5 WAYS TO BE INVINCIBLE

The folks at Precision Nutrition put together another great article that touches on nutrition and related topics, but it’s actually more about human nature!  Very interesting stuff!

5 Ways to Be Invincible

Here’s the opening line, and needless to say it hooked me:

Do you think the following habits would enhance your chances of living a long, healthy and productive life?

• Exercising for 2 ½ hours each week
• Maintaining a healthy body weight (BMI under 25)
• Eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day
• Not smoking

So it seems pretty clear that the answer is a resounding “YES” right?  Well, according to one study sample that is presented in the article, only 3% of Americans engage in all of these behaviors!  That is embarrassingly low.

A few more interesting statistics from the article:

• 50% of Americans will die of either cardiovascular disease or cancer!  Check out some of these diagrams that detail the contribution of environment and lifestyle on cancer:
• 49% of Americans take prescription drugs (I’d love to know if this statistic is actually 49% of American adults or just Americans.  If it is the latter, imagine how high the percentage of American adults who are on prescription drugs would be once you remove children and adolescents!) 
• The cost (both direct and indirect) of cardiovascular disease in 2008 was estimated to be $475 billion.

Now, for the conclusion of the article, several of the experts on staff at Precision Nutrition answered the following question:

If you could only choose 5 top strategies to prevent disease and enhance wellness, what would those be?

Of course most of them mentioned the importance of eating plenty of vegetables and getting adequate exercise, but quite a few of the responses included some of the lifestyle habits that we don’t often think about such as sleep, stress management, socializing, and accountability.  Coincidentally I blogged about each of these in a previous post HERE.

SLEEP – Sleep and rest help keep a clear and focused mind, as well as allowing for better control over our hormonal physiology.

STRESS – Excessive stress can hinder every component of our lives, and most stress is either imaginary or self-imposed.  Purge stressors.

SOCIALIZING – Basically, 100% of the longest-lived societies on the planet have strong social networks…why try to reinvent the wheel?

ACCOUNTABILITY – A lack of success is very rarely a case of “I tried, but it didn’t work.”  More likely it is something along the lines of “I didn’t make the necessary changes to achieve my goals.”