The greatest health insurance plan
Essay #1
Perhaps the greatest health insurance plan we can enroll ourselves in is choosing to live a healthier life today, tomorrow and forever.
Our body with all of its quirks and qualities is the inescapable vehicle in which we will travel through life; experiencing, exploring and enjoying it. The condition of our body influences the way we feel and greatly determines the kind of life we get to live. Now there are things outside of our control; accidents, deformities, genetics. But there are a great many things that we can and ought to control. Among these are how we choose to hydrate, eat and exercise. The choices we make in these three areas will play a pivotal and determining role in both the longevity and quality of our lives.
Our bodies are amazing, but too many of us are destroying them along with the quality of life we might otherwise enjoy because we’re choosing to drink the wrong things, consume the wrong foods, and exercise too little.
We can prevent and even reverse much of our unhealth, sickness and disease by how we drink, eat, and exercise. If this all sounds too simple, we mustn’t forget that the simplicity of something does make it easy. Unshackling ourselves from old ways of thinking, doing and being is hard. Let us not be seduced by the peddlers of easy solutions for nothing truly worthwhile is obtained by traveling the road of ease. To have a healthier body and better quality of life often requires us to change, and change can be painful.
Pain unfortunately is unavoidable, but often we can decide when and how severe that pain will be. We may choose to indulge today and forgo the mild pain of discipline only to reap the harvest of severe pain induced by our ill-health later. Or we may choose the pain of discipline today and forgo much of the unhealth of the future.
There are no shortcuts. No easy fixes. The journey from unhealth to health is the simple one that starts by us taking that first step, followed by another and another. Action, consistency and discipline. Each step, though seemingly small, compounds and amplifies as we go. What once seemed impossible when we started becomes reality; we begin to discover a whole new world as our body is returned to a more natural condition.
Our bodies were not created or evolved for the standard American diet of animal-based, ultra-processed, sugar-saturated foods and drinks that too many of us pummel them with daily. Nor were they made to spend seemingly endless amounts of time sedentary. The ease and comfort of the American lifestyle coupled with its diet is destroying our health, inducing sickness, and slowly killing us.
We are built for more. Most of us desire better. Not one of us set out determined to become unhealthy. Unhealth seems to creep into our lives incrementally, gradually, almost imperceptibly until it chokes our ability to fully enjoy, experience and explore the world around us. But we need not remain suffocated by sickness or hampered by unhealth. We can begin today the journey of adopting plant based, whole-food eating, hydrating almost exclusively with water, and exercising our bodies sufficiently. Perhaps the greatest health insurance plan we can enroll ourselves in is choosing to live a healthier life today, tomorrow and forever.
From my home in Almost Heaven, xo
