By Michael Mantell, PhD
SAN DIEGO — Here’s the choice we all have. We can either be a part of the 80% of Americans who don’t eat properly, sleep enough, make time for healthy relaxation, don’t spend quality and quantity time with friends and loved ones, and simply live in the illusion of health.
This group is likely ill, overweight, emotionally stretched, take an overwhelming amount of daily medication, sit and watch their blood pressure and cholesterol levels soar while their energy plummets.
Or, we can take the more difficult yet beneficial path, optimizing and reclaiming our own health, promoting our fitness and wellbeing, and adding years of good living to our lives.
My wife, Paula, is a certified personal fitness trainer. She’s the role model for so many, including me, to live an active life.
With recent research that suggests that when one spouse keeps fit, it’s motivational for the other to do so as well, all it takes is being married to a very busy fitness trainer to prove this point.
It’s up to us to either choose the passive path to illness, only changing when it’s nearly too late, or take the right steps NOW to actively defend our health and keep ourselves on a pathway to wellness. We just can’t do both.
The data is alarming:
More than 69% of Americans are overweight or obese
20% of adults meet the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity
50% of adults in our country suffer from at least one chronic illness
Psychological research points to the astonishing fact that 80% of Americans are “just getting by” when it comes to wellbeing and life satisfaction. Only 20% are “thriving.”
More than 50% of Americans take at least one prescription medicine at any given time.
Being healthy, fit and having a positive sense of wellbeing places us in the minority. One of my regular reads, Experience Life magazine, promoted a truly remarkable revolution in do-it-yourself health, ”Being Healthy is a Revolutionary Act.” Here are their 10 revolutionary “truths”:
1. The way we are living is crazy
2. There are powerful social, economic and political forces undermining our health
3. The time for complicity is over
4. The resistance is alive and well
5. Being healthy is a revolutionary act
6. This is not about six-pack abs and skinny jeans
7. Inaction is not an option
8. The best defense is a good offense
9. Forget about quick fixes
10. Solutions in the mirror may be closer than they appear
Makes you want to read more Experience Life and join the transformation revolution, right? Only if you want to repossess your health, (which, by the way, is number five among their 101 ways to be healthy.) Interested in some other revolutionary thinking?
Try these: “Practice medicine without a license,” “Aim for 85%,” “Redefine your goals,” “Embrace play,” “Find your fitness edge,” “Say ‘no’ to sodas,” “Identify real hunger and beware of artificial hungers,” “Beware the USDA food pyramid,” “Rest up,” “Invest in your health,” “Go easy on the sugar and flour,” “Focus on action, not outcomes,” and ”Make being healthier easier.” Each one of these, and all 101 of them, has interesting information on their website, too much to include here.
Thinking like this just might help you make the right choice to become “healthy, hopeful with high vitality,” someone who gives up fast food, learns to cook, become more active, chooses health care providers who support health not just cure illness, and teaches children the value of the bodies they were born into.
Our society makes being unhealthy far too easy to not join this revolution.
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Dr Michael Mantell, based in San Diego, provides coaching to business leaders, athletes, individuals and families to reach breakthrough levels of success and significance in their professional and personal lives. Mantell may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com
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