What Is Healthy?

What is healthy? At first, this may seem like an easy question to answer. However, when you actually stop and think about it, it's not easy at all.

Is it the number of push-ups you can do? Is it the distance you can run? Is it how well-rounded your diet is? Or could it somehow be a combination of these things and more?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the easiest way to determine what is healthy is to point out what I know isn't healthy: starvation diets, foods high in bad cholesterol, sedentary lifestyles, trans fat, simple sugars, lack of sleep, and so on, and so on.

This list of what it means to be unhealthy is very easy to compile. But, this whole thing gets a bit tricky when you honestly don't know if one particular activity or product is healthy or if it isn't.

Thanks to smart advertising and widely spread half-truths, it's sometimes nearly impossible to make sense of it all. Fortunately, voices of discontent are starting to be heard, and food manufacturers are coming clean about their so-called "healthy" offerings.

We now know that just because a bread is labeled as being "Wheat Bread", all that really means is that it contains some portion of wheat flower (the rest is made of enriched wheat and then colored with a caramel to give it that healthy brown look). The key is to look for bread that is listed as being 100% Whole Wheat or Whole Grain.

The same goes for many juices. For years, juice manufacturers made it seem like giving your kids their product was a healthy choice. But, we now know that so many of the juices in your supermarket contain the same amount of sugar (if not more) than some brands of soda.

As for fitness, that's just as confusing. For years, people suggested starving yourself and then doing aerobics for five hours a day. Fast forward to today, and it's almost common knowledge that starvation diets don't work (and, in fact, typically lead to an increase in weight gain) and that extremely long periods of aerobic exercise is overly taxing to the heart and can lead to the catabolization of muscle (HIIT, anyone?).

So, I go back to my original question: What is healthy?

In my opinion, healthy is following a positive lifestyle; one that is manageable, as stress-free as possible, involves the eating of several small meals throughout the day (including lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats), incorporates a workout program that is realistic and consistent, and always ends with a good night's sleep.

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