Health For Health's Sake

When you think of someone who is considered “healthy”, what image comes to mind? What does the daily routine of such a person look like?

Many immediately turn to the modern cultural representations which we see plastered on billboards, magazine covers, films, and television – a bodybuilder, a swimsuit model, a famous actor or actress. These are people with publicists; They are people who painstakingly groom their appearances with lots of makeup and editing, carefully balance their diets with the help of professional chefs and personal trainers, have specific schedules for several hours of daily exercise , and who take supplements or have surgeries which alter their bodies to become more physically appealing.

Others might think instead about someone they know – someone they see in their daily lives who represents some form of ideal in their eyes. It’s not always a bad thing to look up to someone or to strive for self-improvement, but how often does “looking up to someone” become simple envy? When does the desire for self-improvement become an unrealistic, or even unhealthy obsession?

The truth is that many people have a ridiculous idea of what “healthy” looks like. They often confuse the word with common standards of physical attractiveness which have no real bearing on how healthy a person actually is. For me personally, someone who is genuinely healthy – a semi-active person who does their best to take proper care of themselves – is far more appealing than someone who might be potentially hurting themselves to chase an ideal (and besides, isn’t attractiveness mostly subjective anyway?).

Like most people, I used to have a specific image in my mind to define what I thought a healthy person was. To a young, impressionable, and charmingly overweight kid riding on the tail end of a 2000’s emo/alternative culture wave, I visualized a thinner version of myself with straighter hair and wearing skinny jeans. I cringe thinking back to it, but now realize that I was the product of my strange social environment.

When you’re a wallflower, you don’t always do things in the same way as others, and the sun only shines on one side of the wall at a time. Not everyone holds the same visual in their mind. Each one of us has a unique idea or set of values which defines our goals, and sometimes our specific goals don’t always come from a positive state of mind.

Its hard being a kid in middle and high school, and for some, it was harder than others. Everybody was insecure about something, making the choice to deal with it either by accepting their unchangeable flaws, taking action to change what they could, or by taking it out on others. If there is one fundamental truth I’ve learned, it’s that young people tend to do very stupid things to try and impress their friends and crushes. Everybody wants to be liked, and to be liked means something different for everybody. I suppose that’s still true after growing up – just to a more varying degree.

Sometime after I decided that I wanted to look more like my ideal, I started a rigorous cardio routine and adhered to a sparse diet, and by sparse, I mean VERY sparse (no more than 900 calories a day!). If you know anything about calorie counting or macros, this diet choice was not a smart one at all, especially if you’re a growing teenager running himself ragged like I was. At the end of several months, I managed to reach my end goal of losing over a 100lbs, but it was at a great cost to both my mental and physical health. I fluctuated in weight for a while afterward, eventually returning to the very place in which I’d started.

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with an anemic blood condition called ITP – Immune Thrombocytopenia. I discovered the condition after nearly passing out during a long weekend shift at my retail job. Basically, it means that I can get injured and bleed very easily, run out of oxygen if I over-exert myself on an empty stomach, or get really cold whenever I eat ice cream or turn the AC on a little too high. It came as a shock to me, though I understood why it happened. Even after recovering from that negative state of mind, my body eventually caught up with me all these years later. I was forced to do some self-reflection, and when I thought of the reasons as to why I wasn’t eating the way I should, why I continued to make the choices I did for the sake of my appearance, I came to a frustrating conclusion.

I was more concerned with the thoughts of others than the ways in which I thought of myself.

Fast forward a few more years – or a few hard knocks – and I became a bit more mature, worked on myself, finished some college, and reconnected with some old friends. Improvements were certainly made, but I was still struggling somewhat. Luckily, this fact did not go unnoticed.

On a particularly hot summer day in 2020, I was invited over to my friends’ apartment to hang out and play some video games. Just to get out of the house, I quickly accepted, expecting a fun-filled weekend before the inevitable return to the grind. However, what I didn’t expect was to learn how to squat, do a bench press, and to subsequently agree to come over and lift for several days each week. You see, these old friends were nothing like the people I was used to hanging out with in school, and while I didn’t realize it at the time, I was incredibly fortunate to know them.

Where once I thought of exercise and dieting with disdain and poor experience, I had grown to enjoy the energy and soreness that followed after a workout, the thrill of my blood pumping as I powered through each set, the fun of listening to good (or goofy) music while my buddies and I cheered each-other on, the excitement of cooking new and delicious meals, and the accomplishment of feeling myself growing stronger. But mostly, I think it was the unfamiliar sense of encouragement that led me to enjoy it the most.

It was an amazing year that helped me build myself up in a significant way, and as a result, I changed dramatically. I was doing things for personal fulfillment, rather than for the fulfillment of what I had thought others wanted from me. I created a new ideal for myself – one that I now work towards because I enjoy it, and not because I’m trying to impress somebody. At the same time, I’ve accepted the things I cannot change, and focus on my better qualities. I learned to enjoy and seek after health for health’s sake, and it was because of this knowledge that my condition has since improved tremendously.

A person can spend their whole life learning, and the more they learn, the wiser they become with age. But if I could go back and teach my former self about the things I now know, I would do so in a heartbeat. That’s why, dear reader, I ask that you consider your goals and priorities for your personal health. Consider why you have those goals and priorities, whether or not you're doing them for the right reasons, and how much you’re willing to sacrifice to achieve them. I would ask that you find or rediscover the things about yourself that you love, find your strength, take care of yourself, and do the things which make you genuinely happy – and genuinely healthy.