Moving to Live, Living to Move

Do you end up sitting for most of the day? Most of us do, so you are not alone. Are you looking for ways to add activity to your day? While most of us don’t get enough activity, you still may be in the minority if you are trying to do more. That may seem like a cynical view, but it comes from watching our society find more ways to do less activity. Not that we want to be unhealthy, but it is often easier to go along with the times. As we get more technologically advanced (some would say dependent), our activity seems to become less of a priority.

This actually makes sense the more I think about it. Let’s think back to the turn of the century. In 1900, the average American was doing physical labor in order to earn a living. Now we spend time in automated, sedentary environments. The technology has brought many good things to our culture, so I don’t want to be negative about it. Actually, technology has allowed us to work out in many ways that were not possible before. Plus, now we know so much more about the body, the exercise we do and how it affects us.

So why are we less active now? I think it’s because we didn’t ever have to “exercise” in the sense that we do now. We were active because it was part of our life. If we weren’t active, we didn’t eat. That sounds like the ultimate motivation to me. Not that we don’t have good reasons to exercise now, but when your life depends on it, you will likely do what it takes.

That is the mentality we need to be taking today. It may be a different scenario, but our lives still depend on being active. It’s simple: if we are not active we will not survive. Clearly, it is a much longer process than it was back when we needed to be active to get food. Now we need to be active to burn the extra food that we choose to eat day in and day out.

Activity was part of everyone’s life 100 years ago. It should be that way today as well. You can do it by changing the way you look at exercise. Walking to the mail box, carrying your recycling bin, raking leaves…all of this is activity. By doing more if it, you get more benefits. You don’t have to be sweating in the gym to be getting activity.

Think about it. What if you needed to eat healthy foods and move your body in order to survive? In all reality, this is true. Sure you can survive on fast food and a sedentary lifestyle. I don’t know about you, but just surviving is not enough for me. In order to thrive, we need to care for ourselves. If we don’t, life will be rough.

We all want our bodies to be healthy. Why not do what it takes to be healthy? Why not take care of ourselves? It is as simple as it used to be, we just made it more complicated. It certainly doesn’t have to be complicated. Eat healthy foods and move your body. We’ve known this all along. Somewhere along the line we lost track of how simple it really is. I think it’s time we get back to the basics. We will all feel better and live better lives.