It's impossible invisioning how hard it would be to keep a car on the road 500,000miles only ever reacting to maintenance issues. I liken the advent of fitness technology to dashboards and computers in our cars. I see adoption of fitness technology as similar advancement in the human species. We are on the precipice of having the ability to monitor major bodily functions in real time at the species level scale. The technology is not longer the things of science fiction.
It's been since we evolved from hunter gatherers, and more recently from a couture of subsistence living (farming), that we haven't had excercise built into our daily lives. And we made that massive shift without the ability to "look at the dash" until the last decade or so. And now with smart watches, pedometers, bloodglucose monitors, blood pressure cuffs, and power metrics during excercise. The access to our health data is becoming more and more democratized.
Data is an engineers best friend.
Unbiased, and omnipresent data such as a simple heart rate monitor and pedometer, like can be found on any entry level fitness watch, is what some people need. Being a professional, with young kids, horrible work life balance raised in a couture that devalues manual labor and fetishizes sedentary lifestyles - I was on a collision course with the US' sickcare system. A system that's currently incentivized to keep us sick for longer with more chemical dependencies than our "first world" budgets can afford.
Hyperbole, you say? Like I said data is an engineers best friend and per this 2018 study from the American Journal of Public Health, 66% of all chapter 11 bankruptcies in the US are the result of medical debt.
But don't fret! this isn't a tyrade, it's a story of hope.
With information comes opportunity. Simply putting a silly watch that made it impossible for my "addict brain" to cope with my lifestyle was all I needed to stop telling myself things like "I've got good genes", "I'm young, I can always lose the weight later", or "I'm active, I don't need to work out". With the watch it became impossible to cope with the unequivocal reality that this was society failing itself. We've come to a point where fitness is vilified and body positivity reigns supreme. But in moving to such a radical position, we've forgotten to reinforce the absolute critical preventative maintenance that truly being healthy requires. Both mentally and physically healthy.
And the ideas that taking care of ourselves needs to be a bourdon is another trope that needs to be re-assessed. Moving your body, with as little intensity as walking, is incredibly impactful on your body's basic function. Infact it's the exact way I lost the first 30lbs. I walked myself back from high blood pressure, poor sleep schedule, and bringing myself incalculable mental clarity. This last benefit, mental clairty, is what has made it so clear to see the other areas of maximum return on investment. Both personally and professionally.
So if you're looking to make a health or professional change, just get outside and walk it out. The path presents itself to those who venture to journey. Because you are who you are, you can be better by just investing more in your whole self.
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