Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NKJV
The leading cause of death in America is heart disease.
Most heart disease is preventable. And much of it is treatable by changes in lifestyle and dietary habits. We are essentially killing ourselves with food and inactivity.
In 1950, approximately 13% of adults and 5% of children in America were classified as obese, and less than 1% of the population was considered morbidly obese. Since then, those numbers have grown immensely, pun intended. In 2023, 40.3% of the American population were categorised as obese and 7.7% as morbidly obese. Type 2 diabetes is directly related to obesity, and those numbers have skyrocketed alongside our ever-broadening population.
Throughout history, humans have been physically active, spending their days either hunting, farming, fishing, or fighting to survive. Then came the industrial revolution, office buildings, the motor car, modernization, conveniences, and the world started moving faster and faster, and things got easier and easier. How we used and fed our bodies started to change rapidly.
A century ago, television didn’t exist. Neither did computers, cell phones, fast food, and countless other “conveniences” and “technological advances”. Just sixty years ago, there 
were no color TVs or remotes, and most folks only had access to a couple of stations. You got out of your chair to change the channel or answer the phone, and you went to a thing called a store rather than a website if you needed to shop for something. Kids played outside until it got dark, they walked to and from school, and recreational activities actually involved physical activity. The majority of the workforce didn’t languish in an office chair all day, and if you wanted to eat something, chances are it was home-made. Genetically engineered foods, assembly-line meals, and a litany of other laboratory-produced substances we consume each day in everything from underarm deodorant and toothpaste to chicken, meat, and vegetables were a mere twinkle in some corporate mogul’s bottom-line-fattening eye. These were the same guys who told us that smoking cigarettes and taking more and more medication was good for our health, and we bought whatever they told us, hook, line, and sinker.
Urban centers exploded, cities developed suburbs, and we started commuting to an office to work extra-long days to climb the career ladder. Having both the time and energy to do anything after work was scarce, and the food we ate had to be fast and tasty, at the expense of nutritional quality.
We quickly grew detached from eating healthy food for nutritional value or even knowing what a nutritionally sound meal should consist of. In fact if you did know and care about what you ate, you were considered a health-nut or fanatic. I know all to well because I was one of those health-nut types that worked out all the time. People just trusted that if food was in the grocery store it must be ok to eat. That was the extent of most folks knowing or caring about how their food was grown and made, and what was in it, and whether or not it was harmful to their bodies.
I know people who have never eaten food they grew in a garden. I also actually know adults who believed meat came from the grocery store and were genuinely appalled to learn that the meat in grocery stores came from chickens, cows, and pigs that were raised on a farm, slaughtered, butchered, and then sold to a store to sell to us. These were voting-age citizens, by the way.
But I digress.
The American population is sicker, more obese, and dying from heart disease at a younger age than they were 50 years ago. The predominant cause is poor dietary and exercise habits.
The good news is that your body will change and adapt to anything you do habitually. No matter how old you are, if you are still able to move and your heart is beating you can change your body and fitness level. If you change your dietary and exercise habits, your body and resulting health prognosis will change as a result.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or how overweight you are. There is no special training program or special diet program necessary to make the change despite what the ploethera of experts flogging their programs will tell you. It will take determination, consistency, discipline and commitment. As with all things in life worth having, you will have to do the work. Some people would rather take their chances with obesity and all the benefits that come with that but if you want to change, I want you to know that your body is capable no matter what you have been told or what you may think.
The secret is this. Your body is an adaptive organism. It will adapt to whatever you make it do habitually. For instance, if you currently do no exercise at all, then all you need to do is start going for a short walk each day, and over a couple your body will become more fit and that length of walk will get easier. That means you can increase the length of time you walk or the speed in which you walk. Do that for a couple weeks and your body will adapt to that workload so you can increase it again and so on.
If you eat a lot of sugary food or processed foods, start by reducing the amount of sugar you eat and substitute processed foods for a home-cooked meal consisting of meat and vegetables. Go easy on the condiments and sauces, and add some fresh fruit to your morning breakfast. Your body needs nourishment so don’t skip meals but make the portions slightly smaller and/or change what you eat to fresh food and not fast food or highly processed foods like packaged meals.
Start slowly, be consistent, and change up the exercise every couple weeks, but not so much that you are sore.
If you are interested in knowing more about this process, please join the conversation on my Facebook group, and we can discuss it there. There is a lot to say about this process, and I want to help as many as I can to live fit, healthy, and vibrant lives for as many days as God has numbered for you.
