WHAT IS
HEALTHY? BY EMILY BETROS
Eat right and exercise enough. These are typically the two areas we are told to focus on to increase our health. We might go as far as assessing our sleep, water intake, and if we’re lucky, someone will inquire about our stress levels. However, diet and exercise are still touted as the best ways to get healthy. It might be a relief to know that research actually suggests that these two areas of health, which we normally beat ourselves up over, actually fall much lower on the list than originally thought.
Some factors that affect your individual health: • where we live • genetics • relationships • income • access to health care services • gender • education
WHAT HEALTH…IS NOT
First, let’s talk about what health is not. Health is not thinness. It’s not whiteness, cisgendered, or able-bodied. In fact, health is not even a moral obligation to achieve. You do not have to pursue health or work to get healthier to be worthy. Your health is not entirely in your control – you can’t wrestle it into what you want it to be. Regardless of a desire to change your health, many people simply cannot prioritize it (and certainly not at the level that our culture has deemed its importance), because of other more important duties, job
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and financial situations, food insecurity, poverty, and a whole host of other reasons. Let me be clear, this is not to imply that there is something wrong with you if you don’t prioritize your health. And it is certainly not saying that just because you fall into one of these categories that you automatically do not prioritize your health. Many of us just cannot or don’t want to, and everyone has their own right to make this decision or define health in their life the way they want to—not fit into the mainstream belief that health is the be-all endall of worth or importance.
Hopefully it goes without saying, but just because focusing on becoming healthier isn’t a value or priority for you, does NOT mean that you are unhealthy. Health is not dependent on body size or shape. You cannot tell if someone is healthy by just looking at them. We could all eat and exercise the same way, and we would still all look very different from each other. Health is not just about personal responsibility and it is certainly not just about what we eat (or don’t eat) or how we move (or don’t move) our bodies.
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