It's a daily choice between maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle, also known as the fitness lifestyle, and letting it slip away. When it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, there is no such thing as "status quo." Every day, your body is either better or worse than the day before.
There's a straightforward explanation for this discrepancy: you and your body have different standards by which to judge physical fitness. You want to have an adequate amount of muscle and a low amount of fat, right? However, evolution has taught your body to prefer a moderate amount of both muscle and fat.
So why does your body crave foods that you know to be bad for it? Protecting you and keeping you going requires a constant supply of energy, so make sure you have plenty on hand. To give your body the energy it needs, you must consume calories. Muscle is more efficient at burning calories than fat is, so having "excess" muscle can be seen as a waste of otherwise usable energy. On the other hand, fat is a source of energy that can be drawn upon when food supplies are low. Such instances can be as common as the 8- to 12-hour fast that occurs between dinner and breakfast, or as rare as periods of widespread famine. The current culture of excess eating may alter this over many generations, but for the time being, you're stuck with the genes you inherited from a time when food was scarce.
You must be vigilant in your pursuit of a fitness lifestyle if you want to break this genetic cycle. You need not spend hours at the gym every day. That would be ineffective because muscle tissue needs at least 48 hours to recover and grow after a workout. Keep your body in that cycle, where it is either working out or recovering every day. Food is fuel, and if you're trying to live a healthy, active lifestyle, every day that you don't give your body the right fuel is a day that you're not at your best.
The rules of the game have changed, but your DNA hasn't. You can't assume your system will continue to function normally without any intervention on your part. So even if it appears that you're making progress toward your goals, you're actually regressing if you're not actively working toward them by, for example, maintaining a healthy weight and exercise routine.
If you make working out and eating well part of your daily routine, you'll find that these changes become second nature and your healthy lifestyle will become second nature as well. Put it off while you're young, and you may cause irreparable harm to your body. So you think you can eat whatever you want because your metabolism is so fast? Many people who now have Type 2 Diabetes probably felt the same way when they were your age. Although they didn't gain weight from a varied diet, they did eventually develop diabetes as a result of insulin resistance.
Do not accept morning soreness or dwindling energy by early evening as inevitable with advancing age; these are symptoms of not being fit and of not having been living a fitness lifestyle. Resuming your normal routine of physical activity, nutritious eating, and sufficient rest will quickly alleviate your symptoms.
However, your body will still react to the efforts you put into it, even if it isn't optimal for your goals. If you train it to expect you to require a lot of juice on a daily basis, it will comply. Muscle growth and strength are the natural results of training your body to lift increasingly heavy loads. Your cardiovascular system will adapt to the demands you place on it if you repeatedly instruct it to run longer distances or at higher speeds. Naturally, it requires your assistance in the form of proper fuel, in the form of nutritious food choices consumed in the appropriate amounts.
So, did you keep up with your healthy routine today, or did you slip up? It's up to you to make a change for the better every day, so commit to an exercise and healthy diet routine and reap the rewards of a fit and healthy life.
