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In your driveway sits the car of your dreams. You get in, start the engine, pull onto the road, scrape a tree, hit the curb, grind gears and leave the emergency brake on all the time. Worst of all, you fill your car with diesel fuel at the station instead of the gasoline it was designed to use.
Sound crazy? If you were willing to spend a great deal of money on a car, you would certainly protect your investment by treating the car with the greatest care. What about your body? It is the physical vessel that carries you through life. Do you treat it with as much care as you would a new car?
More often than not, we may neglect the needs of our physical bodies. We fuel them and exercise them inappropriately.
Here's the grim picture. The United States has long battled an obesity epidemic. Now other countries (including China) are also feeling the effects of excess. Eight percent of 10- to 12-year-olds in China's cities are obese and an extra 15 percent are overweight, while 18.8 percent of American children between 6 and 11 are overweight (Calum MacLeod, "Obesity of China's Kids Stun Officials," USA Today, Jan. 8, 2007).
Merging into fitness
The great thing is that the human body is incredibly complex and renewable. It can repair itself—if we give it the right fuel and tools. So are we fit or are we fat? If we are fit, great! If we aren't—it's time to make a plan.
How much we weigh and how fit we are isn't determined by one meal or one day of jogging halfheartedly out to the mailbox and back. It takes years of bad habits to make a person unhealthy and gain excess weight. Reversing the process likewise takes a good chunk of time—to reinstitute good habits and see them through until they bear the fruit of a healthy body.
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