What Does It Mean To Be Healthy?

All of this lack of focus I've been having the past couple weeks has got me thinking. This blog is called "the Pursuit of Healthyness," so I should be pursuing "healthyness", right? Or I'm a big fat fraud. But what is "healthyness"? Is it seeing the perfect number on the scale? Logically, I know it's not, even though I tend to lose myself in the weighting game. A lot. And I have considered not weighing, but I'm just afraid to not know. Plus, I like to keep track of the stats. I'm a geek. I make graphs.

But look at my header. You would think, looking at that, that I consider "healthyness" to be eating the right foods, maintaining (but not obsessing over) a healthy weight, and exercising consistently. And the more I've thought about it the past couple weeks, the more I've realized that those are the things I should be focused on. And that's going to take a lot of work, because sometimes I'm lazy and I don't want to exercise consistently. Sometimes it's hard to choose the right foods. Sometimes I'm freaking out and the only thing that I think will make me feel better is cheese. But have I ever tried anything else? No, I really haven't. One of these days, I hope my body goes, hey, maybe some exercise will make this feeling go away. Maybe I need to start exercising when I'm freaking out, so my body will start to associate that with feeling better, instead of stuffing my face. It takes time. But you know what? Maybe that learning and growth is also part of what it means to be healthy. Maybe that's part of having a healthy body and mind, because you can definitely have one and not the other, and the goal should be to have both. So I think that's what I need to work on: the whole package.

What does being healthy mean to you?

Last night, I did my first ever run/walk outside. That's right, I ventured off of my treadmill. And, I actually ran. I was worried about how I looked because I had my pants hiked up so my thighs wouldn't rub together and I looked like I was wearing flood plants, and my shirt kept riding up over my belly. But I did it anyway, and you know what? I enjoyed it. This is the route I did (courtesy of MapMyRun.com, which is an awesome site):

Click on image to view larger version.

I did the bottom part first (this picture was taken by satellite in 2006 before our house was built, our house is where the green Start icon is), then up to the top part, then back down to the bottom part. I did all of that, which is 1.57 miles, in 20 minutes 47 seconds, and I burned 139 calories (I usually don't even burn that much walking 30 minutes on the treadmill). My average pace was 13:14 (hello, fastest I've ever gone?) and my average speed was 4.53 mph. I'm seriously impressed with myself.