You are not healthy, you just don’t know you are sick yet.
and what you should do about it…
7 out of 10 Americans rated their health behaviors as good or excellent. If you have ever driven past a McDonalds at 7:30 am you would know that many people are lying on this survey. With so many people making poor daily decisions for their health — how could it be right that 70% of them believe they are healthy?
The disconnect lies in the fact that our bodies are incredibly adaptive organisms. You can kick back burgers and fries every day in your twenties and seemingly not have any negative results, other than those pesky love handles that won’t go away. Even if you went to the doctor and had a wellcheck in your twenties, most people would pass a routine physical without any signs or symptoms of abnormality. How is this possible, seeing we live such unhealthy lives as Americans?
The beauty of our body’s adaptive mechanisms is one that most people do not understand. The body’s main goal is survival. It will do anything to survive. That means insulin spikes to get the blood sugar under control after the grande PSL from Starbucks, increased respiratory rate to balance the body’s pH imbalances, and the ever-present IBS when your diet has been less than ideal (Taco Bell). Many of these balancing acts go on in the background and the only sign of a problem might be the overwhelming fatigue that most people in their 20’s and 30’s feel from day to day.
The saying goes, “Father time is undefeated.” Well, so is an unhealthy lifestyle. You may have really adaptive mechanisms in your body (“Good Genes”), but eventually those processes wane and you are stuck with hypertension, diabetes, and an increased risk of heart disease. We have come to accept the fact that turning 40 or 50 comes with a list of health problems. It wasn’t your 50th birthday that shuttled these problems into your life — it was the decades of abuse you put your body through that is now coming to the surface.
Most people know they need to improve their lifestyle, evident by the bump in gym memberships every January and the temporary decrease in the lines at your local fast food chain. However, these changes are fleeting and it’s back to business as usual within 3 weeks. Living a healthy lifestyle is hard, especially when nothing is really wrong with your body yet. I mean of course you could afford to lose 5–10 lbs., but that really isn’t a powerful motivator to stay consistent. Certainly not as powerful as a health crisis that threatens your life, which is the only time people get serious about change.
How do we build a culture of health and fitness in America, without forcing people to be obsessive about counting calories, becoming gym snobs, or spending $10,000 on trainers, dieticians, doctors, and new athleisure wear (people always seem to buy new workout clothes during a lifestyle change)?
I think it requires 3 things:
- An objective Reality Check to our health. This means, no more lying to yourself about your health status. We need to start comparing our current health to what is optimum health for us, not to our co-workers or unhealthy family members. This shows up in our lives when we say, “Well, I’m not as out-of-shape as _______.”
- An emphasis on Current Data. Most people only go to their doctor when something is wrong, because let’s be honest — going to the doctor’s office sucks. We pay $150 just to be told what you already know? No thanks. Wearable technology allows us to collect about 50% of pertinent data about your health and with a few analytics tools — you could actually do a better job assessing your health than a doctor can every 12 months. (More on this in future posts)
- 5 Minutes per week. You do not need a lot of time to update, manage, and track your health & fitness. Some people spend too much time, some people not enough. We have found a sweet spot of about 5 minutes a week to look over and assess your vitals, body composition, activity levels, and fitness for the week is more than sufficient to monitor your health and make changes accordingly.
If you are thinking to yourself, I want to be healthy but where do I even start? It starts with knowing where your health status is at RIGHT NOW. You can’t know where you are going if you do not know where you are right now. You need that Objective Reality Check we mentioned in Point 1.
Here’s what I recommend:
- Go buy an Apple Watch. (It makes vitals tracking, activity, and fitness tracking easy)
- Download Plus. (The easiest way to manage all your health, body composition & fitness data in one place, as well as gives you that Objective Reality Check to your health. Kind of like a credit score)
- Find 1 person to keep you accountable. (The best way to stay consistent is by being accountable to someone else and them being accountable to you.) If you need an accountability partner, email me — I’d be happy to help you.
I hope you found this article helpful, someone else might also find it helpful. Share it with your family. You never know what could start the process of health in your family.
