow more of a keto friendly lifestyle in general, I am comfortable with certain fats. Secondly, I am a firm believer in the concept of harm reduction.

What do I mean by harm reduction? It is a concept that was introduce with the needle exchange program for heroin addicts. The addicts would shoot up with dirty needles and end up ill from sepsis and other infections. The thought process was this: we know they are probably going to shoot up anyway... the defray the general harm to them outside of the addiction itself that is both detrimental to them in addition to the health care system, we will dispose of their dirty needles in exchange for clean ones. Naturally this concept was met with extreme outrage! It was confused with encouraging or enabling the addict instead of the true goal: decrease morbidity and mortality caused by factors beyond the addiction.

The concept has been utilized to facilitate change with other hazardous habits! For example, I worked as an NP in a homeless shelter with patients who were heavy smokers. The likelihood of the patients cutting cigs cold turkey were nil to say the least... So, I instructed the patients to decrease the number of cigarettes they smoked in a day by one every week until they were down to one or none. This process was completed without the aid of nicotine replacement (gum), so they were able to gradually wean themselves without going through nicotine withdrawal as well. The concept can be used with healthy eating habits as well!

I haphazardly practiced this in the beginning of my journey. There was a point in time when I would bake a cake and EAT THE ENTIRE CAKE by myself!!! Not surprising that I ballooned to almost 300 lbs., right? So, what I did was continue to bake a cake, eat one or two slices, then take the rest of the cake to my mom's house! Hey whatever works. It also facilitated my own concept of "if I make everyone fat around me, I don't have to lose weight." so it's a win win!

So many still may not be convince but I would like to challenge you to apply this concept to ANY vice you would like to get rid of or reduce and let me know if it works!