You Only Get One Body

Your body has to last your whole life. I recently met with someone that gave me this great analogy. I really like analogies that help you picture your health in a logical way. This particular analogy made me think and helped me go into more detail on how we can take better care of ourselves:

Picture yourself buying a car. It’s your first car and you get to select the car of your choice. You choose the make, model, color and every detail down to the cup holders.

Now, picture that you are trying to make this car last the rest of your driving career. It will be the only car that you own and it is up to you to make it last as long as you can.

Think about it. How well are you going to take care of this car? Are you going to keep your car in to shape? Are you going to get the required maintenance done? I’ll bet that you are going to do all of the above. In fact, most of us do this on cars that we don’t have to make last more than a few years.

If it is so natural to maintain our cars, why don’t we treat our bodies the same way? After all, your body has to last the rest of your life. No matter how long (or short) it is your body as to last your whole life. Let’s take a look at some scenarios that sound ridiculous, but most of us are still doing (or not doing).
Fuel grade

When you buy your car, you look at the type of fuel that it needs. You fill it with gasoline every time, because that is what it needs. You wouldn’t put some cheap blend of gas made at an unauthorized station or in someone’s garage. If you did, you know that your car wouldn’t run well. Even if the person who sold it to you said that it would only hurt performance a little or you that it would be cheaper more convenient to use this fuel, you would not do that to your car.
Scheduled Maintenance

When your car is due for an oil change, you don’t hesitate to take it in to get that done. When you hear a strange noise it doesn’t have to go on for long before you take the car in for maintenance. Why are you so quick to mind these signals? Not because you want to spend more money at the mechanics, but because you know that by not tending to this maintenance, you will incur much bigger expenses when they lead to larger problems. Not only are the expenses greater, but it’s just not good for the car.

I don’t understand why we don’t treat our bodies this way. We know that when we put sub-par food in our bodies that we are causing damage. Granted, poor nutrition doesn’t cause issues instantly, but think about the difference between feeling energized and feeling sluggish on a typical day. The sad part is that most of us don’t remember what it feels like to be energized since the sluggish days have become the norm.

As for the maintenance, we know that exercise is what the body needs to perform as it should. We would never choose not to change the oil in our car because we didn’t have time or because we are tired. We would think about the alternative (problems and expenses) and do what we know is the smart thing to do.

I hope this analogy sheds a new light on how we care for our bodies. To be honest, I like these analogies because they help me picture my own health in a logical way. Most of my conversations are due to my own thinking and vice versa. If it makes sense to me and helps me keep things moving in the right direction, hopefully it can do the same for you. I think we can all use any chance to simplify things for us.

I also hope that we can all take a good look in the mirror and start caring for ourselves. We are constantly abusing our bodies through lack of sleep, poor nutrition and inactivity to name a few. For some reason, it is easier to care for our cars that it is to care for ourselves. We spend more time and money on vehicle maintenance yet virtually none on self-maintenance.

This will eventually catch up to each one of us. In fact, the effects are happening now, many of us just choose to make excuses or ignore them altogether. Next time you have a choice (which is every day) remember that your body has to last your whole life.