Are You Living A Healthy Lifestyle?
Are you living a healthy lifestyle?
The criteria for what constitutes a healthy lifestyle is pretty tough, but take the following quiz to see how you score.
If you meet all of the impossible standards, then you, my friend, are someone people should probably start buttering up to so you’re more amenable to donating your organs to them when they’ll definitely need them because of the way they’re living.
But what if you don’t meet all of the impossible standards?
Then you, my friend, are someone who needs to start buttering up to someone who meets all the criteria so they’re more amenable to donating their organs to you when you’ll definitely need them because of the way you’ve been living!
1. DO YOU SMOKE?
Like, do you still light up cigarettes despite the shitload of information that smoking is definitely going to kill you, if not have you talking out of a hole in your throat and sounding like a robot first?1On second thought, sounding like a robot sounds like a huge selling point!
2. ARE YOU ACTIVE?
Like, do you get off your ass for at least 150 minutes spread out during the week and do stuff that makes you breathe harder?2Having sex doesn’t count as exercise, people!!! Not like you’re having that much of it, anyway!
3. DO YOU EAT A BALANCED DIET?
Like, do you eat your fruits and veggies or is the inner child in you still refusing to and all you eat is food made by Frito-Lay?
4. DO YOU HAVE A NORMAL BODY FAT LEVEL?
Like, is your body fat percentage under 20 percent if you’re a dude or below 30 percent if you’re a lady dude?
5. ARE YOU AMERICAN?
Like, do you live in the greatest nation to have ever existed on this or any planet despite its many flaws that are totally ignored and don’t make the country such a great place for more and more people?
SCORE:
If that’s the case that you’re an American, you should’ve probably said that from the start. You saying so could’ve saved us from all those silly questions because a recent study says that you’re like 97.3 percent of Americans who don’t live a healthy lifestyle.
Published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings by geeks in lab coats at Oregon State University, with contributions made by other pocket-protector wearing dweebs at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and the University of Mississippi, the study in question found that only a measly 2.7 percent of U.S. adults are living a healthy lifestyle, greatly opening themselves up to cardiovascular disease, cancer, type II diabetes, and other scary shit.
And what did the dorks in Coke-bottle glasses establish as the lofty criteria for a healthy lifestyle?
Gulping down oceans of water and munching on nothing but kale and quinoa (organic, of course)?
Vigorous exercise 8 days out of the week for 25 hours per day?
Possession of a figure that looks like it was drawn by Jim Lee’s hand?
Living your entire life having never drank a drop of alcohol, banged heroin, or done bumps of coke out of a stripper’s belly button?
Nope!
The researchers were looking for the absolute bare minimum.
All the sample of 4,745 people had to do was:
1) not smoke;
2) be moderately active for at least 150 minutes each week;
3) consume a balanced diet of foods; and
4) have a good body fat percentage.
Yeah, basically what the first four questions in the quiz addressed!
Of the study’s participants, 34 percent met one of the four standards of health, 37 percent met two, 16 percent three, and 11 percent met absolutely none and were basically like “Motherfuck giving a fuck about my health.”
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s nothing unreasonable about any of those criteria for such pitiful findings.
Given the results, however, it appears that the extremely low bar was set far too high for most.
So what can you do to start living a healthy lifestyle?
That’s pretty simple, really!
If you’re still smoking, then quit. Either try nicotine replacement therapy, go cold turkey, meditate, or go find a real live former smoker with a tracheostomy to get the fear of God put into you that anti-smoking ads failed to instill.
If you don’t get a lot of exercise into your daily life, start walking more, take a group class, get a workout buddy, or hire a personal trainer. Basically, find something that you enjoy doing and/or somebody to hold you accountable so you get your exercise in for the day even when you don’t feel like it.
If everything you eat comes served out of a drive-thru window, then eat better. Reduce added sugar and sodium and work on incorporating more whole foods into your diet — i.e. unprocessed and unrefined plant- and animal-based products, such as grains, beans, fruits and vegetables, and meat, fish, and dairy.
If your body mass index exceeds the appropriate amount for your sex, then combine a proper diet with HIIT and lift some motherfucking weights.
That’s what you can do to turn your failing grade into a passing one.
But if all of that’s a wee bit too much work, you could always just renounce your citizenship and repatriate to another country whose medical professionals have a looser definition of a healthy lifestyle.
Yeah, there’s always that!
Glossary: diet, exercise, fat, personal trainer, training partner