Body Shop
Taking a daily inventory of health

I heard a talk recently by a high-powered business leader. He told the audience that, each night as he is preparing for bed, he takes an inventory of what he achieved that day in his business dealings, and where he failed. Then he makes a mental, step-by-step plan for the next day, with goals and resolutions.

It takes only a few minutes, he said, but it's highly effective, because each day is important, and the impact of even one day should not be underestimated.

A daily inventory? What a wonderful idea. But I wasn't thinking of business matters. I, of course, was thinking of health.

Bits and pieces

Unless you are involved in a severe accident or some other form of trauma, your health is not likely to be lost quickly. Instead, health is lost in bits and pieces, fragments lost each day. The degree of daily loss is directly proportional to the kinds of decisions you make.

Eating, for example. At three meals per day, that's 54,750 meals over 50 years. (The 50-year mark is a good reference point, because by then many of the chronic diseases that disable and kill us — heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc. — begin to surface.)

These diseases develop slowly, the result of relentless daily assaults. A major assault is what you put in your mouth, and if each of these 54,750 meals is a disastrous collection of sugar and sludge, the accumulated impact can be lethal.

I like to envision each bad meal you consume as a pebble. With each bad meal see yourself tossing a pebble into a huge container that is hung around your neck with a chain. At first, when you are young, the container is light and not a problem to support. But as the years go by and the pebbles accumulate, the container weighs on you, pulling you down. And when the container is very heavy, each additional pebble, tiny as it is, adds a jolt that is felt in every fiber of your body.

Now, envision each good meal you consume as allowing you to remove one pebble from the container. If you have been following a lousy diet for decades, it will take quite a while to lighten the load around your neck. Even so, each pebble you remove is worth the effort.

The same concept can be applied to exercise, smoking cigarettes, excessive worrying, etc.

Each day you make the choice of whether to be physically active or sedentary, to smoke or not smoke, to worry about something over which you have no control or simply let it go.

Put in this perspective, each day is critical because you make a series of choices, each one a possible pebble that goes on the pile.

The problem is, we don't often think in these terms because we don't pay enough attention to what we are doing. Perhaps a daily health inventory could help us determine whether our daily choices are destroying our health, or promoting it.

Cycles

Taking care of your health is a lot like business cycles. Some times are good, others are not. There are times when you are coasting along, making choices that promote health. Your food choices are good, you are in the exercise mode and your moods are positive. Few pebbles are added to the pile.

Then, one day you wake up and have the insight that some of your good habits have been replaced by lousy ones. What happened?

You are in a downward health cycle. The problem is, you didn't realize it until you had the insight that things had turned sour.

What prompted the insight? Who knows? It could have been a new special on TV, a chance conversation, pants that feel a little too tight, the sudden death of a friend or relative. The problem is, unless something stimulates you to turn you around, you stay rutted in the downward cycle. Here's where the daily health inventory idea comes in as a lifesaver.

Although my health habits are pretty good, and living a healthy lifestyle is a major priority of mine, I am just like everyone else. I have ebbs and flows. At times I ease into bad habits. Recently I had drifted back into drinking copious amounts of coffee, because I was working late at night to meet some deadlines.

I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. Then, not long ago, I stopped myself on my way to finishing off a pot I had brewed earlier. Holding the empty pot in my hand caused me to pause and think about what I was doing. Now, I've shifted back to drinking green tea again.

If I were taking a daily health inventory, I'd have to acknowledge my excessive coffee consumption as a concern.

I may choose not to dump the habit immediately, choosing (OK, rationalizing) instead to believe that I'll just keep it up until I meet my deadlines and quit having to work late at night.

But eventually the impact of seeing my excessive coffee drinking coming up each night in my health inventory would act to weaken my obvious rationalization and nudge me back to where I want and need to be.

The bottom line

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Similarly, chronic diseases grow bit by bit, going unnoticed until they are advanced and can no longer be ignored.

Take steps to stop the accumulating effects. Count the pebbles that you either toss into your container — or pull out — as an index of whether you are slowly but surely, day by day, destroying your health or promoting it.

Bryant Stamford is an exercise physiologist and director of the Health Promotion and Wellness Center at the University of Louisville. If you have questions about sports injuries, health, exercise or fitness, write to Body Shop, Gannett News Service, care of The Courier-Journal, 525 W. Broadway, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, Ky. 40201-7431, or e-mail bastam01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu.