Over the past century life expectancy has increased dramatically and the world will soon have more older people than children. Populations are ageing everywhere, but less-developed countries are witnessing the fastest change. This social transformation represents both challenges and opportunities. In particular, countries may only have a single generation to prepare their health and social systems for an aging world.
I am taking this a little opposite direction and saying "healthy living brings years to our life". None of us are getting younger, so hopefully this is something that we can all take to heart. The biggest way to help our chances of being healthy as we age is starting sooner than later. Here's some info to get you started:
World Health Organization - founded on April 7, 1948 - a lot of good stuff here, in many languages, about the WHO and World Health Day
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - a pile of information here
Health Canada - a bunch of easy ideas for healthy living
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - more great resources
Now, for the IvaThongon Challenge!
We all know what we need to do to be healthy. We also all struggle to make good choices for ourselves, me very much included. So, I thought I would challenge you all to join me on a quest. Whether you are a health nut or not so much, we all have something we would like to make changes to. Whatever one area you think you could make a small change in would be a great starting point. Exercise, smoking, diet, caffeine, drugs, risky behaviors, whatever...let's all make a small change to something.
Since it is my challenge, I guess I must turn the magnifying glass on myself to illustrate. If someone asked me if I lived a healthy lifestyle, I would immediately say, "Well, I get a lot of exercise daily, I don't drink or smoke, and I eat well, so, yes, I live healthy." Once I got over myself, and started being totally truthful, the picture would be a bit different. Yes, I get a lot of exercise every day. Also, I have never drank or smoked. However, my idea of eating well, and what is the truth is maybe a bit off. I have a pretty bad sweet tooth (as you can see by my middle of the night status update, lmao). I also love to blow off making my own dinner for a few tacos or some other fast food trainwreck. I certainly eat more processed foods than I should. My excuse is always that it is easy, or hard to cook for one, or I'll have a salad later, but it's all just a cop out. I don't think of myself as an overeater, but I definitely take in more calories than I should because of the above. I absolutely know it is true, because if for some reason I can't exercise for a few days, I'll immediately put on weight. Thank goodness I have a huge dog that makes me run every day whether I feel like it or not.
So, what am I looking at trying to change? I guess in a nutshell, I'm looking at tweaking my diet to a more consistently healthy one. As for the changes themselves, I'm going to try a couple different things. I'm going to start grocery shopping with a list, not just go and fill my basket. Hopefully this will limit the sweet treats that always end up in my cupboard. On the weekends, I am going to take one day and make a large meal that I can potion out and freeze. Hopefully this will cut down on my fast food splurges. The last thing, and I guess this is an easy one, is I'm going to hit the fruits and vegetables hard. I say this will be the easy one because now that it is spring, the next 6 or so months will be the best for fresh produce. That doesn't look too painful, but I'm sure I'll have a few slips, especially with people pushing easter candy at me from all angles.
Before I issue the challenge, I must clarify one thing. I'm not looking for any of you to open up about yourselves or anything publicly. I did, only because I was making a challenge and it hopefully provided some illustration to everyone. We are all adults here and I am not looking for any personal stuff from any of you, or for any of you to be putting your business all out there for the world. This is strictly an honor system challenge.
SO, HERE'S THE CHALLENGE: For anyone who is interested in taking me up on this, I only ask that you honestly look inside yourself, where no one but you knows what you are looking at, and if you see something you'd like to work on, join me in making a small or a big change. The best thing about my challenge is that no one loses :-) Maybe it will even help me hit that stupid ding!