What's Harder - Changing Your Habits or Living with Chronic Conditions? The Truth About Healthy Living

A lot of people will agree that “getting healthy” is hard. The thought of learning new recipes, cooking food from scratch all the time, and not to mention actually getting to the gym for an exhausting workout seems like too large a mountain to scale.

But here’s one perspective that is easy to overlook: being unhealthy can be just as difficult as getting healthy.

There’s many challenges that come with being unhealthy, including limited energy, physical limitations, chronic health conditions, chronic pain, increased risk of injury, and more. 

Sure it’s hard to complete a workout, but it’s also hard feeling winded every time you go up the stairs. Sure it’s hard to cook food with whole ingredients, but it’s also hard dealing with IBS or other gut-related problems from inflation or irritation due to a steady diet of over processed food.

When it comes down to it, both choices are difficult. In the end, many people simply end up sticking with the difficulty that they’re more familiar with.

The Challenges of Getting Healthy

Let’s explore the challenges associated with getting healthy. While the physical labor of workouts and the time-intensive commitment to cook healthy meals are challenging, the biggest difficulty lies in that in order to commit to a healthy lifestyle, you must break the deeply ingrained habits from your unhealthy lifestyle. 

As anyone who has tried to quit smoking, drinking, or social media will tell you, it’s extremely difficult to break one bad habit, much less three or four (or more) of them at the same time! And yet when people embark on a journey toward health, that’s exactly what they try to do: quit fast food, quit snacking, quit their tv binging, and quit their sugar addiction all at the same time. 

It’s no wonder that 65% of dieters return to their pre-diet weight within three years. Add to that statistic the fact that many people view dieting through the lens of self-hatred, and it’s a wonder that that number isn’t higher. Although most people think they should eat healthier, when the motivation isn’t there, the commitment disappears as well.

Here’s some more obstacles people might face when it comes to getting healthy:

• Location

Logistically it makes sense that people who have easy access to a gym in close proximity are more likely to make it for a workout. Also, those who live in a stable, nice neighborhood are more likely to go for walks around the block.

• Money

Gym memberships, supplements, equipment, organic food, personal trainers, and dieting programs are all things that cost money. For some people, adding another expense right now severely limits their ability to change their lifestyle.

• Time

Some people work multiple jobs, juggle kids between school and events, or have unusual working hours that make it difficult to maintain consistency in anything.

• Energy

People with unhealthy lifestyles are often operating with a limited amount of energy. For most people, it takes all the energy they have just to make it through the day, much less putting in the energy to break bad habits or find the motivation to work out.

• Lack of support network

Those who have a support network of like-minded individuals are more likely to stick with their healthy lifestyle choices. But if people are shamed, guilted, or simply excluded due to their attempts at living a better life, it will be harder for them to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

• Lack of direction

When faced with an overhaul of your life, it can be paralyzing to try to figure out where to start. Many people spin their wheels trying to figure out the direction they need to go and how to get there on their own.

• Lack of knowledge

As stated above, there’s an abundance of misinformation at everyone’s fingertips, and while you may see results from following bad advice, it will be harder (or even dangerous) to sustain the momentum.

Although getting healthy comes with its challenges, most of these usually get better the more you do them. For example, the more you fuel your body with healthy foods, the more energy you will experience, and the more you learn about health and fitness, the easier it will be to make informed decisions and optimize your results.

The Challenges of Remaining in an Unhealthy Living Situation

No matter how uncomfortable the topic is, it’s important for people to evaluate the dangers associated with prolonged unhealthy habits. Let’s briefly explore some of the ways that remaining in an unhealthy lifestyle can be difficult.

• Decreased mobility

One of the more obvious drawbacks of having an unhealthy lifestyle is that it affects overall mobility. Even if you’re not a gymnast, mobility plays a crucial role in every day life such as balance, ability to pick things up, sit down and stand up easily, climb stairs or go on walks with the dogs, lift things above your head, etc. If you’re not regularly training for all these functional areas, it will make it difficult to execute these basic movements later in life.

• Risk of chronic health conditions

As anybody who has ever had a doctor tell them to lose weight can attest, these health conditions are paraded around like a poster-child for the fight against obesity. But the reality is, although these are not guaranteed outcomes of living an unhealthy lifestyle, your risk of acquiring them greatly increases if you’re not taking care of your body. Some conditions include heart disease, stroke, hypertension, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, and more.

• Increased medical expenses

Joint-replacement surgery, weight-loss surgery, heart surgery, chiropractic adjustments, injuries from falling, medication to treat high blood pressure and other conditions, and more.

• Pain

Many people with sub-optimal strength can experience pain in their joints and back from a limited number of muscles overcompensating for weaker muscles.

• Quality of life

People who struggle with their health often don’t feel like participating in activities that might be difficult for them, such as running and playing with kids or pets, going on vacations, or hiking and skiing. In fact, some people may develop a form of agoraphobia and limit their time outside their home.

• Mental health

Being unhealthy can alter your brain chemistry, causing a lack of necessary chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin that can help regulate your emotions and cause an onset of depression or anxiety. Even without that complication, many people who struggle with their weight also deal with eating disorders, bullying, a lack of self-worth, and comparison, which can be an insidious enemy to mental health.

Although living with these drawbacks can be difficult, many people choose to remain where they are simply because it’s familiar to them. For many, the thought of the unknown can raise more anxiety than the reality of the known, however difficult that reality may be.

Three Takeaways

So now that we know there are challenges to both sides, what are we to do?

1. Choose your hard

Faced with the information from both sides, what will you choose? It’s going to be challenging either way, but it’s up to you to choose if you will take on the challenge or let the challenge overtake you.

2. Choose your style

Everybody is different, and everybody’s health journey should look different, as well! There’s no reason why you need to make things more difficult than they need to be. If you’re having trouble finding out where to start on your journey, find a guide! If you really don’t like kale, don’t eat it! If you hate running, swim instead! There’s more than one way to do things, so find a way that works for you and with you.

3. Choose your balance

For some people, cutting out sugar is what they choose to do to feel healthy. For others, that deprivation mindset causes more harm than that apple cinnamon muffin ever could. You need to find a way to balance healthy choices with a lifestyle that you can sustainably enjoy.

I hope this has given you a fresh perspective on balancing a healthy lifestyle. If you want to experience permanent transformation and feel like you could use some guidance on next steps, contact us and talk to one of our amazing coaches today for free. We help busy, hard-working people like you achieve freedom with food and sustainable success – for LIFE!