Better Health, Longer Life

The only way that you can make your health better - and, more importantly, keep yourself healthy on a permanent basis - is for you to decide that now is the time to do it. If you have reached that point, whether as a result of recent health problems, a death of someone close to you, or if you have simply decided that you need to get on track to improve your health, then just be sure that your primary focus is the ultimate goal: to improve your health for the better and to consequently improve every other aspect of your life.

THE BENEFITS OF BETTER HEALTH

You probably don't really need a huge pep talk about the merits of improving your health. Even if you have never really stopped to think about all the great things that come from a healthy lifestyle you are still relatively certain that just about anybody can benefit from some healthy changes in their lives. It's common knowledge. Just in case you haven't truly examined the best reasons for adopting a healthy lifestyle then here is a review of all the great things that can happen once you decide to put forth some true effort and motivate yourself to better health.

YOU FEEL BETTER

Your entire body benefits when you start paying attention to it. You may have a specific goal in mind when you begin your new health kick. Maybe you're trying to lose a little weight, or maybe you're just tired of getting sick all the time and you're hoping that a healthier lifestyle will help you to boost your immune system. The great thing about adopting a healthier lifestyle, however, is the residual effects. You may start to lose weight, but you'll probably also notice a marked increase in your energy levels, you will probably get sick a lot less, and you might even notice that other aspects of your physical appearance improve… maybe your skin gets clearer or your hair shines just a little bit more. That is what is so great about living a healthier lifestyle. You get all sorts of "bonus features" to your life.

There aren't many things in life that give you extra freebies from another goal, but you can certainly think of your quest to become healthier as a journey that will bring you a myriad of other perks and benefits beyond the ones you were expecting. You will especially notice a huge and drastic improvement in your entire body if you are at a point in your life where you have essentially ignored your body for some time. If you are a veritable couch potato (and have been for some time) then you may be pleasantly surprised at the quick results you are going to notice. This doesn't only pertain to weight loss, but also to all the other perks that come with a healthier lifestyle. Who knows…you may get so motivated from the initial results that you even unplug your television in protest of your former unhealthy habits.

How do you feel right now? Pay attention to how you feel right now. Do you have enough energy to get through the day? Do you frequently get colds and other illnesses? Do you suffer from frequent headaches, constipation, fatigue, or any other host of annoying issues with your body? It's important that you recognize how an unhealthy lifestyle can be a contributing factor to these issues with your body. Your emotional demeanor can also be greatly influenced by whether or not you are healthy. You may not realize this, but when you start treating your body a little more carefully and paying attention to what you're doing to it you will probably find that you are in a better mood more of the time…it's just easier to be peppy when your body feels good.

Take the time right now to evaluate your current health status - including how you feel emotionally - and then write it down and reference it as you start making a concerted effort to make yourself healthier. You can rest assured that as you start to get healthier and healthier you will get further and further from the pre-healthy you. Your stress levels will go down, you won't get sick as often, and you'll have a lot more energy to enjoy life. What other motivation do you need beyond knowing that your life will be greatly improved by taking the small steps necessary to be healthier than you are?

Were you once healthy and now aren't? People who have never been healthy in their lives may fall into one of two patterns: they either accept that this is the way their life is and they choose not to do anything at all about it, or they get fed up and work hard at changing their lives for the better.

When you have had a period of time in your life when you were actually quite healthy and then got to a point to where you became unhealthy for whatever reason, this can be extra difficult to deal with since you know both sides of the coin. You might be harder on yourself because you know what it's like to be healthy, and you may be frustrated with yourself for not being healthy anymore.

When you are trying to get motivated to get yourself healthy again you need to set aside your so-called glory days of good health. Yes, you can reference those days and remember how great you felt when you were at optimum health, but you can't allow yourself to feel miserable as a result of how far you have let your health deteriorate. Just be happy that you have decided to take the steps necessary to get yourself healthy again and let the journey be your motivation. Instead of saying to yourself that you will one day wear the same size jeans that you wore twenty years ago in high school you may instead hearken back to the days when you could get off the sofa without groaning in effort and hearing your body pop in twenty different places.

The further back in your life your healthiest times were, the more difficult it will be to completely replicate those days. Choose your motivations wisely if you find yourself in this situation, and be sure to remain realistic in your pursuits. Above all else, don't let yourself get too sad or angry about your current state of health unless that's the type of thing you need in order to get motivated. It's best to simply consider everything a learning experience and then get busy with adopting a healthier lifestyle.

YOU LOOK BETTER

Who doesn't want to look better? Most people will tell you that this is a shallow motivation to have, but when you really think about it there is nothing innately wrong with wanting to look better. Life can be easier for you when you look attractive to the people around you, and society as a whole mostly considers people who are fit and healthy to be attractive. Certain things happen to your body when you are healthy: your skin looks better, your hair is shinier, you don't carry around excess weight, and a large number of other attractive residuals occur when you work at being healthier. This does not have to be your main motivation for getting healthy, but there is nothing wrong with including it among your list of motivations. You should know that the mere act of getting healthier will probably make you look better overall, even if that was not a motivating factor for your goals. Think of it as a bonus for your hard work.

This can be a great motivation - but probably not the best one. Getting healthier often translates into looking better. When you are healthy you simply look better than if you're unhealthy. Only you know what the best motivation for you is when you're trying to get healthy, but you may want to steer clear of only working towards better health because you want to look better. There are a couple of reasons for this. One reason is because health is about so much more than how you look. While it is true that as your health improves your appearance will probably improve as well, you should focus on your health as your main priority. You don't want to reach a point where you think to yourself, "Hey, I sure look good, I guess I can stop trying now."

Getting healthy is an ongoing goal and should not end just because you reach a point where you feel like you look good. You should also remember that society finds some traits attractive that are not necessarily healthy. For example, there is a big difference between maintaining a healthy weight and starving yourself because that's the look you want to attain. You must also remember that no matter how healthy you are there are physical attributes that will wane. You're going to get wrinkles and you're going to start sagging eventually no matter how healthy you are, and if you put too much stock into your outward appearance then you may have an unrealistic view of how healthy you are. Let a desire to be more attractive be a motivation in your quest to get healthy, but do not let the desire to be attractive rule your motivation for getting healthy.

Your self esteem can go through the roof. Unless you have a personality disorder you probably don't have perfect self esteem. You probably will never have perfect self esteem no matter what you accomplish in life and no matter how many steps toward better health you manage to take. You will probably find, however, that your self esteem does increase exponentially when you start taking steps toward better health, and not just because you may start to look better physically. Think about it this way: how does it make you feel when someone else values you so much that they sacrifice for you and care deeply about you and your well-being?

Most people would answer that it makes you feel great, and that it makes you feel as though you have more self-worth (and thus higher self esteem). Now just imagine getting that feeling from yourself because you are the person who is taking the time to make sure that you have everything you need and that you are in the best health you can be. You can indeed give yourself a real feeling of self worth. You don't need someone else to do that for you. When you really take the time to care for yourself and about yourself then you can't help but feel better about yourself. Be your own best friend and you'll notice a vast improvement in many aspects of your life.

YOU MAY LIVE LONGER

Take a "Real Age" test online to see where you are now. There are plenty of fun quizzes online that reveal to you what your "real age" is according to the health habits you have. For example, smoking cigarettes will add to your "real age" since the process harms your lungs and other body functions while maintaining a life that is relatively free of excessive stress may shave years off your age with one of these quizzes.

While most of these quizzes are designed to be fun - and not necessarily supposed to be used as any sort of medical diagnostic tool - you don't want to consider the results to be carved in stone. Nonetheless, you should pay attention to the results because there is some merit behind the method by which the quizzes come by their answers. Unhealthy habits add years to your age while healthy habits take years off, and this is a fairly intelligent assumption. This can be a real wake up call for you too if you have been in a bit of denial about how your unhealthy habits affect your overall life.

A thirty-two year old finding out that an online quiz estimates his "real age" at around forty-five may have just found the motivation he needs to get cracking at a healthier lifestyle. You may want to take the quiz again a few months into your new healthy regime and see if you "real age" has been decreased, because that can be a great motivating factor as well. Here is a brief list of some of the "real age" quizzes you can find online:

• http://www.realage.com/homepage.aspx  This quiz is quite extensive, asking you a variety of questions from your daily habits to the health history of your immediate family. The drawbacks to this online quiz are that you have to supply your e-mail address in order to get your results and also that you are encouraged to sign up for several newsletters during the course of the quiz. This is considered to be one of the best online age quizzes however, so if you don't mind the additional aspects of the quiz then this is a good one to take.
• http://www.growyouthful.com/quiz.php  You can choose to take a long or a short quiz on this website, depending on how in-depth you want to go with the analysis. The terminology in this quiz is a little different from what Americans are used to since it's written in European terms, but it is relatively simple to figure out the jargon.
• http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/fitness/quiz  This quiz is quick and easy and only pertains to the "age" of your skin. You can find many different quizzes like this one that are only written for a certain portion of your body. These types of quizzes are good to take if your quest to get healthier is prompted by one particular issue, such as wanting your skin to glow or slowing down the aging process.

Be sure that any "real age" quiz that you take online comes from a reliable source. These can be great resources and can offer valuable information, but you don't want to click on a quiz that is nothing more than a complicated marketing tactic that takes your e-mail address and spams you relentlessly. The stress from something like that certainly won't help you lengthen your life at all, will it?

Sure, you may not want to live all that long right now. One excuse that some folks use in order to avoid putting forth the necessary effort to get healthier is that they don't want to live that long anyhow, so they may as well enjoy life now while they can. This is, of course, usually a cop-out. There are not many people who actually have a death wish, and people like this should be dealt with by a mental health professional who can help. If you have found yourself muttering these words to friends or family who ask you why you don't take better care of yourself then you need to examine your motives and see if this is actually something you believe or if it's just your way of trying to avoid what you know is true: getting healthy takes hard work and you do have to give up some things you probably love.

Look at it this way…you cannot assume that you know now what your feelings about life and death will be when you find yourself on your death bed. If you could jump into the future and talk to your future self do you seriously think that your future self would say, "Hey, way to go with not taking care of yourself! Thanks for shaving some years off our life!" or do you think that instead your future self would say something more along the lines of "Go get some exercise and start taking care of yourself so that we can live a longer and more productive life." Let the image of yourself in the future, either flourishing in great health or decrepit from years of neglecting your health, be the motivation you need to get healthier now while you still have a chance. Try envisioning how your life will be years down the road depending on the decisions that you make right now.

Once you realize how you feel right now and how you wish you felt, you can work toward your ultimate goal of getting healthier. Your motivations might vary, but obviously there are multiple benefits to be had from living a healthier lifestyle. Getting healthy is not all about the benefits, however, because there is also another issue to consider: you should think about the detriments to your health that you are able to avoid by getting and staying healthy.

On the next page we will discuss the Dangers of Not Getting Healthy.