Are you a liability?

That's the question you should be asking yourself.

Are you a liability at your job? In your home?

In NY, we just had Hurricane Sandy. Crazy storm that had wide spread damage. What if you were one of the unlucky people that had everything wiped out? What if you were stuck and had to help other people? Would you be able to? Are you healthy enough, or fit enough to be useful, or are you out of shape, unhealthy and require someone else to help you survive? to get out?
Hopefully the answer is "yea I can manage myself." Hopefully you can.

A great story that illustrates my point comes out of NYU Hospital in NYC. The nurses there had some serious work on their hands. They had to evacuate 20 newborn babies down 13 flights of stairs, carefully as some were sick and needed extra attention. Do you think they could have done all that if they were not healthy and in any kind of physical shape? The story is not only a testament to the great work that the nurses do, but also to the fitness level of all of the women that helped out. Here's the story if you want to check it out: NYU Nurses

At home, are you able to play with your kids? That's the one thing that keeps me going back to my workouts. The one thing that has me working on my mobility and trying my best to stay in shape. I want to be able to run around with my son AND keep up with him. Are you able to do work around the house? Yard work, house work? Laundry? Or are you so out of breath, so out of shape, that you physically can't do anything but lay on the couch, which leads to more inactivity and even more unhealthiness.

What about at work? Are you putting everything you can in terms of work capacity into your job? Or is your health holding you back from being a productive member of the team? If you're out of shape and unhealthy, do you think you'll be able to have the same output as someone who is healthy and in shape at work? When you lead an unhealthy life, you are bound to miss more time at work due to illness or doctor appointments. You are bound to have less energy than your fitter coworkers and therefore get less done during the workday. This decreases not only your capacity to work but it will decrease your value as an employee. If you have no value as an employee, then what are the chances you keep your job?

Tough, harsh questions. Maybe a little insensitive, but such is the world we live in where the obesity rates are climbing and the activity levels are dropping. You can't just beat around the bush to get someones attention, you have to be straight forward. You can call people out on being smokers and kick them out of bars/restaurants, or being alcoholics, but there is this oversensitivity when you call someone out on being out of shape and overweight. Why? I would think the same logic applies.

Are you useful to society when disaster strikes(zombie apocalypse anyone?) or are you going to hold people back, needing others to save you all the time. It's not an easy thing to ask, and it may be a little insensitive, but in order to survive, you need to be able to help out and not be a hindrance. Or even just for self survival. If you're being chased by someone (zombie?) you can?t stop to rest or call a time out because you're out of breath. You have to keep going, keep pushing on. There's no way to do that if you're out of shape.

Now it comes out that the military is kicking people out for being out of shape (out of shape soldiers). Well that's great. We have an army of unhealthy, unfit people. How the hell are we going to protect our country when all our soldiers are out of shape. According to the article, the number of personnel deemed overweight or obese has tripled between 1998 and 2010. Even worse than being overweight and out of shape, recruits that even make it to training are so screwed up when it comes to movement patterns that they fail anyway. They can't do basics like rolling, running, jumping, or crawling. Since our lives have become more sedentary, movement patterns have gotten awful, and we have sub par recruits to protect the country. Being healthy and fit is now a matter of national security.

You owe it to yourself, your family, your coworker, society, and your country to live a healthier life, get active, get moving and increase your ability to do more work. Otherwise you'll just get left behind.

Survival of the Fittest!!