top of page
Search
haleyn4

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE


Many of us grew up at a time when health and lifestyle weren’t mentioned in the same sentence. The basic diet included lots of meat and potatoes and dairy products and refined sugar and flour. Virtually no physicians asked you about or recommended exercise, and I actually had a medical professional caution me about overdoing it personally when I was teaching physical education – joking that he gets his exercise being a pallbearer carrying the coffins of friends who exercised.


When I injured my back in my late 20’s, I was treated with weeks of bedrest (subsequent research has proven that virtually no condition - aside from high-risk pregnancy - benefit from bedrest as opposed to prescribed activity). As a result, attention to health wasn’t part of our lifestyle. Building a body was like building a house with a haphazard set of building blocks: sedentary lifestyle, inadequate dietary choices, sugary deserts, and little attention to how much sleep you got as long as you were able to get up and go to work. And I was a guy. Women growing up during that time didn’t play competitive sports – so they really had no incentive to stay in shape aside from self-pride in their appearance.


But just like building blocks can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle, proper building blocks can also lead to a healthy one. Although I was never really out of shape, it wasn’t a priority for me until a confluence of events occurred a couple of decades or so ago. I don’t know the exact order in which they occurred, but this series of events became my building blocks for a healthy lifestyle: I got a new primary physician who, at my annual physical, would ask questions like how many days a week I ate red meat and how many days I ate fish and whether I regularly worked up a sweat when I exercised; a gym opened nearby that had long hours and made it convenient to exercise; I joined a yoga class; I seemed to naturally change to make much of my diet plant-based just because it felt right; I just felt better. The final barrier was crossed when I started sleeping at least 6 ½ hours a night and realized that yawning doesn’t have to be a normal part of my day.


I know that the odds are that the time will come when I won’t be able to feel as good or do as much. But I’m not going to help that process along. I feel that I’m WINNING IN OVERTIME, and I am devoting a big chunk of my life to helping others to do so. It’s my passion, and I’m here to tell you that it’s never too late to change. If you’re approaching or have entered the overtime portion of your life, and you feel that you don’t have the building blocks to enable you to win, be in touch with me and let me help. Getting to overtime is good; winning is better!

0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page