Fit By ___

With the high rates of obesity in our state, it might not be too much of a shake for us to find out that we are also in the top for Type 2 Diabetics. Honestly, it seems like the worse are southerners in general.  The glorious state of Tennessee is ranked 7th in the United States, which means that 12.9% of all our adults have Type 2 Diabetes. Here’s the graphic:

Not shockingly, the numbers keep going up. Remembering back to last week’s blog posts, we know that our kids aren’t bringing a cure or much help… so… what are we going to do?

Be less active and continue to eat whatever we want?

nope!

We have to change our lives… our lifestyles. We need to become a different culture. Our cultural trends don’t help our forward progress and we need to be different, or accept our sick lives which we are watching change in front of our very eyes.

At the root of it all… we’re lazy. We’ve forgotten to move regularly. Here’s how it looks across the country…

We are the 11th worse movers in the country.

To recap… Our states doesn’t move and doesn’t eat well… I wonder where we are headed?

Destruction!

Our whole livelihood before the modern era was survival. The fittest survived and lived on. Now we are stagnant persons who are sitting through life and yelling at each other about who’s right and wrong. We don’t do community really well anymore and we don’t care about anything much more than money, convenience, and person possessions.

(Sure, there’s a faith side to this whole thing, but my aim is to be super practical and pragmatic.)

We are killing ourselves slowly and no one seems to care.

The truth is, there’s more out there. Community can still exist. Good and healthy food (stuff from the ground or that walks on the ground) can still be found. We know more about how the body works than every before and yet we don’t see ourselves killing the only one we get.

What are you and I going to do about it?

What excuses are you still giving to not get healthy?

Are you going to wait until your need becomes greater than your fear?

The answer is simple and difficult.

1. Change your personal culture. Join a community where fitness and healthy living are the priority. Get people around you that will walk beside you with encouragement and correction. Walk together being honest.
2. Change your food.
   1. Don’t drink your calories
   2. Eat “real” food. Stay away from processed foods! Eat meat, veggies. nuts, and seeds. Eat some fruit and a little starch. No Sugar! Keep it simple… the hardest part is just starting. Reach out for help once you get going.
3. Move… Just move. If you walk, walk. If you run, run. If you CrossFit, CrossFit. Just move daily. Maybe you need to start with three days per week before committing to daily. The point is to NOT spend your days sitting behind a desk/computer all the time. What’s the best thing to do? something! Something is always better than nothing.

That’s it! Start there. It’s that simple… yet difficult. It’s difficult because change is TOUGH. It’s not easy, otherwise everyone would do it.

Start one thing new this week. There’s no need to start everything at once, after all… you didn’t get into the place you are today  overnight and it also won’t be fixed overnight. You can do something different today, then something else another time, and then another thing later… keep that up and people will be amazed at what will happen. The best part, you’ll even surprise yourself.

Keep Going!