Volume 01 Issue 10: Health is Personal

Those of us who are petite often find ourselves trying to keep our physical development involvements a secret. A common question from family and friends at the mention of our physical development observances is usually “what for?”. I have come to appreciate that the fact that one has no fat to burn nor weight to shed doesn’t make him/her any healthier than those who do. Health and fitness is for everyone, big and small alike. We all need our physique to deliver our goals regardless of our size. Other than non-modifiable factors of genes, inborn defects, age and sex, health is determined by diet, exercise, rest, social and emotional environment. This implies that health is largely a product of lifestyle. Genes for instance only load the trigger. Lifestyle pulls it.

Diet

We are largely ignorant about the foods that we take. The Bible warns us that God’s people perish for lack of knowledge. Just the way we value our vehicles and give them fuel that we deem to be good. Shouldn’t we make an effort to learn about the foods that we feed our bodies? Are you letting modern society determine what you should eat? I do not purport to be an expert in diet but my observations indicate that what you feed your body with determines its useful life. My own practice confirms that taste buds are indeed in the brain, not in the mouth. The more you eat foods that you would otherwise consider tasteless, the more you develop a taste and liking for them and eventually prefer them over the not so healthy ones that appear tasty.

Exercise

Engaging in physical fitness is not just for weight loss as it is wrongly construed. Once we attain our personal ideal weight, we exercise to maintain it. But more importantly, we exercise to attain and maintain cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance (which come in handy in emergency situations), flexibility and body tone.  All body parts benefit from physical fitness, the heart, the brain, muscles, GIT and the skin.

I take it that engaging in physical development in our youth is commensurate with making financial savings and investments now for future consumption when we lose our earning abilities. Invest in health and fitness now while you are healthy. We usually watch with sadness whenever we find an elderly overweight fellow in the gym struggling to exercise because the physician has advised that his/her life depends on it. Why don’t you eat well and exercise now while you have the privilege of youth and vitality? Healthy living doesn’t guarantee us a disease free life. But there is plenty of wisdom in choosing preventive measures over curative ones for our health.

Lillian Chebosi