Why the Holistic push? Just like 'green' and 'organic', this word has been taken for a ride, primarily becuase the term 'holistic', like its compatriots, challenges the powers that be and therein, our very culture.

Sociologists have long known from work by the likes of Locher, that changing behaviour- like food and exercise/activity habits- is no easy task.  Moreover, we (if we could take the cultural, media and industry supplied blinders off), know this too and somewhere realize these key facts:

Beahviour is linked to our identity, our culture, our social network and our emotions.

 GI Joe taught me that knowing is half the battle and Star Wars taught me that there is no try, only do.  The evidence has and will continue to mount that if we want to change ourselves for the best we can only do it holistically.  We need to take an integrated approach to our endeavours, see the synergies that abound and be moving our minds and our bodies in the same direction with each step we take.

Dr. Heather Keller said that success, as outlined at least in Health Canada's Vitality approach to health, is life long moderation, not exactly a sexy sell.

I say, life long moderation, health, vigorous life, sex and happiness is a sexier sell than a multiple heart attack victim in middle age lying in intensive care, too overweight and depressed to even think about sex on a beach and hanging on to a prescription list longer than his bed clothes.

Just like Indiana Jones taught us: choose, but choose wisely.

The bottom line is you will not perform at your peak, no matter your venue, if you don't have the proper fuel.

Picture a car, a plane a boat, you name it, if there isn't good clean fuel in it to start with and the proper lubricant to keep the engine running smoothly, you aren't go far or fast.

Water is your lubricant.  Without enough of it to metabolize your sugar and fat (which needs twice as much water than sugar to burn), you aren't going anywhere.  To drive the point home, if you are dehydrated while exercising your heart rate goes up 6 beats every minute, over-heating your engine quick enough to cause cardiac events in even the most healthy individuals.

Real food is your fuel.  Without a properly balanced meal before exercise you will underperform.  Furthermore, without a well designed post performance fueling plan, your engine won't be at its best for the next performance.  No matter your task, without all the nutrients your body needs, to burn and to repair, you will not run your ship at tip-top shape for long!

What are you choosing your fuel, why are you choosing it and where did you learn this? Choose wisely, every engine is built for a different purpose and fits in a different vessel!

Over the past weeks, remiss though I have been in contributing to this blog, I have had the luxury of contributing to my overall health in ways that many people would not relate synonymously with health.  In my conversation yesterday with Michael Fletcher of Neworld Business Coaching, I had the opportunity, led by some great questions, to describe how I would like to redefine "health".

During these weeks, I have had the luxury of meeting with three good people, a bookkeeper, business coach and an accountant, each of whom factor substantially into my picture and definition of health.  Essentially, these people remove stress and keep me on track by doing what they do, to let me do what I do.  Beyond that, they provide for me, much as I and other health practitioners do for their clients, those systems that enable us to maximize our time in each endeavour.  By removing stress and maximizing productivity for lack of a better term, these key players in health provide me a very important product beyond the dollar value of their services, time.

One of the common wants in our lives is for more time.  By surrounding yourself with experts that are good people you can trust, from your handy man/woman to your Naturopathic Doctor, you can find in their services that invisible benefit of time.  It may be immediately tangible like when you can keep playing with your child as the repair person fixes the leaky faucet, or it may be something you can only dream of, like running around with your great grand children thanks to the steps you took in caring for your health throughout your life.

We need to take a good look at how we value and define health.  Orison Swett Marden once wrote that "personal value is a coin of one's own minting".  Personal health needs to be appreciated as the substantial player in determining personal value and we need to realize that experts can provide us with more time, healthier, stress-free time, to do what we love.  The reality is their is no "perfect health" and their is no universal definition for health, so each of us needs to create a realistic picture of our health and paint in all those players we can to make this coin of personal health and value worth its full potential.