Are you bankrupting yourself?

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Had a conversation with a guy last week. Wants to lose weight. He’s been gaining a few pounds a year for the last 5 years. 

Was having a similar conversation with someone else in the DMs this week. 5 pounds a year for the last 5 years. It’s starting to add up. 

Both are heading in the wrong direction in the health department. The danger is that it’s a slow demise, one that many people don’t take seriously (or even recognize!) because it’s so slow. 

Quick aside: Do you ever think about the people who have changed your life? What about them was different? What about you needed changing so badly that you let them into your life? What was their relationship with the truth? Was it an avoidant one? A direct one? A mentor told me a few weeks back that the #1 problem in US politics is that everyone besides our President is too worried about being politically correct. The result? We don’t stand up to each other. And the bullies get their way.

Back to today’s newsletter…

I’ve mentioned Elliott Boll. He wrote Boiled Frog or Cold Shower a few months ago. Elliott is talking about sales, but the same point applies to your health. You can be the frog that slowly, over the course of decades, boils to death in the pot of your own deleterious lifestyle and habits. Eventually, you may very well end up on a research study similar to the one I work on at the Mayo Clinic. I work with cancer patients. Ugly stuff like surgically removing part of someone’s spine because it was cancerous. Now this person is held up by rods and screws and is in pain all day, every day. Their fault? I didn’t say that. But the WHO says 30%-50% of all cancers are preventable through lifestyle changes. 

I’ll be sharing more of this “ugly” stuff going forward because I’m increasingly convinced that most people fall victim to “it won’t happen to me” thinking. They don’t get to see the end result of bad lifestyle and habits on a regular basis. They might go to a couple funerals per year, but they don’t get to see the demise that preceded the funeral. At the same time, deep down, most people know that if they don’t change the trajectory of their health, they’re going to end up in a bad spot. The trouble here is twofold: 1. It’s not getting bad enough, fast enough to make drastic changes (boiled frog). And 2. It’s all too easy to distract ourselves with the ease and convenience of modern life and neglect our health. Why eat real, whole foods when a frozen pizza is tastier and faster?

To borrow an analogy from personal finance, treating your health in this manner is similar to racking up credit card debt every month. You go just a little too far, spending beyond your means, and the debt grows. But you can still make the minimum monthly payment, maybe even more than the minimum, so you feel like you’ve got it under control. Ok, maybe not totally under control. But you could control it if you wanted to, right? 

We know how it ends with the credit card debt analogy: bankruptcy. 

In the health example, your clothes get tighter and tighter, you get winded going up the stairs, and it gets harder to keep up with the kids. But you can still do most of the chores around the house. Plus, you’re “getting old”, right? And your spouse is gaining weight even faster than you, so they can’t tell you to get it together. And this bad stuff is supposed to start happening once you hit 30. Right???

Ever think about the danger of giving “supposed to” and “should” too loud of a voice in your life?

Similar to the credit card debt, our health example leads to…bankruptcy. Not financial, at least not directly. But many people are going to be health bankrupt if they don’t fix their ways. And the longer they wait to fix them, the more expensive it will be to fix them, the longer it will take to make the change, and the less health they’ll be able to recover. The wild part? We even know when, on average, it will happen. This stuff is preventable. But it’s got to be prevented before you’re out of moves. Better to fix it at 28 than at 58. Your body is still young and you’ll be better able to recover your health. But if you’re 58, you’ve still got 8 years before you hit the magic 66.1. 2-5 pounds a year for 5-10 years is going to take you from a “healthy” BMI to “obese” or, at the very least, “overweight”. And once you land in the “obese” category, your life expectancy is shortened by 9 years compared to people in the “healthy” range. 

Here’s an image from The Lancet: 

We’re called 66.1 because that’s the average health span of an adult in the US. Health span = years lived without a chronic disease. 66 is also the number of days required to build a new habit, on average. And that’s the real way to extend your health span beyond 66.1 years. Habits. Lifestyle. The good stuff. 

If you’re tired of dying slowly, maybe we should talk?