Living Healthy

Living Healthy "No matter who you are, no matter what you do, you absolutely, positively do have the power to change" (Phillips xv). No matter how old or over weight you are, you always have the need to be healthy and it is never too late to start living healthy. Your body is the center of your universe. You can go nowhere without it. It 's the temple of your mind and your soul. If your body is sagging, or aging rapidly, other aspects of your life will soon follow. There are too many people who believe that they 're already too overweight, too weak, or too old to get in shape. People think that everybody in the gym is in perfect shape, and that is just not true. Everybody has to start somewhere. (Phillips xiv). When you begin to apply the information in this paper, you will be proving to yourself that outstanding changes are within your grasp. Being healthy is a gateway to a new and better life, a life of rewarding and fulfilling times. The first thing that everyone needs to do is to learn to control your bad habits. Bad habits wait on us forever, they don 't go away. Bad Habits will always be there looking for an opening. If you 're addicted to food or alcohol or cigarettes, if you have a bad habit of any kind, you need to know that it doesn 't just disappear. If you stop stetting goals for your future, that is when bad habits push their way into your life (Phillips xiii). Exercise is a way to control your bad habits and to help you become healthier in all areas. Runners run and exercisers exercise because so many people have told them it 's good for them physically, emotionally, socially, and even spiritually (Solomon 3). There are approximately 35 million people walking enthusiasts, 20 million cyclists, 5 million weight lifters, 10 million basketball players, and 25 million joggers around us (Glenn 4).

You get the impression of how many joggers pound the streets and shoulders of suburban roads by looking around during the early morning and after work hours. In former days, the healthiest form of exercise was thought to be a daily constitutional, a brisk walk that could be accomplished without special gear and certainly without panting (Solomon 2).
Now days ' exercising is much harder. Elite professional athletes such as John Elway, Karl Malone, Mike Piazza, and Terell Davis have turned to advisors for clear-cut information on how to enhance their energy, and performance (Phillips cover). Exercising is just a way of living to many people. Exercising obviously helps to make a person healthier, but it could even save one 's life. There have been many tests taken to challenge just how important exercising is to a human being. In Sweden between 1958 and 1967 at test determined that during a 10-year period, a group of 88 exercisers were ill for a total of 4,673 days, an average of five days apiece. A different group comparable to the first group in age and sex, but not exercisers, added up to 13,478 sick days, nearly three times as many as the exercisers (Gilmore 11). Another test taken by Professor A.H. Ismal of Purdue University. He studied the medical records of 44 men for four years. He found that the medical expenses for the sedentary members of the group averaged about $400 a year in doctor 's bills, but the regular exercisers added up to only half that amount (Gilmore 11). Duke University found that a regular exercise alters the chemical composition of blood that is better able to dissolve blood clots. Because blood clots in an artery are believed to trigger some heart attacks, strokes and other diseases by cutting off circulation of the heart and brain, the change in the blood induced by exercise may also give some protection against many

disorders (Gilmore 11). In recent years physiologist have discovered that a certain type of regular exercise brings about a number of changes in the heart and circulatory system. While exercising the heart acquires the capacity to pump more blood with each beat than it did before exercising (Gilmore 11). Also when exercising the blood pressure generally drops and the pulse rate slows, the heart may beat as many as 13 million times fewer per year. "The heart becomes like a low-mileage used car; it takes longer to wear out" (Gilmore 11). Many doctors like Dr. Jim Glenn believe that "Exercises do strengthen the heart, increase breathing efficiency, diminish stress, reduce blood pressure, burn away fat, improve appearance, and increase energy." Nutrition is just as important as exercise when trying to become healthy. There are many diets that people follow that are not doing any good for them. People 's perceptions about diets don 't always match reality. For example, about 40 percent of main meal planners who thought that their diets were about right in terms of fat, learned that only about one-fourth of them had fat intakes that met the Dietary Guidelines to limit fat intake to 30 percent of calories or less (Wilkinson 14). Many Americans tend to have few nutrients in their body. Some examples of nutrients that tend to be low in American diets are: Vitamin B6 found in bananas, watermelon, white potatoes, chicken, and turkey; Calcium found in yogurt, milk, cheese, broccoli, spinach, and turnips; Iron found in beef, dark turkey, clams, oysters, pumpkin or squash seeds, and cooked spinach; Magnesium found in whole-grain cereals, dry beans, nuts, peanut butter, and cooked spinach and broccoli; Zinc found in yogurt, oysters, crab, lobster, beef, pork, lamb, turkey, and liver (Wilkenson 15). Everyone needs these nutrients to become a healthy person. The more

we learn about the relationship between diet and health, the focus shifts from concerns about nutritional adequacy to concerns about over consumption. Scientists have developed food guides to help people monitor what they eat and to show what should be served with every healthy meal. The first USDA food guide was developed in 1916. Other food guides such as "Basic-7" developed in the 1940 's and the "Basic-4" developed in the 1950 's have been changed. (Wilkenson 14). The newest food guidelines have been revised and it was determined that the new food guide should: "Promote overall health, be based on up-to-date research, address the total diet, be useful to the target audience, be realistic, be flexible, be practical, and be evolutionary," (Wilkenson 15). All of these were developed to help people become healthier because it is so important for everyone to live healthy. In conclusion, it is so important to doctors, scientists, and nutritionist, that people be healthy that they have wrote several books on just how to live healthy. It will benefit you in all ways possible. It will make you feel better both physically and emotionally. Your health depends on your exercise and the good nutrients that you put into your body. I hope that this paper has been able to persuade you to take control and live a healthier life. Just like Bill Phillips says, "When you gain control of your body, you will gain control of your LIFE!"

Works Cited

Gilmore, C.P.. Exercising for Fitness. Chicago: Time Life Books, 1981.
Glenn, Jim. Exercise and Fitness. Springhouse, PA: Springhouse Corp., 1986
Phillips, Bill. Body for Life. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1999.
Solomon, Henrey. The Exercise Myth. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Wilkinson, Cecilia. Nutrition. Hyattsville, MD: United States Department of Agriculture.

Cited: Gilmore, C.P.. Exercising for Fitness. Chicago: Time Life Books, 1981. Glenn, Jim. Exercise and Fitness. Springhouse, PA: Springhouse Corp., 1986 Phillips, Bill. Body for Life. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1999. Solomon, Henrey. The Exercise Myth. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. Wilkinson, Cecilia. Nutrition. Hyattsville, MD: United States Department of Agriculture.