Is Diet, Exercise, and a Proper Lifestyle Enough to Help You Manage Your Health?

Once a year, one of my favorite aerobics leaders asked her participants to look at their bodies in the mirrors that lined the room. She would then tell us there were two very important things we should understand about our bodies.

The first was that a body was not like an automobile or other consumer good. What she meant was that we can’t trade it in or buy a new one when it breaks down. It is the only one we are ever going to have.

The second is that we have no right to expect or assume that someone else will take responsibility for it if and when it did break down. What she meant is that we have to take on that responsibility ourselves. Yes, medical practitioners can advise, patch and prescribe, but the responsibility is really ours and not one that can be handed off.

How right she was. It has been years since I have been to one of her classes – I haven’t stopped exercising, she retired – yet to this day I often think about her words.

It is difficult to argue against an exercise regimen, healthy diet and good lifestyle habits as the best means to a healthy body. But is there more you can or should do? No doubt there is. There are probably a lot of other things you can and should do, but I would like to share one additional thing that I do, and which I believe to have significant value.

I keep meticulous records of things related to my health. I keep the data current and I keep it formally. I use a computer program to manage the data because there is quite a bit of it even though I am in good health.