One of the problems with how we approach health is that we are taught that there is a right way and a wrong way to be healthy. It is a zero-sum game. You either win it, or you lose it. So, I wanted to discuss your health portfolio. Where are you investing? How risk averse are you? Where do you diversify?
Traditionally, the “right” way to be healthy usually has to do with self-loathing and “punishing” our bodies. These practices manifest themself through painful workouts we don’t enjoy and eating foods that we don’t think taste good. Research states teenagers who diet to change their body size are more likely to feel fat, be depressed, and feel alone. This is the opposite of what you’re sold about being thin. As a father, this should send up red flags about commenting on your child’s body weight or shape or activity level. We will go into this in other articles, but today, I wanted to focus on the mentality of health and how investing should shape our health beliefs.
Health isn’t always visible
We are fed the lie that, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. And so we strive to reach a certain weight, a specific size, or a level of definition. With women it is a certain level of tone or the “right” amount of curves. With men, it is more related to avoiding the beer gut and being shredded. If you look at any men’s health blogs/forum/magazines they are typically selling you this guy.
However, most of us won’t look like this guy, and honestly, he might not look like that in 5 years either. So how do we obtain long-term, sustainable health?
That’s where your investments come in.
If we were to approach health as people are told to approach financial investments they would be much better off.
Zach Cordell, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
Understanding Health Investing
When looking into retirement traditionally people would get a pension from their employer. Now, pensions are rare and 401k’s are the ticket to having a nest egg. Over your lifetime you are slowly adding to your retirement plan. Each paycheck adds just a little more and most employers will even match what you put in.
The purpose of an investment is to do better in the long run, because you are playing the long game. What if we looked at health as an investment? How would you change if you recognized that there would be fluctuations in activity levels? What if you understood that throughout life the amount of time you have to exercise could change? But in the end you would be getting a nice return if you just stayed in the game.
Ask yourself:
- What if you didn’t get discouraged by the highs and lows of the market each day but instead focused on the trajectory?
- Are you eating well?
- When are you physically active?
- Are you managing a chronic illnesses?
Then you are putting money in the rainy day fund. You are building your health portfolio. On top of that, each time you do eat well or exercise your body will match your efforts and amplify them. When you exercise your blood pressure will decrease for up to 12 hours after the exercise. Your insulin sensitivity (what impacts diabetic risk) is higher, which is a good thing. The muscles you build while exercising help you to be more metabolically active (burning more calories) even when you’re not exercising.
The same is true of eating well. When you consume more fiber (plant based foods), you decrease your LDL (bad cholesterol). You blood sugar is more easily regulated. And a decreased risk for all cancers.
So, you put in a little bit of exercise and plant based foods and your body will compound your interest.
The difficulty of a health portfolio
When people first start investing they can get caught up in the here and now. They check their stocks daily. They want to see just how much interest they’ve gained overnight. Is it truly passive income yet? Can they retire now?
They don’t understand that fluctuations each day where you may make some money or lose some money.
Similarly, when people start a health journey they are solely interested on the immediate returns. They want to look a certain way, they want to get more attention, they want to feel more comfortable. All of these are fine reasons to start healthy behaviors. The problem is that it usually takes longer than someone thinks it should.
When we go to the gym, the next day we look in the mirror to see if we are more defined. After we eat one healthy meal, we step on the scale expect the number to be lower than it was. By only measuring health by weight or body shape, we are getting caught up in the day to day fluctuations of the market rather than recognizing that there has been an upward trend for the past umpteen years.
Enjoying health
Lets further drive this point home. Student athletes would feel differently about physical activity once they graduate if they were taught to love the sport rather than to love winning. I have worked with retired NFL players, and USA military vets who have retired. Many of them have lost their community, the pressure to stay active, and have lost much of the health benefits they’d gained. In most cases, they did not learn to enjoy being physically active. They simply viewed it as a job. Once they left, they decided they would never do those activities again.
Consider how someone wanting to get healthy would eat, if they weren’t worried about losing weight, but instead, enjoying healthier foods. Too many people only eat healthy to get the promised return of being thin. That isn’t always the return on the investment. If they were to think of their body, and the return they were receiving it may have changed their willingness to continue.
So, think about your “risk tolerance” and how you can change your approach to the long-term health gains and compound interest.
When you are reviewing your health portfolio consider the following:
- What is your long game health plan?
- What are your investments?
- How do you diversify your health?
Then consider, what we are teaching in our families. Are we encouraging them to find healthy behaviors they enjoy? Are we setting the example that health is supposed to be an enjoyable experience?
Join our email group to be alerted of new thoughtful health articles.
Authored by Zach Cordell, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist at www.cordellnutrition.com