I was listening to a great podcast with Gary Brecka, a former research scientist for the life insurance industry. He spent 20+ years of his career estimating the likelihood of an individual dying within the time that their life insurance policy covered, just by studying their body/blood measurements and lifestyle. What he said just really stuck with me and I wanted to share it with y’all…
“Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.”
-Gary Brecka
The aggressive pursuit of comfort weakens our body, because it’s never the way we were meant to live. You’ve also likely heard the adage that good times make weak men…I think it’s the same concept with our bodies. We all know the elderly man who finally retired just to sit at home with no movement & no purpose quickly shrivels into a sad existence. A full belly all day long with lead to digestive, blood sugar and insulin issues; seasons of fasting are so important for our health, but they’re not comfortable by any means. You have to allow your immune system to be challenged in order to strengthen it. You have to break muscle down in order to build it, it’s called muscle hypertrophy, and truly some level of damage (small though it may be, a lesser degree than injury of course) is required in order for a muscle to get bigger & stronger. By never going out into the sun, our skin burns eventually easier; by never getting our heart rate up, our hearts get weaker. If we do no challenge our ability to balance on our feet, then our stability will weaken. I think inherently we know this is true, but the culture we live in is so bent toward comfort, we don’t even realize how weakened we’ve become, physically and I would even argue mentally/emotionally as well. I would agree with Mr. Brecka, that because of this obsession with comfort, that our bodies will inevitably age quicker! We’ll experience feeling older than we are because our bodies are weaker than they should be. I’m voting that we aggressively pursue strength 😉 …strength of character, strength of faith, strength of our bodies and strength of our minds, because every single effort we make to become stronger will be worth it…and our lives will benefit greatly!