Health means absence of pathology. Being in a state of health means all your bodily functions are normal and you don’t have any illness or disease. Individuals with normal functioning of body can be called as a healthy individual.
Health
“Unfortunately this word called “health” is thrown around randomly without understanding depth of it and actually what it means to have health.”
Against the popular belief that whenever we see a chubby kid or slightly overweight kid we call them healthy, individuals with round cheeks or slightly fuller appearance always gets compliment – he/she is healthy. Actually most of the time having chubby appearance or slightly overweight body is an early sign of person having poor nutrition and moving towards abnormality, masking and ignoring the real problem with unscientific culturally accepted notion of health is the reason why India has second-highest number of obese children.
When it comes to adults, a person with flat stomach and thin structure is generally called healthy. I worked with so many individuals who looked and would fit in to the category of healthy by culturally and socially accepted notion of being healthy, but had various many internal issues like weakness, being skinny fat, disturbed hormones, mental and emotional issues, infertility, digestion and constipation to name a few. Such Issues by no means should be considered as healthy even though a person may look slim or have flat stomach .
Health is a basic requirement for well-being
“It’s time we need to shift our focus from how we look at health and take the necessary action to actually be healthy and move society and culture towards true well-being.”
Fitness
Fitness is measure of your physical capability to do work. Fitness is task specific, it is your ability to perform a particular task effectively. In simple words, your ability to run cannot help you swim or your ability to lift weight cannot help you play cricket. If you are fit for tennis game does not necessarily mean that you are fit for basketball game, both of these activities involve different muscular recruitment, different skill sets and different training methods. So keep in mind that fitness is always task specific.
Commonly people use this term called fit or fitness without referring to the task or the activity a person is good at, which puts everyone in the same category of being fit. Health is normalcy and a must requirement for task specific fitness. When you are healthy you can consider improving a particular function of your body by training or develop skill set to perform a particular activity by training and practice.
Trying to improve task specific fitness without being healthy first is a negative load on the entire body and instead of improving performance it compromises overall health. It is very important that you always focus on achieving health first (absence of pathology, normal functioning of human system) and then start your journey on the path of task specific fitness to improve quality of life.
Steps to follow for beginners
First build health then go for task specific fitness
Tools – Customized nutrition plan, suitable lifestyle modifications and customized workout plan
Once you have stable physical and mental health you can pick a task specific fitness to challenge your system and unleash your true genetic potential to perform at the peak of your natural capacity.
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