Living a healthy life. It’s survival of the fittest

I’ve spent my life learning how to balance lifestyle with health. Everything I’ve learned points to being active on a mental, physical, and spiritual level. Activity forces you to grow, while lack of it leaves you to decay.

I’ve been struggling with the common assumption that health comes from what you eat, not what you do. Although this message is heard everywhere, it doesn’t fit what I see and learn.

Now, I think I can explain why using an age-old theory. Darwin said it was the survival of the fittest. He didn’t say it was the survival of those who eat the best. That’s it.

The basic theory of evolution states that we must be fit for purpose. I take this to mean we must live lives that make us fit. Health comes from making our lifestyles fit our environment. Finding and consuming the right food is part of it, but making our bodies capable of dealing with the effects of our lifestyle is much more important.

I think everyone forgets that wild animals do not control the soil and growing conditions of the food they eat. They develop the ability to get the nutrition they need from what they’re given and deal with the by-products. That’s how nature deals with it so that’s how we should if it’s going to be sustainable.

Humans have had the same problem for millennia, too. We learned to cultivate the land and move to find good soil, but we have only recently had the power to completely change large sections at will.

I’ve been struggling to put together a simple line that puts this all in context and shows how the activity is fundamental to all life. I think I have it now.

Living a healthy life. It’s survival of the fittest first appeared on my original blog.