Prioritizing Your Health: If Not Now, When?
by Carrie Myers Smith

Where does your health rank on your list of priorities? As women, we sometimes feel that it would be selfish or vain to care too much about our health. After all, there are kids to cart around, a home to take care of, a business to run, a spouse to serve — the list is endless. If we took time to devote to ourselves, what would people think? The guilt would be too much. Who has time anyway? Hence, we put off the fitness class, refuse to manage our stress or indulge in emotional eating — or no eating at all!

Fast-forward ten years from now. If you continue with your current lifestyle, what shape will you be in at that point? Study after study points to the ill effects of inactivity, of not eating a healthy diet, of not getting enough rest, of not managing stress. At some point, an unhealthy lifestyle will catch up to you. Lack of sleep alone (it’s been shown our bodies run best when we average eight hours of sleep — just like your mother told you) has been implicated as an increased risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. 

As women we’re natural caregivers. We are born with bents to take care of others. This is an awesome trait! However, the problem is that when we give and give and give, and don’t replenish ourselves, eventually, we can no longer give at all. Our unhealthy lifestyle catches up to us, and we no longer have the health or energy to continue to give in the capacity we desire. 

Which brings me back to my original question: Where does your health rank on your list of priorities? Is it in your top three? If so, you may already be living a life of wellness. Or you’re ready to begin making some necessary changes. If you can’t say your health ranks that far up your list, it’s time to do some soul-searching. Passion, or a desire to improve your health, must be high on your list of what’s important to you in order to make true, lasting change. Consider the smoker whose family wants her to quit smoking. She does it “for them.” Because she’s depending on external motivation (her family), chances are her attempts, while noble, won’t last. Ditto for the overweight woman whose doctor tells her she needs to drop some pounds. If she is not passionate about making the necessary changes — if losing weight is not important to her or she feels there are too many obstacles for her to overcome — and she depends on external motivation (her doctor), her weight loss will simply be a quick-fix, and ultimately, a "quick fizzle."

If you need to move your health higher on your list, ask yourself: How would my life — including business and family — improve if I had more health, more energy, more strength, more rest? How would my life improve if I just plain felt better — both in general and about myself? Are there things I want to do now, but don’t have the energy for? Only you can answer these questions, and the possible replies are endless. Simply answering these questions, though, is the first step in moving you closer to a life filled with passion — for your family, friends, business and health.

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Carrie Myers Smith, a certified personal trainer, speaker and licensed wellness coach, owns Women In Wellness, a free wellness club. Her work has appeared in many national magazines and her first book, "Squeezing Your Size 14 Self into a Size 6 World: A Real Woman’s Guide to Food, Fitness, and Self-Acceptance," is an award-winning book helping women change their minds about their bodies. Carrie lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with her husband and four sons.