The answer to this question was made initially by W.H.O. (World Health Organization) "not being ill", until the implications of this statement meant that if you have chronic illness; you can never be healthy! WHO have now changed that notion, to incorporate more of a quality of life conceptual framework. Have you ever heard the expression "you are what you eat"? This notion is far about health equation today, because it incorporates a large degree of unhealthy practices that are creating the chronic disease in daily life today.
We live in a western culture, where life is made easier by having cars, cell phones, TV, fast convenient foods to eat and so on. The bad news is that if we use all these products in our lives, we are choosing a sedentary lifestyle that is leading us down a path the path of self-destruction rather than good health.
I am trying not to criticize your lifestyle, because it is your choice in your daily life. It is there for the offering; but you need to know why it is not good for your overall health. I entirely agree that life is a choice; but have you made the right choice, when you are overweight and your body is starting to hurt with all the functional activities that you are performing? As you grow older, you will soon realize that this sedentary lifestyle is not doing you your health any good. The western lifestyle is a life of convenience; meaning that you do not physically active enough to perform even the most simple of functional tasks without pain or breathlessness in your daily life.
If you're not physically active, then you do not require many calories of food for sustaining your energy. Everyone knows that fast food is full of sugars, salt and fat, which need a great deal of energy to burn up in your body. When it is not used up, the excess calories convert into fat that fills out your body. Small amounts of fat are fine on your body, but when you have more than 12 pounds of excess body fat, then not only your body changes, but your posture and the position of your skeletal joints also change, for compensating for the changes in symmetry of your body shape. You are no longer balanced, so the body has to make changes that keep your change in body shaper balanced again.
It means that the changes in your body shape will try to make you to perform activities easier; but in doing so, you will not be performing them correctly. You will begin to feel aches and pains in your back, neck and shoulders; because you are no longer using your whole body correctly to move. Your internal body also will be trying to cope with the excess build-up of acid in your system, caused by the intake of fats, sugars and salt in fast convenience foods.
If you feel that this all relates to yourself and your family, then you should start thinking about making some positive health changes; that will improve you and your family's overall health. These changes do not have be too radical, but both you and your family need to understand that your current lifestyle needs to incorporate some positive changes; such as drinking fresh tap water, instead of bottled acidic water; eating one fresh fruit each day, instead of ice and tinned fruit; taking a walk each day, or going swimming once or twice per week; buying food to cook, from the grocery store, instead of constantly using fast food.
There are articles in your pharmacy, doctors' offices, any library and in most health stores that discuss ideas for making a healthier lifestyle, plus explaining the damage your current lifestyle is causing to yours and your family's current health. This is designed as a wake-up call, that you need a plan of action for making small steps to a healthier lifestyle that improves the quality of yours and your family's health.
You may ask where to begin. The first task is to find the articles, pamphlets, internet reports and newspaper cuttings about the issues affecting your current lifestyle. Then bring your family together, in order to try and gain their interest in making some lifestyle changes for bettering their health. Try to make it into a collaborative effort and encourage them to be involved in the process. Your children may want to get the class at school involved, as a science project.
Try anything that will help your family realize the growing damage they are doing to their health with the unhealthy food choices they are currently making. Ask them to create their own positive changes that will help to improve their lifestyle choices. By making the health changes a collaborate effort, where you will gain more interest; just as long as you make the changes small and measurable, so your family can see and feel the positive health benefits happening.
Living a healthy lifestyle can seem like a major challenge to make in your family's, or your own life. It does not have to be, if you are realistic and make the changes small and manageable; you will soon gain support of the idea, as each person sees the benefits that he/she is gaining from the concept. Healthy changes are not a quick-fix idea; but more of a slow deliberate and permanent process, that all the family will become use to, as they see the positive health changes, as well as an improved quality of life.
The author Gail McGonigal was a qualified Occupational Therapist, who changed her career to building a website business called Active Living Solutions Ltd: http://www.activelivingsolutions.net. The business introduces people to solutions, for maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle with chronic discomforts,. She is starting by selling ergonomic chairs for helping people with back problems. Gail specializes with the Big Wide and Tall customers, who have difficulty obtaining chairs for their size. http://www.activelivingsolutions.net/big-and-tall-chairs.html Her aim is to help them lead an active and healthy quality of life, through her "Therapeutic Active Living Plan that is free with each ergonomic chair, or purchase of an Ionized Water machine