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DOES A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE REALLY MATTER?
If you were to ask most people what are the most important things in their lives, I guarantee at the top of the list would be answers like health and happiness.
All you have to do is get sick to really appreciate how good it feels to feel good, right? Without our health, our quality of life suffers and our happiness along with it.
When you really think about it, it’s crazy not to do what we can—what is in our control—to promote our own health and happiness through making healthy lifestyle choices, don’t you think?
What To Do
The benefits of regular
cardiovascular exercise
and
strength training
along with a
healthy nutrition plan
can truly mean the difference between life and death, not to mention save you money in the long run. That may sound like an over dramatization, but I truly believe it!
Why should we exercise? Why should we care about what we put in our mouths or about what we eat? Does a healthy lifestyle really make that much of a difference?
Just take a look at a few statistics
and then YOU do the math:
U.S. healthcare costs doubled from 1990 to 2001 and are projected to double by 2012
Four of the ten most costly health conditions affecting employers are related to heart disease and stroke.
Heart disease and stroke are, respectively, the first and third leading causes of death in the United States
USA Obesity Rates are Climbing at a Sickening—pun intended—Pace:
* 58 Million Overweight; 40 Million Obese; 3 Million Morbidly Obese
* Eight out of 10 People Over 25 are Overweight
* 78% of Americans Below Basic Activity Level Recommendations
* 25% are Completely Sedentary
* 76% Increase in Type II Diabetes in Adults Age 30-40 Since 1990 |
The National Safety Council stated that in 1996, backaches alone cost industry more than $1.2 billion in production and services and $275 million in worker's compensation.
Last, but not least:
Guess how much money the average 40+year-old male could save each year in medical expenses with regular exercise? 949 smackeroonies! That's right, $949.00. That’s almost a GRAND a year, peeps!
I could go on and on, but I think you are getting the gist here.
THINK ABOUT THIS
For every 5000 dollars spent on healthcare per person in the year 2001, over 95% went to diagnosis and treatment, with about 2%-3% going towards early detection like screenings and only about 1%-2% went to prevention.
Now, this is what kills me as a fitness professional: Despite the evidence that up to 50% of health care costs are lifestyle related and therefore potentially preventable, we continue to take this reactive approach with our healthcare, with our lives, with our quality of living instead of a proactive approach with effective healthy lifestyle changes.
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