TGIM: Why Give A Crap

Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday!

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tl;dr Why give a crap about being healthy? Taking care of yourself will provide you the opportunity to remain independent, mobile, and able to gain the most from life. Nobody will force you to do it. At first, you may need to grit your way into beneficial habits. But at last, when you experience the joy these habits bring, you will engage in them willingly, even eagerly. I promise.
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I spend most of my time figuring out how to engage more people in “healthy habits.” It’s something that I think is so important I will probably spend most of my life honing this craft. You see, obesity is the the greatest threat to public health of our generation, and health professionals have not quite figured out how to best address it (to no fault of their own, it is a difficult and complicated issue to address).

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Obesity is the new smoking. Smoking was first advertised decades ago as safe and stress-relieving. Over the years, the wildly detrimental effects have been studied both on the users and the people around them. Now, with effective public health initiatives, it has steeply declined in popularity.
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Obesity, however, is still on the uptick. The rate of overweight and obese individuals continues to rise and at a concerning rate, especially in the United States. And it’s not just the scales where we see the difference. There is a concomitant rise in heart disease, diabetes, musculoskeletal pathologies, asthma, and mental health burden. Our bodies and healthcare system are becoming crippled under the weight of this problem.

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Why give a crap? Modern medicine has made it possible to stave off the effects of this epidemic. High blood pressure and atherosclerotic heart disease would have taken many more lives in strokes and heart attacks if not for the pills. Diabetes (specifically Type 2) would have led to many more amputations if not for the available therapies. Obesity and its consequences would have led to a lot more “survival of the fittest” (and natural selection) if not for the protective effect of medicine.
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But at what cost does modern medicine come? The medicine we have has fixed or abated a lot of problems we would not have been able to overcome otherwise (infectious diseases like bacterial infections and autoimmune diseases like diabetes Type 1). But it has also slapped a huge band-aid on these other chronic diseases and allowed people to not give a crap about taking care of themselves.

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Why exercise when there are weight loss and high blood pressure medications? Why care about yourself when the government is not invested in your health (made evident by the active effort to withdraw from the World Health Organization)?

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As with much of life, the answer is multifold. Some aspects are more self-evident like not wanting to deal with the side effects of these medications. Every medicine comes with potential side effects or at the very least, trade-offs. Some blood pressure medications may lead to erectile dysfunction or blood pressure that’s too low and can potentially make you faint. But that’s the trade-off you’re willing to make to prevent heart attacks or strokes from your blood pressure being too high. Everything comes with a cost (or at least a potential cost).

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The cost you pay by choosing to engage in “healthy habits” is that they require working against what may feel natural at first, or what’s easy. Continuing to sit on the couch is way easier than getting up and going to the gym, and that will always be true. Reaching for cookies or chips is easier than cooking a meal, and probably is more appealing for many. But the tradeoff that comes with the easier actions is the toll they take on your quality of life.
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Without movement, sufficient sleep, balanced nutrition, and stress management, you’ll become less mobile, decrease your ability to regulate your emotions, more likely to make impulsive decisions, and more dependent on medications to do these things for you. You won’t be able to sit on the floor with your grandkids, go grocery shopping on your own, go outside for a walk without being afraid to fall, or do all the activities on your vacation because you haven’t cared for your body. And if all of these seem like they’re still far many years (or decades) away for you, I implore you to not get complacent.
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I’ve worked with hundreds of people who want to learn how to exercise, eat better, and build habits to get more out of life. And what a privilege it continues to be to learn from each of them. However, a theme that has become prevalent through many years is that people often (not always) wait until a problem arises before addressing it instead of acting preventively. Most people wait until they’re overweight and uncomfortable with their bodies, or too weak to do their activities of daily living (cooking, cleaning, dressing, etc). Some people wait until their pain is unbearable or when their doctor scares the whit out of them. And I don’t blame them. If there isn’t a problem, why address it?
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But the truth is that the problem is always there. The pain, immobility, and weight will always be building, quietly at first. And then it will feel like overnight, all at once, your knees and back started hurting, the weight on the scale jumped, and you could no longer get up from the floor.

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I’ve heard about it at every decade. Wait until you’re 30, wait until you’re 40, wait until you’re 50 or 60 or 70. Then you’ll understand.

But I’m not going to wait until then to decide to address the natural entropy of life. While our bones and organs do age, our joint spaces narrow, and our hormones fluctuate, not nearly enough people are doing all they can despite these factors. Not nearly enough people are doing everything they can at their current age to ensure that we age with strength, mobility, and resilience. Myself included, there’s always a little bit more we can do.

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So why give a crap about your health? Because giving a crap about your health means giving yourself the absolute best chance you can have at living a life (at the bare minimum) being able to take care of yourself, and (at best) squeezing every ounce of opportunity from what life has to offer.
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If you’re just starting to develop new habits, it may take some grit. I’m not going to pretend it’s all sunshine and rainbows. Doing something new always is harder than doing exactly what you’ve been doing. Try to make the experience the best it can be by lowering the barrier to entry and taking small, bite-sized steps. Take steps that seem idiotically simple, because that’s the only way to make change possible.
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But I promise you, once you hit your stride, it gets better. You enjoy the fruits of your labor and that fruit is so, so sweet, it will get easier to come back to. Do I still always want to exercise? No, of course not. But I know how good I feel when I move and I have enough activities to alternate so it makes it a little easier to do. Do I always want to eat vegetables and protein? Not necessarily, but I know the difference it makes in my regularity, sleep, and functioning, and that makes it a little easier. And at the end of the day, I always, always come back to the fact that I want to live a life where I have independence, movement, and strength to do the things I want to do for as long as I can.

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Your goals may not be the same as mine, so define what they are for yourself. If you want to be able to walk up and down the stairs in a house at 80 years old, imagine what you have to do at this age to be able to do that. If you want to sit on the floor at 70 to play with grandkids, can you get up from the floor with minimal assistance now? If you want to still enjoy hiking or going to the beach or on vacation at 60, can you carry luggage and climb stairs now? As I’ve learned from so many wonderful humans, these decades come on faster than anyone can expect. And what a blessing that is to live until then. But I am not merely trying to survive until these years, I’m trying to live.

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So the wrap it up, why give it a crap about your health? Give a crap because you want to live fully. Give a crap because you want to enjoy your golden years, not just survive them. Give a crap because you want to be able to feed yourself in your 80s and 90s and not have someone else do it for you. Give a crap because no one will force you to do it, but you solely will reap what you sow, for good or for bad.

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There’s clearly a long road ahead on this journey to getting people to act in their own best interest, but we can all start to make a difference. If you take care of yourself and encourage those around you to do the same, you can all enjoy the benefits together (and do the grit work together too). Surround yourself with people who are ready to prioritize their health with you because community is key.

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If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM.

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This week, my podcast recommendation is from Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, “Building Real Confidence, The Motivation Puzzle, and Understanding All Your ‘Parts.’”
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With that, here’s to a life well cared for and well lived!

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Until next time,

Shannon