Does Physical Health = Happiness?

This post is the first in a series relating physical health to happiness.  While it's true that merely having a healthy body will not make you a happier person (there are plenty of healthy, miserable people out there) taking care of your body is still a good place to start.  If your body is un-healthy, it will be much harder for you to achieve your maximum happiness, so we'll start here.  

Our society is pretty obsessed with fad diets, fad exercise regimes, diet pills, etc.  In fact, Americans spend over 40 billion dollars on fitness related products every year.  That's a lot of cash being thrown at people who are selling you little more than hope.  

Unfortunately, it's also a lot of cash that is apparently being wasted.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one third of Americans are now considered obese.  Obesity is also the underlying cause of many preventable deaths, such as heart diseases, certain cancers, type 2 diabetes and strokes, to name a few.  As you can imagine, with one in three people being obese and most likely ending up with one of the above mentioned diseases, obesity health care costs are sky-high:  $147 billion (in 2008), and an obese person can expect to pay $1,429 more each year on heath related costs than their average-weight counterparts.  

I'm sure I don't have to do much convincing for you to agree that the obesity epidemic is certainly troublesome.  Chances are you have several loved ones who are obese or you may even be obese yourself.  Many people take the attitude of "I'm going to enjoy life and eat what I want and be as lazy as I want.  I don't want to eat things that taste like cardboard and then go run a marathon.  I'm fine being 'fat & happy.'"  Sadly, that attitude will actually sap you of future happiness, cost you more money, and negatively effect the lives of those closest to you.  Not exactly a prescription for happiness.  

So how do you become healthy and happy without starving yourself or depriving yourself?  Stay tuned - next week we will explore the nutrition side of health and hopefully, you can see how easy it is to start making (tasty) changes to your diet.  

Until next week, examine your own life.  How physically healthy do you think you really are?  Are there changes you've been meaning to make but just haven't gotten around to it yet?  Why?  

For more inspiration, visit me on Facebook!