What’s Fitness Without Health?

December 22nd, 2008

There are a lot of people out there who aren’t getting the results they expect from their hard work in the gym. Whether their goal is to lose weight, gain muscle, or improve their energy, the common link is health. Most people simply don’t have the capacity for the strenuous exercise they’re doing.

Stay Within Your Energy Budget

Whether you’re doing a lot of cardio to burn calories and lose weight, training for a sport, or weightlifting to build muscle, it’s putting a serious demand on your body. If you don’t have the capacity for it, you’re just driving yourself into the ground like an old car that you don’t care about. Instead of improving your health, you’re making it worse!

If you’ve read my article on The Effects of Stress, you should know that all types of stress, whether good, bad, physical, or mental, sum up to one single physiological burden that your body has to deal with. If you’re not getting high quality nutrition on a regular basis, not sleeping enough, are stressed out at work, and are trying to squeeze more hours into the day, what makes you think your body will be able to handle the additional burden of strenuous exercise? I know most people will think this doesn’t apply to them, probably as a result of not understanding what a healthy lifestyle truly is, but if you’re not getting results and your workouts are making you tired, then don’t you think something must be wrong?

Better Health Means More Capacity

If you’re not currently enjoying excellent health, and by excellent I mean being full of energy throughout the entire day and having very few complaints, then your body is already struggling to keep up with the daily demands of simply being alive. By significantly adding to these demands with strenuous exercise, your body will have even more trouble keeping up and will have to cut corners.

Although you may only be exercising to improve your appearance, your body has no way of knowing that the physical demands your placing on it aren’t necessary for survival. As a result, something important like organ repair may be compromised in favor of your exercise recovery. If this continues on a regular basis for an extended period of time, symptoms of poor health will develop and it may even lead to disease.

With this in mind, would you want to look like a cover model for a fitness magazine if it meant being tired every day and having the potential for serious health problems? I certainly hope not! Besides, improving your health will make it much easier to achieve your fitness goals anyway. And with good health as the foundation through which you achieve, you’re likely to get more appreciation and enjoyment out of it.

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