Integritus Prime

I’m still in Sydney, savoring the beauty of experiencing this city differently through my speaking tour. It’s been amazing and the culmination will be a Christmas party at the Sydney Opera House in a few days.

I did take a few moments to reflect on the week before I came here. I went back to the award-winning nonprofit FRIEND – the Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprise Development, in Lautoka to conduct a follow-up workshop on behavioral approaches to diabetes management. Insights from the first retreat are covered in Part I and Part II of an earlier blog series.

The goals of this follow up were to understand and address any challenges in implementation of behavioral science tactics in the participants’ communities, and build empathy so that participants could support each other through the holiday season. All participants were mothers.

Participants shared many struggles and victories, and most of these had to do with whether or not they had been able to harness support from family members. Social and family norms played a key role in their ability to be effective. We did mindfulness activities and discussed how important it was to manage stress – participants had learned to manage their stress a lot better compared to the initial retreat.

Early on in the day, I was struck by how much progress the participants had made. Two returning participants had lost so much weight over five weeks that they needed new clothes. They achieved this weight loss by eating fruits instead of what they call “junk snacks,” which consist of processed and packaged snacks high in refined carbs.

Another participant told a story of how she gave mangoes and water to her mom instead of heavier foods, who felt better and is now able to walk longer, so now mother and daughter take walks together. The participant also ate local and seasonal fruits and has lost weight, so she is feeling motivated to keep going.

The most surprising and innovative strategy was from a mother whose children are given sweets by their grandfather first thing every morning. He is a diabetes patient, and two others in the family also have diabetes. This participant bargained with her children and convinced them to use their pocket money to buy fruits from her instead of buying sweets at school. This, she told them, would ensure the money stayed in their family and go into a piggy bank. To help the grandfather be less lonely and therefore less likely to eat sweets in his room all day, she brought him a bus pass (seniors travel for free for up to $40 per month in Fiji), so now he travels and socializes.

These three strategies:

1. Substituting fruits for junk snacks,
2. Using fruits to combat lifestyle disease and lose weight, and
3. Replacing processed sweets with fruits AND saving money in the process

range in complexity and use the mighty power of fruits to address immediately pressing health concerns. Considering an amputation occurs every 8 hours in Fiji due to diabetes complications, and cancer, obesity, and heart disease are also huge challenges, these stories provide hope and show the power of behavior change in action.

We concluded the workshop with each participant creating and presenting a plan for how to get through the holiday season while maintaining their healthy habits. Some of their amazing action items include organic backyard and community gardening (initiatives offered by FRIEND), dancing, reducing meat in the diet, and developing a healthy and organic holiday menu. I hope to meet with these amazing behavior change champions again soon and see what other innovative strategies they are practicing!

If you like what you’re reading, drop me a note and let’s chat about behavior change and wellness for you, your organization, and community.

Stay tuned next week for insights from my Gold Coast tour…