The following is a piece taken from a book I wrote but never published.

I hope to turn it into a series of articles, in which you, the reader, will find philosophical and practical value in regards to everything that comes under the gigantic umbrella term “health”:

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, said:

Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.

Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.

And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;

The result being that he does not live in the present or the future;

He lives as if he is never going to die and then dies having never really lived.

You see, when we look at our society's relationship with health, it often feels like one of those dysfunctional couples where you observe and quietly wonder, "Why are they even together?"

They've been together for years, but the spark is long gone. There's no real love or passion between them; they simply co-exist next to one another. They know a lot about each other technically and can tell you all the dry facts about their significant other – like what their favourite colour is or what they like to eat – but they never truly see each other for who they are, and as a result, fail to grasp the gist of what actually matters in a relationship.

And frankly, there’s no wonder we are so detached from what it means to be healthy – over the past few decades, we've gradually adapted to a way of living that pulls us away from both mental and physical well-being.

A lifestyle that’s overly sedentary and excessively comfortable. Nutrition reduced to processed, hyper-palatable foods. We've traded proper sleep for caffeine and sugary drinks. And we regularly numb our emotions with a constant stream of distraction: smartphones, tablets, Netflix, social media...

Essentially, the basic actions that used to serve as the cornerstones of our “previous life” in the analogue world - moving, eating whole foods, and connecting with each other – have all received totally different meanings nowadays and are being done for totally different reasons.

In the not-so-long-ago analogue world, for example, physical effort was necessary in order to survive and was part of our everyday routine: we used to have more physically demanding jobs, less available means of transportation or household chores that were significantly more demanding than today.

If we go even further down, to hunter-gatherer times: we used to hunt game and carry it for food, walk miles upon miles daily for water, chop wood for fire, or skin animals for warm clothes.

In other words: if you weren’t able to move properly, life would be impossible to live as a hunter-gatherer and very difficult as a mid-century worker.

Today, where everything is adjusted for minimal physical effort and maximum comfort, automated and digitized - this is no longer the case.

We have supermarkets and flowing tap water for sustenance, cosy apartments with a full electric grid for safety from the elements, and shopping malls for clothes. We really don’t need to move or be particularly strong or fit in order to survive.

While all this is not necessarily a bad thing, the comfort we experience as we transition from our relatively active lifestyles and into a sedentary digital age certainly comes with tradeoffs; one of the most significant ones is the absence of physical health.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2010: “Less than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity each day; only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week.”

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2020: “More than 80% of adults do not meet the guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities, and more than 80% of adolescents do not do enough aerobic physical activity to meet the guidelines for youth.” This is a downward trend.

Consider the following:

Between the 9th and 11th centuries in Iceland, the locals used to test the strength of all men who wanted to work on fishing boats so they could see who was fit enough to handle the very common job of being a fisherman. The method they used was a simple stone lifting test: Men who could lift a 100 kg (225 lb) stone from the ground and stand erect with it were considered only “half strong” (Hálfsterkur).

In order to be considered “full strong” (Fullsterkur), one needed to lift a 154 kg (340 lb) stone off the ground and stand upright with it.

Clearly, the standard of what it means to be strong is very different nowadays – think about it: how many people do you know who you consider “strong” and can heave such a rock?

Now, while clearly not everyone needs to be capable of lifting a giant boulder (as cool as it might be to be able to do so), the absolute majority of people today are incapable of performing even basic feats of strength like a single pull-up or ten push-ups, let alone deadlift their own bodyweight.

Today, instead of moving and being active, a large portion of our day is, in fact, focused on, well, sitting. The average human sits about 8 hours at work.

They sit on the way to work in their car or bus, sit a bit more while waiting for an appointment, sit through the appointment itself, then once more on the way home, then again at dinner.

They then sit on the couch at home and watch TV before they lie down and go to sleep…

Stan Efferding, one of my favourite coaches, goes so far as to call sitting “modern man’s disease”.

In my line of work, I have met hundreds, if not thousands, of people suffering from this very “disease”:

The symptoms might sound familiar: lower back pain, slouched upper spine, inflamed wrists from typing, tight hips, knee pain, unexplained chronic tiredness, terrible posture, bulging discs, and difficulty climbing a flight of stairs.

Some people are in fact so static, so sedentary, that their basic fundamental health is impaired as a result – their joints have literally degenerated and become arthritic, and their mental health deteriorated so much so that they experience a vast array of orthopaedic, metabolic or psychological issues that require much work to correct – if correctable at all.

How did we come to this?

Our body is first and foremost an “adaptability machine” - it will become adapted to what it is exposed to over time. Nothing more, nothing less.

While originally meant to help us adapt to the environment and help us survive unpredictable Mother Nature, the innate biological ability we possess as organisms to adapt can also backfire – with the “disease of sitting” as a prime example.

Think of the brain’s job when it comes to managing the body’s resources as being identical to the department of treasury’s job when it comes to managing government funds: if a certain office finds that a body it finances isn’t using the allocated funds properly, it will cut funding.

You see, the brain will always seek to optimise the body’s function by conserving energy, because the less energy we use, the more likely we are to survive. Tissues like muscles are extremely high maintenance and require a lot of resources (calories) to maintain. When we don’t use a muscle, a joint, a ligament or a bone as it should be used, our brain will adapt accordingly.

It will perceive any unused tissue as "unnecessary" and will allocate fewer nutrients and resources for its buildupor maintenance. The fewer resources allocated for the tissue, the more the tissue becomes weaker until it degenerates.

To further illustrate this: when we are under cold temperatures, the first areas that “feel cold” are the hands and feet.

The brain deems the limbs as “less important” compared to our torso, which contains our heart and lungs, and therefore puts more energy into steering the blood to where it deems vital for survival so it can stay warm.

And so, our brain will allocate less blood or nutrients to build tissue we do not use on a regular basis, with muscles – due to their high demanding nature – being the first to go.

However, the opposite is also true: if we use our muscles and joints with high demand, our brain will allocate resources to build them because it deems them important to the body’s daily function.

It will also allocate funds to the heart and blood vessels because they need to deliver the resources to the muscles through the bloodstream.

This will likely result in a stronger and healthier body.

My point here is very clear:

If all we do is sit, lie down and walk at a moderate pace, our brain will degenerate all the tissue that isn’t needed for such tasks so it can conserve energy.

To sloganise this: “If you don’t use it, you lose it!”

Our comfortable lifestyle isn’t a free meal, it’s a trade-off

The loss of strength, which is considered a prime measurement of health and longevity, isn’t the only thing “taken” from us by our modern lifestyle and its comforts: According to CDC data, 40.3% of U.S. adults were obese during the August 2021 – August 2023 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cycle.

40.3% – That’s almost half of the people in the US that are consuming vastly more calories than they spend. In Europe, according to WHO data, between 1975 and 2016, obesity rose by +138% and overweight by +51%; from 2006 to 2016, obesity alone rose by +21%.

Another one of our downward trends.

While the problem of obesity is at its extreme specifically in the US (40.3% vs 17% in Europe), just a quick look around when in a crowded area can show you the reality: as a society, we are simply overfed and undermoved.

In my line of work I deal with hundreds of individuals seeking to regain their physical and metabolic health. It pains me to see people in their 60s move around like they are well into their 80s or people in their mid-20swith absolutely zero body awareness because the only physical activity they ever did was gym class as children.

The amount of adults who casually laugh about the fact they cannot go up a flight of stairs without getting winded and shrug it off as “I’m just so lazy” don’t seem to understand that they are walking into a literal death trap.

They fail to see that the things they don’t do today because they are comfortable will bite back in the later years when they should be comfortable.

The way out

So what can we do as a society about this? How can we stop ourselves from slowly marching into our comfortable, sweet and fluffy doom?

How can we regain our strength, our health and our vigour?

Well, as a society, I don’t believe we can do much.

We cannot absolve ourselves from personal responsibility by demanding society to change, hoping for the government to come and save us with more regulations.

And we certainly cannot follow the body positivity fruitloops and decide that “being obese is healthy” and “fitness is fatphobic”, just because it’s extremely comfortable to believe it.

However, I truly believe in the individual’s resolve. That any revolution starts from the heart of the one person who chooses to create a change from within. I strongly believe most of us still have the spark within us and truly want to be healthy, mobile and strong. We all want to be able to pick up and play with our children with no effort or go for a spontaneous hike with our friends.

While not everyone wants or should lift that Icelandic 154 kg stone (which still exists today, by the way), everyone should be able to handle heavy groceries, go up a long flight of stairs, jog for 15 minutes or move a heavy couch when necessity comes.

Even then, body positivity loonies who yap endlessly about how it’s perfectly normal to weigh 500 lbs secretly wish they were healthy, in my opinion. Because it simply cannot be “fun” to be so physically limited. It’s just drastically comfortable to say it.

And so the change that we want (in anything) cannot be expected to be at the level of society, and has to start with the individual. We need to look inside. We need to start within ourselves and then project it outward.

Each one of us has to take responsibility and ownership over their own health, have agency over their own lives, and maybe then, if they want, inspire others to do the same.

It starts with what you consume

I strongly believe that each of us has to either educate themselves around the basics of health, nutrition, and movement or follow the advice of a certified health practitioner that will guide them on their path.

T. Colin Campbell, in his book “The China Study”, talks about how eating is one of the most intimate things we do with the world – because we literally let the world inside of us.

While I don’t agree with the book’s general premise, I took that quote by Campbell as a hallmark idea – because it’s brilliant.

You see, when I started my training as a nutrition coach, I learnt about digestion and how it works; it completely changed my approach to what I put into my mouth.

To simplify things: anything you consume is being broken down by your digestive system into smaller and smaller particles, until it reaches molecular size. This is done so the body can “work” with what we eat by integrating it into our cells.

Take something like a potato, for example:

You cannot shove a potato into your cells, because the potato is simply too large (the image of a whole potato swimming through your bloodstream is still kind of funny though).

Enter the digestive system:

The carbohydrates found in a potato are large sugar molecules called “starches”: they are so large, in fact, that even they cannot be used by our body in their state, so the body breaks them down further into smaller sugar molecules called “glucose”. The body then uses these glucose molecules to produce energy, amongst other things.

This basic principle alone shows how correct the term “you are what you eat” is. If all you eat is McDonald’s burgers, that’s all the material you provide your body with to build itself.

You’ll literally be made of McDonald’s burgers. Not a very healthy picture, I know.

Knowing exactly what the food you buy contains and adopting correct behaviours around purchasing food so you can select the foods that are actually good for you is extremely important:

  • Knowing how to read food labels and understand the nutritional content and caloric value of the products you buy.

  • Understanding the tricky marketing language food manufacturers use to make the food appear healthy and bait you into buying their stuff: “All natural”, “No sugar”, “Gluten free” or “Vegan” comes to mind.

  • Avoiding foods that contain excessive amounts of chemicals or empty calories, processed fats, colourants and preservatives can go a long way when it comes to your metabolic health.

To emphasise the impact this has: one of my clients has been trying to lose weight for years, and only by starting to read labels and understanding just how much sugar, seed oils and dead calories his favourite sauce actually contained, he lost 9 kg (about 25 lb) in a matter of a month.

It continues with the choices you make

Comfort is a choice you make over and over again, and so is effort.

In his book “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, Nassim Taleb uses “antifragile” to describe systems that actually benefit – rather than merely survive – when exposed to volatility, randomness, stressors, shocks, or time.

In other words, a system that is anti-fragile will improve, learn, or grow stronger (e.g., muscle that strengthens after exercise, biological evolution, well-designed venture portfolios) as a result of stress.

Contrasted to that are fragile systems, which are harmed or broken when exposed to stressors (e.g., a wine glass), and robust systems, which withstand stress but stay the same (e.g., a sturdy rock).

And so, if we are indeed an anti-fragile system, we have to expose our bodies to physical stressors; we need to challenge ourselves constantly so we can build ourselves stronger and avoid the arthritic doom everlasting sitting and endless comfort bring.

Because remember: There is no such thing as a free meal in nature. Only trade-offs. And if you let yourself go down the downward spiral of comfort and bodily neglect in your 20’s or 30’s, you’ll end up paying for it well into your 50’s and certainly in your 70’s.

Coming back to the quote that started this article: you’ll spend all your money on trying to regain your health, instead of simply having it and your money.

The solution here is very simple: do something physically difficult 3-4 times per week for 30 minutes or more.

How difficult? At least a 7 out of 10. Difficulty is relative to your level of fitness, and the fitter you are, the more difficult feats you’ll be required to do so you can keep your anti-fragile body challenged.

I always tell my clients that it never gets easier – you only get stronger.

When selecting the activity that you wish to do, there is only one thing that matters: that it is something that you can see yourself doing as a lifestyle and not something you do for a “3-month summer body”.

The activity itself, when it comes to longevity, can vary, and while many will tell you “their solution” is the best one, I can tell you there are many ways to skin that cat.

I have seen people living with good health well into their late 80s by doing a variety of things: power walks, swimming, weightlifting, yoga, and even gardening (as long as it is a 7 out of 10 effort).

Remember – you are only weak if you choose to be every day. And you can be strong and healthy by sacrificing only 30 minutes, 4 times a week – a short-term sacrifice of comfort that yields long-term dividends for life.

In summary

Our relationship with health today is paradoxical: in a world designed for maximum comfort and minimal effort, many have slowly adapted themselves into dysfunctional patterns which result in an abrasive loss of physical health. We mistake convenience for progress. What we’ve lost isn’t just physical capability – it’s vitality, clarity, and the sense of agency over our lives. The solution isn’t sweeping societal reform or waiting on policy changes—it’s individual responsibility:

Each of us must reintroduce effort into our daily lives, not as punishment, but as nourishment. By challenging the body, educating ourselves about nutrition, and choosing discomfort in small, deliberate doses, we can reclaim the power to shape our own trajectory.

Health, after all, is not given. It is earned – through attention, action, and consistency. In an age where we’ve outsourced so much, this remains one of the few things that still rests entirely in our own hands.