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Health and Fitness Matter
Your
fitness level and the lifestyle choices you make have always been
important, but they are now taking on even more meaning that could have
a significant impact on your quality of life and the quality of life
that you are able to provide for your family. The issue at hand has many
facets to it and the only simple answer in it all is that you are
responsible for improving your fitness and health and that of your
children by showing them the way.
Healthcare
costs have risen in this country to epidemic proportions that are only
dwarfed by the near pandemic level of obesity that is present in the
population of the United States. We all pay for these costs whether we
are thick or thin, fit or fat, in higher insurance costs and taxes to
support programs for the poor and uninsured.
Employers
have bared the weight of a lot of these costs in providing benefits such
as group insurance to employees. Rising premiums are forcing many
employers to rethink whether to offer such benefits at all or to exclude
employees whose poor health and fitness levels drive up costs, from
participation in insurance packages.
Some
employers have even resorted to punitive measures such as deducting
money from the salaries of employees who have demonstrated poor fitness
and health such as high cholesterol, excessive weight, and those that
smoke and use tobacco products. A few employers are requiring
cholesterol and tobacco level screenings prior to hiring, and are
denying employment to some based upon these results.
Whether
these punitive measures, including denial of employment, that some
employers are feeling compelled to institute in an effort to stem the
tide of American workers becoming increasingly more unfit and unhealthy
will hold up in the courts, remains to be seen. Insurance companies have
long been denying coverage to people they felt were high risk candidates
that would cost more to insure than low risk candidates.
Not being
fit or engaging in unhealthy behaviors such as smoking could result in
you earning less money from your job, or even from getting the job you
want if employers continue implementing these punitive measures and the
courts support their right to do so. Earning less money from work or not
being able to find work at all will of course have an impact on how you
are living now and in the future. It will also affect what you will be
able to provide for your family.
However the
issue of fitness and health goes way beyond jobs, healthcare and
insurance costs, taxes, and money. We need to pull our heads out of the
sand or stop sitting on the couch forcing our bosses and foreseeably the
government, to fix a problem that is of our own making, and our
responsibility to solve.
The only
innocents in this are children. We have not shown them the way to
fitness and health by teaching them about proper diet and exercise and
the avoidance of harmful lifestyle choices like smoking. We allow our
children to eat unhealthy manufactured foods containing high levels of
sugar and unhealthy additives with little nutrition. If we didn't buy
them, manufacturers would have no choice but to produce healthy and
nutritious products.
We permit
our children to watch television unsupervised where advertisers
purposely target them to get them wanting to eat unhealthy, brightly
packaged foods, when we should be turning the TV off more and getting
the whole family involved in physical activities.
Children
cannot protect themselves, we have to. They are not born knowing what
good nutrition, health, and fitness are. We have to teach them and show
them the way by taking responsibility for our own health and fitness and
ensuring that our behaviors and actions reflect responsible fitness and
health practices.
If your
fitness and health are poor, you will live poorer and die sooner.
Disregard your own health and by doing so teach children to disregard
theirs , they too will live poorer lives and die sooner. Let us instead
start the process of getting our fitness and health levels where they
need to be for long and healthy living, and let us show the children the
way.
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