At No Biscuits, we are pretty clear about what we are doing.
It’s more of a question to you.
How far do you, or could you, look and plan ahead?
A month, a year or five years?
We are asking you to stretch that by maybe decades, especially if you are in the “first half of the game”.
If the current average life span is 80 years, and we allow 80 years to be equal to 80 minutes, and 80 minutes is two halves of a sporting game, then if you are under 40 – you are still in the first half of the game. You could still be able to burn energy, run around at speed and have a low risk of injury. But in the second half, the underlying fitness and training level will inevitably show itself.
So the question is – how far can you look ahead?
It could be good news if you make it to 80, quantitively it might sound ok?
But at No Biscuits, we want to focus on life quality and health span, much more so than just life span. Get the health span right and life span should look after itself.
In the USA, lifespan, although now unbelievably in decline, currently averages out overall at about 79 years, but here comes the real shocker, the true shocker.
The average health span in the US, according to Peter Diamantis is 63. I suppose that this statement is supported by the fact that around 88% of the US population as defined by the World Health Organisation has metabolic syndrome, so is essentially suffering with some form of medical issue.
And this is further reinforced by a US doctor Karl Zarse in this clip, who states that the wistful comments that he hears very often from his patients are:
“I can’t believe how long this illness has been lasting, 5, 10, 15, 20 years.”
and:
“I wish I had done something about it earlier”
Now the absence of time travel prevents us from testing how it feels to be sick in the future, for years and years, as health declines toward a debilitating and slow demise. But IF we can learn something from this, it brings us to the main point of No Biscuits and the mission statement that we have chosen.
So here it is:
“Narrowing the gap between health span and life span, while increasing both”.
It does summarise what maybe most people, including myself, had not realised. When you are in a long term mode of repeat behaviour, and you feel no immediate consequence of that negative behaviour, the habit holds you in that rhythm until something causes you to change.
And this returns us to the other motto of No Biscuits:
“Change your life, before life changes you”.
Find your motivation, build a project, think long term, start the journey, make little, simple, daily changes and see what happens.