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How to Become Healthy

What does being healthy mean?

There doesn’t seem to be a concensus answer on the topic. Below is how we produce successful returns on being healthy regardless of how YOU measure your health. Though we have a singular definition of health most other care providers do not. Whether your goal is to improve your health metrics, quality of life or stay absent of disease and pain we’ve got you covered.

Health Metrics

If you define being healthy by the below health metrics we’ve got you covered. We’ve met our fair share of “cholesterol” guys. There’s been plenty of “I’ve been on BP meds for the last 15 years” gals. One thing is clear… people really like to pick one metric and roll with it. Here are the most common health metrics tracked and asked about at a Dr’s office:

Correlates measure but don’t define health

The problem is when you chase success in one of the metrics it doesn’t guarantee success in the others. Detailed in hundreds of client interactions the story goes… “I went to the doctor and they said I have high XYZ. Then they prescribed me XYZ. I’ve been taking it for 5 years now.” Have you heard the advertisements for medications? The possible side effects read at 10x speed take longer than the ad itself at normal speed! Guess what… then when your ABC levels go up… you’ll get another pill with another long side effect list. It is not a solution… it’s a bandaid. Let’s go upstream and solve the problem. Phil had high blood pressure…

If any of the health correlates listed above are more important to you than fitness, that’s fine. Fitness will still be the solution… We regularly accomplish health metric goals because we help improve our clients fitness.

Quality of life:

If you define being health by “quality of life” here’s your guide! Quality of life can loosely be defined as being able to do all the things you love about life. If you have a high quality of life, you can do all the activities you love without fear.

Is Quality of life Pass/Fail or Low Threshold

So you like to do 4 mile runs as a hobby, great! “I could run 4 miles today, life is good.” “I can’t run 4 miles today, life is bad.” Insert your favorite hobby in place of running. Are the above statements true? If so you’ve found a thing worth living for, AMAZING!

Where does running 4 miles (insert your thing!) rank in difficulty? It depends an individuals personal physical capacity. If you’re physically capable of running 8 miles and run 4… 4 miles feels easy. If you’re capable of running 2 miles, 4 miles is impossible. So you’re capable of running 4.25 miles, 4 miles is difficult, maybe less enjoyable?

What if the things worth living for are out of your physical capacity? Life sucks. If the activities you love are within your capacity? Life is good. Is your capacity slowing degrading or increasing? Without measurement… you don’t know.

Capacity and measuring your physical functions

If being healthy is about quality of life and quality of life is about being able to do the things that make life worth living and those things require having physical capacity, then you must develop phyiscal capacity to maintain quality of life. Any capacity above the minimum threshold is called buffer. If you’d like to do the things that make life worth living until you’re 90… you might need a good buffer.

What if you find out there’s other activities that would make life more enjoyable that have greater physical capacity requirements. You’ll place a limit on your ability to have a higher quality of life.

What capacities should we have?

We can create unlimited categories and sub categories to test and measure. Upper body, lower body, core, squatting, pressing, pulling etc. What is important is that we’re developing capacity at each of the 10 general physical skills. We use Level Method to distill down the categories to least amount necessary to gain the full picture of your physical capacities.

Functional movements are the movements most capable of delivering those capacities.

Absence of Disease or Pain

Do you have a disease or are you living in pain?

It’s a simple and straight forward proposition, yes or no? But as discussed above however with disease there is a continuum on which the health metric rides… when you reach the threshold you have the disease. Example Blood pressure at XX/XX you have hypertension, XX/XX pre hypertension, XX/XX normal. Normal or Good blood pressure is representative of a buffer zone before hypertension. Is medication the best path to reduce blood pressure? Have discussion with your doctor. Improvements in fitness are always a safe bet.

Is your pain a problem? or lack of knowledge?

Pain is definitely a limiter in feeling healthy. If being pain free is how you define being healthy consider that pain might not be the problem. Your lack of knowledge of body maintainence might be the issue. Is your joint pain coming from bone, muscle, tendon or ligament? With basic knowledge of how your body systems work you can conquer 98% of your pain.

Mobility helped when Ed had “shin splints” for years… then had it solved in 30 mins.

Post PT Rehab program helped Laura get back to normal after knee injury and back injury.

The case for medication…

We absolutely 100% encourage you to follow your doctor’s advice. With that said there are many things that you have control over, specifically fitness. If you’re taking care of your fitness (as defined here) then you’re doing your part. In the event that genetics, traumatic event or terrible luck are the cause of your disease… that is what pharmaceuticals are for! In our observation, many people tend to go straight to pharmaceuticals. Why? They are easier, require less life change, you submit your will to the expert doctor… all things that are hard to argue. It’s our contention that the right thing to do is usually a hard thing to do, usually… also better.

Actions to become healthy

Whether your looking to improve a health correlate, improve quality of life or reduce pain or disease, fitness is your surefire bet.

Book your No Sweat Intro with CFJG Coach today!