Imaginary Therapy

As a sedentary psychotherapist, no matter how active I am outside of work, I have to be very careful about what I eat. That’s why I was very pleased that the Department of Agriculture revised their Food Pyramid. In fact, they set up a website, mypyramid.gov where you can get a diet customized to your sex, age and level of physical activity.

So I went to the website and put in my data as an adult male who does 30-60 minutes extra activity. The Food Pyramid told me that each day I should eat:

7 ozs. Grains
3 cups Vegetables
2 cups Fruit
6.5 ozs. Meat
3 cups Milk

I certainly could eat more grains and veggies, and less meat. But Three Cups of Milk? Except for milk in coffee, and an occasional Slim-A-Bear ice cream sandwich, that’s about it for Milk.

What if I took up jogging? Could I cut back on the Milk? With more physical activity, everything else changed in the diet the Food Pyramid customized for me, but I still had to have Three Cups of Milk.

Maybe I should be less active. Nope: Three Cups of Milk every day.

Maybe once I'm old I'll be able to decrease that Milk consumption. Not a chance. When I’m 80, whether I'm wheelchair-bound or still walking, the Food Pyramid says I’ll need my daily Three Cups of Milk.

And when I was younger? At twenty, it was Three Cups of Milk.

In fact, according to the Food Pyramid, when I was an active four-year old, I needed Three Cups of Milk.

In my life, I’ve seen many things change, even the amounts of grains, vegetables, fruit and meat the Food Pyramid says I should eat. But the one constant in my life is that every day until my death, I need Three Cups of Milk.

We therapists need to get together and hire the Milk Lobby. With all the problems people are having, we need a Mental Health Pyramid. It would be customized just like the Food Pyramid, and tell you that whether you’re a man or woman, child or aged, sane or not, the Government recommends that every year you should have Twenty Sessions of Psychotherapy.

I bet the Milk Lobby could make it happen.