For many of us, living a great life is the ultimate goal. But what exactly is a “great” life? And what do exercise and diet have to do with it? These are important questions and some explanation is in order since much of what we’ll be talking about here at Fitfilled is centered around improving life through healthy living.
Most people embrace lifestyle change as a means to improve their appearance or performance. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this, and either outcome can contribute to living a great life, but only to a limited extent. Furthermore, it’s possible to compromise health in the process of improving your appearance or performance, so pursuing these goals with intelligence and an emphasis on healthy living will not only increase the likeliness of great results, but more importantly, will simultaneously increase your capacity for a great life.
A Universal Characteristic of a Great Life
You have to know your target before you can start aiming, so in order to understand the value of exercise, nutrition, and other aspects of healthy living in promoting a great life, we need to establish at least a general idea of what a great life is.
While your definition of a great life will be highly individual and based on your specific values and interests, it’s human nature to seek happiness. We can therefore generalize a bit and say that happiness is the foundation of a great life. However, happiness can be experienced in a variety of ways. The two general forms of happiness most relevant to this discussion are pleasure and fulfillment, and they each have very different effects on our sense of well-being.
Pleasure tends to be intense but fleeting, leaving desire for more, which is why it’s the basis for addiction. In contrast, fulfillment is more subtle and is similar to contentment, but is longer lasting. And since fulfillment tends to be associated with meaning, it also induces a deeper sense of satisfaction. We can therefore make our generalization a bit more specific by saying that fulfillment is the foundation of a great life. (For a good read on pleasure vs fulfillment and how it applies to living a great life, check out A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine.)
How Unhealthy Habits Undermine Fulfillment
It’s undeniable that unhealthy habits (smoking, excessive drinking, poor diet, lack of exercise, insufficient sleep, excessive stress, etc.) can compromise health and lead to fatigue, decreased mental clarity, depression, and other symptoms that make you feel far from your best. In fact, lifestyle is clearly linked to many of the most common and concerning chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and neurodegenerative disease). Although it’s not impossible to achieve fulfillment in spite of these undesirable consequences, it’s certainly much more difficult.
Some people are blessed with genetics that allow them to look and feel pretty good no matter what they do. If you think your genetics are letting you get away with unhealthy habits, give some thought to whether or not this belief is really serving you well. Are you sure your quality of life is as good as it could be? And are you truly comfortable with the potential for your health to unexpectedly fall apart much sooner than it should? These questions are not intended to be a scare tactic, but they certainly deserve some deep thought.
I’ll share a very sad personal example with the hope that it will open your mind. In the course of about a decade, I watched my father consistently decline from being very intelligent to forgetting how to get home, eventually not being able to recognize me, and ultimately being incapacitated in a nursing home with severe dementia. Although he was rarely willing to talk about what was happening and often dismissed his forgetfulness as something funny, it was anything but funny, and it’s terrible to think of the mental anguish he must have endured as he realized he was literally losing his mind. What’s most sad is that I knew how to help him, even early on when there was a chance of reversal, but he never fully acknowledged that there was a problem and never believed that lifestyle could make a difference. Lifestyle absolutely can make a difference and usually does. In fact, there are now well-informed doctors who are improving and even reversing early-stage dementia exclusively through lifestyle modifications.
How Pleasure Undermines Fulfillment
Most unhealthy habits are difficult to change because they induce pleasure, and food is perhaps the most insidious example.
Foods that are exceptionally tasty are referred to as hyperpalatable, and not surprisingly, they tend to be high in sugar and can promote addictive behavior. Unfortunately, some food manufacturers intentionally go out of their way to take advantage of this. If you succumb to your cravings for these foods, you’ll likely experience swings in energy, mood, and mental clarity. If you eat these foods consistently, you’re much more likely to become diabetic and obese with increased risk for a variety of other conditions. This is obviously not conducive to pursuing fulfillment and living a great life.
There’s a saying that summarizes the concern here pretty well: “feeling good feels better than tasting good tastes.” Think about that for a minute. Consistently feeling close to your best is much more conducive to living a great life than the minute of pleasure, as intense as it may be, from eating hyperpalatable food. So if you’re one of the people who argue that life is too short to not eat whatever you want, I hope you’re reconsidering. And limiting hyperpalatable food certainly doesn’t mean that your diet can’t be enjoyable.
Healthy Living Should NOT be Boring or Miserable
One of the most common objections to living a healthier lifestyle is the assumption that it will be boring and miserable. Sure, if you’re crushing yourself in the gym every day and eating nothing but chicken and broccoli, I could certainly see this being miserable, but I also wouldn’t consider it healthy living.
When considering a lifestyle change, it’s important to be open minded and not be dissuaded by misconceptions. Exercise need not and should not consume your life, and if you stay open to variety, you’ll likely discover forms of exercise that you genuinely enjoy. After all, it’s human nature to feel satisfaction from moving your body!
You don’t have to be obsessive about your diet either. Although there are conflicting opinions on what constitutes a “healthy” diet, we believe the best diets are those primarily based on whole (unprocessed) foods. Within this scope, there are still plenty of delicious foods that will still allow variety and provide enjoyment. Furthermore, as whole foods become a more consistent and prominent part of your diet, your taste will change and you’ll develop a stronger appreciation for these foods. Granted, you won’t get the pleasure you’d get from a candy bar, but healthier eating certainly doesn’t have to be boring, and the benefits are much more meaningful.
Final Thoughts
At this point, I hope you’ve opened your mind two things: that lifestyle really is important for living the best life possible, and that the most rewarding way to pursue appearance and performance goals is through an approach that simultaneously promotes health and, in turn, living a great life. One last thing to consider is that associating lifestyle changes with a more profound and fulfilling goal (such as living a great life) adds more incentive, which makes it easier to stay motivated and keep your progress going.
If you’ve had any relevant experiences or challenges with your lifestyle influencing your quality of life, we’d love to hear about it in a comment below!
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