4 Legs of a Healthy Life

What does being healthy mean to you? It seems our culture wants us to believe it is all about being skinny and having six pack abs.  But I believe it’s about much more than that.  To me, health is like the four legs of a table.  When those four legs are even, life is in balance and you are moving through life like a dancer, with ease and grace!  When one leg gets broken, all of the other legs are affected, and you are limping along like an injured dancer.

The four legs of a healthy life are :

1)      Movement.  I prefer to use the word movement rather than ‘exercise’, because life should be more than just sitting all day working, and then doing half an hour of ‘exercise’.  Life should be movement throughout your day.  Certainly, for many of us that includes some sitting.  I prefer to think of my life as a daily dance, where I’m changing positions throughout the day.  That makes me think of “movement’, not ‘exercise’!  Become aware of how you are moving throughout the day, and if you notice a movement deficit, add simple things to increase your daily dance!

Two for one - Cool sky and movement!

2)      Work. This includes work you do to be able to feed yourself, and work you do to feed your soul.  Work definitely includes working in the home raising children, even though it’s unpaid! (That is the hardest work in my opinion and can also feed your soul and challenge you to the utmost.  But that’s an entire post in itself!)  Does your work challenge you and help you grow?  Do your hobbies feed your soul and make you excited about life?  And yet….sometimes we have seasons in life where our work doesn’t do much but pay the bills.  And sometimes we can’t figure out what we want to do with our spare time.  And THAT’S OK.  We all have seasons like that.  That’s when you count your blessings (at least I have a job!), review your life and find a new job or hobby or re-connect with old ones.  Compare times like this to autumn.  In autumn, farmers finish harvesting their crop.  They reflect on the past year, and prepare for changes for the coming year.

3)      Relationships.  A few years ago I read a book by Dr. Dean Ornish, (can’t find the title) where he discussed the importance of relationships to our physical health.  Dr. Ornish has spent his adult life as a medical doctor helping people recover from heart attacks and helping people change their health to prevent heart attacks. He shared research that showed that older men who suffered heart attacks recovered much faster and better if they had loving relationships in their life.  I think it is commonly known now that people without a sense of community and intimate relationships in their life struggle with more physical and mental problems.  So to keep moving through life with joy, cultivate strong relationships!

Some of the fam on a hike.

4)      Food.  Boy, just like the word ‘exercise’, the words food, diet, and nutrition come with a lot of baggage to me!  Luckily I had a strong foundation growing up, where food was in it’s place – balanced but not King.  Looking on any social media now, you’d think you need a PhD in Nutrition to be able to eat!  Luckily again for me, I had a pretty good relationship with food up until my mid-40’s.  Then I realized I had put on more weight than ever, and no matter how much I ‘exercised’ and ‘watched what I ate’, I could not seem to lose the weight!  It just felt so uncomfortable to me, and my body did not feel like itself!  (I have heard some women say this about pregnancy, but my experience with pregnancy was not like that, thankfully.)

In my search to figure out how I could lose the weight, I found a book that I consider a hidden treasure.  It is called Fit from Within – 101 Simple Secrets to Change Your Body and Your Life, by Victoria Moran.  One of my favorite quotes from the book sums up my feelings on food. “…strive to put food in perspective in your life---somewhere beneath God, country, family, work, good deeds, good sex, good times, and making your mark on the world.”  AMEN.  I don’t believe our Creator put us on this earth to obsess daily about how many calories our food has.  But we certainly need food to accomplish other, more important things.

So there you have the 4 legs of a healthy life!  Our challenge in life is to keep those legs balanced so that we can help others through their challenges, and so that we can have JOY!  I recently heard a local radio personality share this mantra, which is my new favorite:

Every day, see something that inspires, say something that uplifts, and do something that makes a difference. 

Flowers from my garden that inspire me!

                                                                                      

 Have a great day and keep on moving!
Denae