The Quality of Life: Is Health Important?

 As a matter of course, all responsible persons should take the time to educate themselves, and their children, about the benefits of healthy eating.  Learning to eat for life in a health conscious way is one of the best guarantees for a long and fulfilling life. The quality of our lives is as important as the quantity to most individuals, but because of debilitating disease, we are often forced to make a decision and choose between quality and quantity. 

Thanks to the advances in modern medicine, the average person’s life span now exceeds seventy years. If you stop to think, that’s quite a long time to walk around on this earth. Along with the wonderful life expectancy increases, however have the detrimental effects of overeating and unhealthy eating.  It seems that as we advance in one area, we regress in others

The issue of obesity brings this debate to the forefront, what kind of quality life can someone who can barely walk because of their weight have?  The first question I always ask, is how did we get here?  How did we go from one of the most physically fit nations, to just wallowing in our weight?  I believe the answer lies in our lack of education about the weight gaining process, and a lack of concern about our children learning how to eat and exercise correctly.

            Today, we must determine how much nourishment we need, how much physical exercise we need, and how best to accomplish those ends.  Calorie needs, nutritional needs, physical needs, and education about those needs now is information we should all understand, at least as it applies to our individual self.  If you will visit your local doctor, library, or fitness center, there is massive amounts of information available to help educate and to help you make good health choices, no matter what the age group.

            The question raised in the title of this article, would have a resounding YES as the answer. The life you choose to lead, no matter what your field of interest, your level of education, or your level of income, your life is tremendously affected by your health.  Maintaining your health is one of the most important things you can do as an individual to enjoy what time you have on this earth.  It is also one of the most important things you can do for you family.  As we become an older population, and our life expectancy increases, do we want to become burdens on our children?  Or de we want our time with our children in our retirement years to be something we and they have enjoyed?

            There are so many things to do in life that allow us to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  All of these options can be cut short if we haven’t taken the time to take care of ourselves.

            Quality is as important as quantity.  Education of the healthy choices we can make, making the right health choices, and then living life to the fullest should be the ultimate goal of every person alive.

            Speaking of education, before we can make really effective choices, we need to have a complete comprehension of the subject at hand.

Weight versus fat: they are not the same thing

Weight versus fat: they are not the same thing

Every tissue in your body (including muscle, body fat, your heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, bones, etc.) weighs a given amount.

We could (conceivably anyhow) take them out of your body, plop them on a scale and find out how much they weigh.

Your total body-weight is comprised of the weight of every one of those tissues. But only some percentage of your total body-weight is body fat.

Researchers and techie types frequently divide the body into two (or more)

Components including fat mass (the sum total of the body fat you have on your body) and lean body mass (everything else).

Without getting into unnecessarily technical details about different kinds of body fat, let’s just go from there.

Let’s say that we could magically determine the weight of only your fat cells.

Of course, we know your total weight by throwing you on a scale.

By dividing the total amount of fat into the total body-weight, you can determine a body fat percentage which represents the percentage of your total weight is fat.

Lean athletes might only have 5-10% body fat, meaning that only 5-10% of their total weight is fat.

So a 200 pound athlete with 10% body fat is carrying 20 lbs (200 * 0.10 = 20) of body fat.

The remaining 180 pounds (200 total pounds - 20 pounds of fat = 180 pounds) of weight is muscle, organs, bones, water, etc.

Researchers call the remaining 180 pounds lean body mass or LBM. I’ll be using

LBM a lot so make sure and remember what it means: LBM is lean body mass, the amount of your body that is not fat.

In cases of extreme obesity, a body fat percentage of 40-50% or higher is not unheard of.

Meaning that nearly 1/2 of that person’s total weight is fat. A 400 pound person with 50% body fat is carrying 200 lbs of body fat. The other 200 pounds is muscle, organs, bones, etc. Again, 200 pounds of LBM.

Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. An average male may carry from 18-23% body fat and an average female somewhere between 25-30% body fat.

So a male at 180 lbs and 20% body fat is carrying 36 pounds of fat and the rest of his weight (144 lbs) is LBM.

A 150 pound female at 30% body fat has 50 pounds of body fat and 100 pounds of LBM.

I bring this up as many (if not most) diet books focus only on weight loss, without making the above distinction.

I should note that more current books have finally started to distinguish between fat loss and weight loss.