For example, I know someone who will never eat any fast food item in their life. It’s just like, I know other people who eat fast food once a month or more and they’re 80 years old and haven’t died. You could never eat fast food and die before age 80.
The person who’s 80 got the experience of eating fast food.
Comments
It’s the quality of life.
A person who eats healthier and exercises will have less health issues than someone who is morbidly obese.
And even if both died at the same age, the healthier person would have better quality of life.
There needs to be a good balance. Sure you can’t predict death, but unhealthy habits, when done way beyond moderation, will reduce your lifespan.
Lower lifespan means you die earlier, means less life to experience (puns on preferring this alternative is redundant, don’t reply with it), which is bad.
Not only that, unhealthy habits will make the time you do live much less desirable, with a variety of health problems.
Now it is up to everyone themselves to decide on the level of balance between these two. Engage in an activity you enjoy but is unhealthy, but do so in moderation.
Being healthy is good. It makes life easier, it makes you better looking, stronger against disease, more active and makes you enjoy life. Being “extremely” healthy (like to the point of obsession) is an eating disorder.
Quality of life! Obviously some people take it to an extreme, but you’ll get more out of the 80 years if you SLEEP, work out, and eat healthy enough to support the first two
Quality of life and also because its logical and normal to feel pressure to stay alive for tomorrow even if youre going to go some day. I didnt roll out of bed today and blow my own head off because I remembered my mortality
You have clearly never seen someone die of organ failure. Liver and kidney failure is not how you want to go and living a healthy life can prevent that.
It’s more about chances. The more you risk, the higher the risk of something bad happening to you.
It is like saying “I know someone who tried Russian roulette and is still alive. Of course this statement is true, but in theory 1/6 people that try Russian roulette die. Of course in the case of fast food it could be something like 1/60.000.
But it is still 1/60.000 and not 0
What’s the point of a vacation when you’re just going back to work in a week? I’d imagine the purpose is to be physically able to enjoy your life vs being a disease riddled and crippled most of it. Quality vs quantity of life. 🤦
it’s about the quality of life during those years, not just the number of them. feeling good and having energy can make a big difference, even if the end result is the same for everyone. but yeah, life is unpredictable
Less doctor visits
Quality and length of life
Honestly this is something I talk about. Not everyone wants to live long lives. Some people prioritize the unhealthy behaviors because they enjoy it. Who are we to force people to live how we think they should?
You know how people who don’t exercise and eat whatever they feel like eventually start complaining about how everything hurts and they can’t do things like they used to?
It is about quality of life WHILE you are living 💜
May I interest you in the MAGA philosophy of not being vaxxed and not worrying about your health?
I imagine your proverbial 80-year-old-nothing-but-fast-food-person will be laden with all sorts of health issues associated with obesity/poor diet and taking gobs of medications and otherwise forced to be sedentary (to say nothing of mental capabilities). Vs the reasonably in shape and health 80 year old that is still active, able to travel/go out and about, and otherwise enjoy more aspects of life outside of their home, taking relatively fewer medications.
quality of life, not just duration.
Life is hard enough all by itself even when it’s pretty good.
It is a lot harder when you have to have a couple knee replacements… Or a hip replacement… Or type two diabetes… Or chronic pain… Etc.
My dad is 75 and has had both knees replaced, a triple bypass, and has type two diabetes he refuses to control. He has a generous pension and probably 750k in the bank. He always talked about how hard he worked his whole life so he would have something to leave his children and grandchildren… Because he hasn’t taken care of himself, that money will be eaten up in a nursing home in 3 to 5 years, easily.
What a waste.
Dude, you do NOT want to be alive and very unhealthy.
Healthspan. Once you hit the wall, your life becomes miserable and expensive. The wall gets pushed farther back the healthier you live early in life.
I see patients everyday with blindness, amputations, arthritis, from bad health choices early in life. They still make it to 80,90… but they wish they hadn’t
Life is what you make of it. Some people love to eat and may be be happiest eating different fast food places their entire life. Others may enjoy exercising and working on their health for theirs. Healthier person might die first. Life is weird. Do what makes you happy.
well part of it is to make the time you are alive nicer.
Like, I read memes constantly about “omg, I’m 30, my body is falling apart, I’m always in pain, I wake up with a broken back every day” and I’m 32 almost 33 and do not relate at all.
But that’s probably because I’ve regularly exercised since I was like 17. Not even anything crazy, just semi-regular running and gym-going over the years, sometimes with months or even years of breaks between, but always going back to it and trying to exercise.
Everyone’s body is different. It’s a preventative measure to take good care of yourself. Never eating junk food is too far though, you can be healthy and enjoy it once in a while.
More about moderation than extremes. Genetics come into play also. Gotta find the balance of what for you is enjoying the things in life and taking care of your self to a certain extent.
If you’re healthy you increase your odds of living longer, as well as having a higher quality of life, especially when you get older. People who exercise regularly, for example, will be able to remain more active later in life, while people who don’t are more likely to be confined to a bed or wheelchair in their sunset years.
Anything done to an extreme is unhealthy, even being healthy. Orthorexia is a thing.
While everyone dies, being active and choosing whole foods with lots of nutrients and like… what’s generally billed as a “healthy lifestyle”, can make your death somewhat easier. Like, how do you want to die? From heart disease because you eat a ton of salt and have untreated hypertension? Or liver cirrhosis because you eat super dense, fatty foods and consume enormous amounts of alcohol?
That said, there are no guarantees of health and longevity, no matter which choices you make. There are countless ways to meet your eventual demise that have nothing to do with personal choice. My mom, for example, was paralyzed in a car crash in a snowstorm despite making all the right choices; she owned a Subaru, downshifted instead of braking, she was traveling well within safe speed limits for the conditions but was rear-ended by someone in a huge truck and forced into oncoming traffic and hit head-on. She died after enduring three and an half years of intractable excruciating pain, constant complications, infections, loss of agency and autonomy and privacy and dignity.
All things considered, I want to enjoy life and that means some kind of balance. I am active so I can continue being active. I eat generally what I want because food is amoral. I avoid excess alcohol and sun and other known carcinogens. And I know my own personal health history. You can do what you can do.
Would you rather be 45 and have people go “wow I thought you were younger, you look great and have so much energy” or be 45 and look and feel 60?
It’s hilarious that people here think they can control what their body does. 😂
You could get to be very old and stay alive in pain and all sorts of health issues. You don’t even have to be that old to start going downhill and still have many more years to live like that and it just keeps getting worse. Or you could get to be very old and be healthy and not be miserable and feel old for the last few decades of your life.
I don’t know how old anyone here is, but say if you’re 25. A neat young adult age. That’s a lot of years too, say you don’t worry about your health and get to be 60 and you have to live 25 more years like it hurts to be active and so you don’t move and that compounds itself and makes your world smaller and smaller and less comfortable – for 25 more years! A lot of people don’t just croak when they get a little sick, it just snowballs a lot of troubles and you spend a good chunk of your life not able to enjoy many things. If you’re going to get old, you want to make the most of it, not wear out decades before the end. And fast food, who cares if they don’t eat it, it’s none of your business. It’s not an experience.
Everyone dies, but not everyone lives th3 same amount of time or with the same amount of comfort and wellbeing during that time.
There are always statistical outliers, but on average eating relatively well will give you more years of life and more years of comfortably active life tha. Eating poorly.
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lol. You don’t have the fear in you yet.
But someday you are going to be drowning, or a doctor is going to tell you that you have cancer, or a strange knife man is going to have a blade to your neck; you will worry. Anyone’s lack of worry about death is basically because you have a privileged life. Spoiler alert if it’s too privileged do you wanna commit suicide for no fucking reason?
Quality of life. My mom is a good example. She lived to age 86, but the last 10 years of her life were miserable because she neglected her health her whole life and her diet was horrendous. It caught up with her.
When I was unhealthy I kind of had this attitude. I didn’t exercise (if you never exercise why be in shape). I drank too much.. basically whenever I wanted and as much as I wanted.. (didn’t interfere with relationships or work) I ate whatever.. a lot of pizza and frozen junk from a cardboard box. I started doing some body weight squats or lunges one day in my kitchen and I felt sore the next day. Maybe even for 2 days.. embarrassing.. a combination of micro dosing psilocybin, a bout of mild depression and I just lost all my ability to justify my lifestyle.. it was like a switch in my brain was flipped.. I quit living for the moment quite so much. I feel so much better.. for so many reasons. Wish I hadn’t wasted most of my 20s and half my 30s before I figured this out.
Quality of life. Good food is nice- not having heart attacks and strokes is even better.
Quality of life is the right answer, but I just want to drill down on those last few years. Falls can be devastating, and poor fitness makes them more likely. Poor fitness also leaves you more vulnerable to things like congestive heart failure that didn’t kill you, but make your life much more difficult. Not taking care of your health may not have a huge impact when you’re young. But it can change your last years from positive to being miserable and knowing you’re a burden on others.
Because having health problems sucks and is costly and will likely reduce your lifespan. Nothing wrong with eating fast food once in while, but not every day, probably not even every week. While 0.1% get away with unhealthy lifestyles, 99.9% don’t.
The goal isn’t to live forever. It is to live without pain and sickness
It could add a few years to your life, which as far as I’m concerned is good to be alive.
Plus I really hope you don’t think of fast food as good to the point of something that shouldn’t be missed in someones life
Life is a balance between living in the moment and planning for the future.
I don’t look at it as living longer down the line, but living better now.
If I don’t have multiple routines in place and practice rigid disciplines in my daily life, I feel deeply unfulfilled and unmotivated.
I don’t really care if I die at 60 or 80. I want to live until then.
Im not dying for another 60 or so years (I hope) you think I want 60 years of back pain, poor hygiene, and an unhealthy diet?
The difference is pain. Death and suffering are two totally different things
Though also;
Living healthily has zero guarantee that you’ll experience a better quality of life. It’s Russian Roulette with genetics in the streets
I’ve been sick for about five years. I could cry when I see a runner (was one) or people drinking wine (doesn’t agree with meds) because I miss those things so much. Quality of life is super important and the healthier you are, the more enjoyable everything is, from the moment you wake up till the moment you close you eyes at night.
How do you know if because of their diet that 80yo will die at 82, but with a healthier diet could have lived to 98, and likely felt healthier for the last 20+ years? Just because someone is currently 80 doesn’t mean they haven’t had their life cut short by their diet.
And as others have said, it’s chance (maybe they’re the lucky one but 90% of people with their exact same diet die in their 60s), and also quality of life. I’m in my 40s and overweight. I DEFINITELY am feeling the effects of my diet making my life more difficult (energy, stamina, mobility) even if I have zero illnesses at this point in my life, where some of my healthier peers have health issues known to be made worse by poor diet.
At some point, most olds decide to be healthier because we’ve probably experienced the consequences of unhealthy behaviors and habits, or just simply, age-related aches and pains. It catches up with you eventually. Regarding that fast food, I’ve been eating healthy most of my adult life, so when I eat fast food I feel sick. I don’t want to feel sick, because when you get older, you feel sick for longer. I don’t do anything that disrupts my sleep, my next day, or my digestive system, because … why suffer when you don’t have to? It throws you out of the game longer when you’re older.
So you can live without worrying about aches, pains, and medical debt. Yes I can die tmrw, but I’d rather not be in pain until then
At age 75, do you want to be chasing your grandkids around the yard, or in a wheelchair with tubes up your nose?
Healthspan v lifespan.
Feeling good for a very long time. A lot of people break down in their 30s because of bad diet and lack of exercise.
For one thing, it won’t always be true that everyone dies. Death is a technical problem we will solve sooner or later. (My guess? Probably around 2050… but with how fast AI is advancing, it could be much sooner.)
To get from here to there, there’s always https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
And as for fast food… I’ve had some. Is the experience really all that valuable?
Top comment already said it. Quality of life. But it goes beyond not having health problems.
You’re happier. Life is easier. Everything feels better. Like 100x better.
This I know. I used to be unhealthy and overweight, and now I’m fit and strong. Life is extremely different
If I knew I was dying tomorrow I wouldn’t eat fast food today lmao
To watch your enemies die.
I agree but that’s because I have a condition which severely affects my quality of life way more than any food anyway
Healthier people are sexier
Everyone makes their own decisions about what they believe will benefit them the most. Some people have strong ideas about health, and want to prioritize taking measures they believe will improve their health. It may or may not make a difference in their quantity or quality of life. People who never eat fast food and still have heart attacks or cancer. People who eat fast food every day can live past 90.
Most people will concede that fast food isn’t optimal for health. But other choices—vaccines, fluoride, soy, beef, sunlight etc. etc.—don’t have universal consensus about their healthfulness. So even if there was a universal agreement that health should come ahead of joy, we wouldn’t agree on what healthy choices are.
Have you ever pooped? Do you know the difference between a healthy BM and a sick BM? Ever been constipated or had loose stools for weeks? Maybe your kidneys hurt from all the Mountain Dew? Ever pass a kidney stone or a gallstone? Trust me, chicken tendies and Le Dew doesn’t hit the same after passing a kidney stone.
It’s more about the quality of life while you’re living it. There’s nothing wrong with some McDonald’s here and there. Have a drink or a hamburger from time to time. Just don’t make it your all the time. You can still eat, drink, be merry, and be healthy. Growing up in the South and being a FF for a time. I saw a lot of people who excused their lifestyle with, “my daddy told me when God says it’s your time, it’s your time.” So they just keep on smoking and drinking. We kept putting them in ambulances.
Nobody gets out alive.
Still, being at least reasonably healthy will definitely make the time you got more enjoyable, and if you’re lucky might help you squeeze a bit more time in here in the ole mortal coil. It’s just something you gotta weigh out, cause you can drive yourself insane maximizing every single decision to the “healthiest” option but genetics/bad luck/one wrong decision can see you dead or disabled at any time. So moderation is always key. Sometimes it’s fine to splurge, most of the time you just wanna be reasonable. My wife is disabled and I can tell you, being able-bodied and at least relatively healthy is an incredible boon that’s hard to truly appreciate until you fucking lose it.
Define “extremely” and “healthy”. Anything in extream is bad for you. I live in southern California, land of diet culture and abs. I have more friends suffering sports injury complications than age issues. I don’t want to live with a busted knee joint from age 40 till death, so I workout and eat vegetables, but moderately. It’s for the short-term feel good benefits, not the long term ones.
Yes, we all die, but when we are alive we want to avoid high medical bills, being unable to walk or sit comfortably, and feeling uncomfortable before we die.
Just to live a little longer.
The difference is living weak and in pain and suffering for decades with ill health,or having fun and enjoying life at its fullest.
As long as we’re stuck on this rock, we might as well ha e a good time and enjoy it.
Nobody enjoys being sick. Or maybe, you do ?
Health allows for more wealth, comfort, options, flexibility, and security.
As someone who doesn’t have a good support system and doesn’t live under a government that values human life or offer medical care, I would be horrifically vulnerable if my health were to decline such that I needed expensive treatment. I will inevitably lose mobility, strength, and independence as I age: I need to prolong my health and independence as much as possible.
Because you can die in your 80s two ways:
Or
You die in both. But the way you are die does matter.
Balance. You don’t get to live forever, but you could live in pain forever. You could spend your whole life doing nothing to stay safe, but did you live it then? If you only eat healthy, then did you ever get to nourish your mind and soul? Sure, the body got food, but the brain never got that cupcake. If you do the opposite, then your body becomes weak and sluggish. Life is all about balance. However, it’s also about picking your poison. some things will kill you (or cripple you) faster than others or at a less extreme. Eating extremely healthy will normally be less detrimental than eating extremely unhealthy. Both can be bad but both in my opinion are needed for a good and long life.
There’s diminishing returns on improvements in lifestyle.
Suppose you were eating McDonald’s every single day (365 days per year) to about 1/10th of that (37 days per year, or about 3 times per month) – that’s going to have a very very noticeable impact.
But suppose you were eating McDonald’s 3 times per month and cut it back to 1/10th of that – now you’re only eating McDonalds about 4 times per year. Probably still some improvements, but no where near as much improvement as noticed in the previous example.
Now suppose you were only eating McDonalds 4 times per year and cut that back to 1/10th as often – you’d now be eating McDonald’s about once every 3-4 years. This change isn’t going to result in the same drastic improvements as the other two scenarios.
You don’t get the same results back for more and more effort, so for many people it may not be worth it. Only you can decide, but for the majority of people, that tiny fraction of a difference in improvement in health in the last reduction there isn’t going to be worth fretting over at all.
It’s not just about Longevity, but rather Quality of life. I don’t think anyone wants to be 40-50 with the health & body of an 80 year old, or living in a 600lb body.
There’s also the focus of mitigating risks. A lot of things are out of our control, like Genetics and Environment, which can predispose us to certain conditions. So you focus on what IS controllable (diet & exercise) to mitigate risks.
For example, Diabetes and Heart conditions run in my family. I’ve watched as family members’ quality of life suffered due to those issues. So I’m going to make conscious healthy choices to try and lessen my risks, and if it still happens, I will be in a better place to manage it so I can do the things I enjoy.
Sure there are freak accidents that cut life short or chain smokers living until they’re 90, but life is unpredictable and chaotic like that.
Are you talking about balance? Or a bunch of American fatties?
better life. been healthy means I have some more energy to do the shit I want
Because you don’t want to be in your 50s with joint pain and necrotic amputated feet unable to take care of yourself or go anywhere without help
Being healthy does not mean abstaining from fast food, it just means you don’t eat it in excess. The reason why people choose to be healthy is because of the improved quality of life. One thing you have to remember is that the human mind and body are extremely adaptable, which is a double-edged sword. Humans evolved to take the path of least resistance. It made for a good survival strategy, but it’s not very helpful in the modern world. This means that your brain will always want to take the easiest route to do something, but if you constantly go against it and do what you should be doing, eventually your brain will build a tolerance and it will not only become tolerable but even enjoyable.
Our brain is also heavily dependent on our habits. This quality can be both very beneficial and very detrimental. On one hand, if you’re always getting fast food, it’s going to be hard to break that habit. But on the other hand, if you go to the gym consistently enough for it to become habitual, you’ll find that you won’t have to motivate yourself to go to the gym because that’s just what your brain expects you to do.
So you don’t feel like shit in the meantime. My dad died at 74. However, he was severely physically limited starting in his late 40s when his unhealthy lifestyle caught up with him. He was alive those last 25 years but he missed out on so many experiences as his body slowly became a prison. A third of his life. That’s why I prioritize (mostly) healthy living.
Quality of life matters too
I mean, without wishing to nudge anyone in a bad direction, life is literally what’s made of it, at every point. There’s no prizes for most paths, it’s about personal satisfaction. A healthier life give you more time in control of what you can do in life, probably less pain/less restrictions, better quality.
There’s the old “quote” from one of the greek philosophers around it being a requirement/”shame to not” experience the strength and beauty the human form is capable of.
So you’ll be more likely to die later
I don’t like fast food
It makes me feel good about myself as I live.
A longer and healthier life, better quality of life. Lower risk of many devistating diseases.
I work as an EMT doing routine interfacility transfers, taking people from the hospital to physical rehabilitation and things like that. So I see a lot of people who are elderly.
And there are a lot of sixty year olds who are older than a lot of ninety year olds. I’m fifty-one, and I occasionally meet someone who’s my age and has been a heavy smoker and drinker their whole life, and they look genuinely elderly. And then the next person I meet is ninety-five and is in the hospital because they broke their ankle doing a five mile cross-country run. Now, if you break your ankle at ninety-five, it’s going to take a lot longer to heal than if you’re younger – that may have been the last time that guy ever ran that distance. But he still would be getting around with a cane rather than being bedridden – the fifty-year-old couldn’t get out of bed.
Heavy smoking and drinking ages you. Stress ages you. After those, though, the next thing is genetics and dumb luck.
But the next thing after genetics and dumb luck is diet and exercise.
Fast food once a month isn’t going to do anything. Fast food once a week is unlikely to do anything bad. Fast food three times a week … now you’re gonna maybe have some issues long term.
Or not – again, genetics and dumb luck is a bigger role than diet.
But the point is this: do you want to be largely bedridden at seventy, or able to walk a couple miles at age ninety five? It’s not a question of how many years you get – it’s a question of how many good years you get.
I’m unhealthy (disabled, even) and feel like shit 24/7/365. I have thousands and thousands of dollars in medical debt.
Some people presumably don’t want either of those those things.
Not suffering while you are alive. A lot of the consequences of not eating healthy or exercising don’t kill you – they just make being alive extremely unpleasant.
I’d never live a life without a bit of guilty pleasures in there…
But everything in moderation – even moderation 😉
Also physical exercise!
Take it from someone who has numerous health issues that drastically impact my life, it’s miserable. It’s a struggle to do anything and if I had taken steps even a decade ago my body probably wouldn’t be in such bad shape as it is now. Living a sedentary life and eating an unhealthy diet has made all of my health issues significantly worse.
If you eat processed foods and fast food, you will always be sick, fat and in pain all the time. Some people live long even if they are fat but they feel horrible all the time
I used to eat fast food more. Working out, eating healthy, and sleeping is better overall life experience than the weird rush from a fast food meal immediately followed by feeling bloated and lethargic for so long.
Most of the time, the healthy choices are the ones that I genuinely prefer over the unhealthy ones. I didn’t grow up eating a diet high in sugar or ultra processed food, so I don’t feel a constant craving for those things. I prefer eating things like kimchi tofu stew or shakshuka to most fast food. Most soda is disgustingly sweet, and I prefer having a cup of tea instead. I don’t find most junk food appealing either, and prefer high-quality fruit from the farmers’ market. I don’t like the feeling of being drunk, so I don’t drink much and limit myself to 1-2 drinks on the occasions that I do. My main vices are ice cream and bubble tea (with less added sugar), but I’m fine with having those once a week or so.
I think you would be able to find many Asian people who feel similarly.
Other reasons for myself:
That’s actually a pretty interesting question.
Being healthy makes the journey to death easier and less painful/difficult.
Think of it this way. You are going to drive a car for the next 10 years. If you take care of the car, routine maintenance, it will have less problems over the 10 years. Or you do zero maintenance and just deal with things when they break/fail/etc.
Which would be better?
Cool I can answer this, i’m a retired ICU RN.
Contrary to popular belief people don’t just die in their sleep. People who don’t take care of themselves pick up very debilitating, chronic diseases such as diabetes heart disease kidney failure lung disease. And when they die, they die very slow, expensive, painful deaths usually after years or even a decade of low quality of life
I (f71) lift weights and swim and power walk so that I have fewer years of disability before my death. If I get a few extra years, that’s a bonus. But what i’m trying to avoid are the years of disability and decline.
How old are you? Sometimes the answer to this become abundantely clear as you get older and your body starts to give out.
Being healthy is not just about longevity, it’s about quality of life. As you get older things start to cascade pretty quickly. You may have been fat in your youth and it was fine but now that fatness has other negative effects on you: sleep apnea, plantar fasciitis, gout, bad knees, etc etc
Things sort of compound after a while and it’s good to control what you are able to to mitigate the inevitable. We are all going to get old and start feeling shitty – some people have a head start on it, though.
“What’s the point of being alive if you’re eventually going to die?”. Living a longer life feeling better is generally worth it. There’s a lot of leeway between eating only McDonalds/smoking/taking heroin and never eating fast food/running 20 miles a day/avoiding sunlight.
Chronic illness is an awful. Being healthy makes you live longer AND better.
My mom has been chronically ill since 2002 likely due to lifestyle (smoking a pack of cigs every day, drinking only a 2L of coke and then Diet Coke for years, working hard, laborious jobs) and it just seems awful to get lung cancer because you just wouldn’t stop smoking. She’s had more than lung cancer too.
I just wouldn’t want to put myself through having to remove parts of my body to survive the choices I willingly made.
Happier until you die?
I’m currently hung over. This sucks. It’s my fault.
Some people really enjoy exercise. I’ve heard then talk about it like a drug, where they get “high” when they run or do cardio. Some people love structure and discipline. These people tend to turn what would be a vice into self aggrandizing virtue: “I exercise daily and eat right!”
Others of us have chronic pain and exercise hurts, for hours after we stop. Dieting is extremely stressful and alien to us. Life is a constant struggle, and we hate ourselves for it.
I’m at the age where my friends are starting to die. Healthy ones and the not so healthy. My oldest friends are the second type, never paid attention to what they ate, and never really exercised. My mother was that way, and outlived all her friends, dying at 96.
Statistics tell a different story, of course, and I wonder why my personal experience is so different. I wonder if modern medicines, that control blood pressure and cholesterol even for fat lazy people, are starting to challenge those stats.
I always think about if I’m driving on a bridge and my car falls into the water I’m cooked as a fat guy
Healthy generally means you live longer. Yes everyone dies but do you want to die at 60 or 80? In addition being healthy makes the life you live more comfortable and easier. I’m not healthy and I’ve been overweight for a long time. I’m 51 and everything hurts all the time. I can’t enjoy a lot of activities any more. Meanwhile, last time I was trudging slowly and painfully around Disney being miserable in the heat, I saw plenty of health people 10+ years older than me just zipping around having a great time.
Does that mean you should never indulge in anything unhealthy? No. There are plenty of unhealthy things that are perfectly fine when done in moderation. The occasional fast food meal isn’t going to be an issue. Eating fast food on a regular basis for an extended period of time is going to be an issue. But your friend may not want to start down a road that is known to be addictive. Just as I won’t even try recreational drugs because I know there is a good chance I’ll get addicted. It is much easier to abstain from potentially unhealthy things if you have never tried them.
It’s how you die. I’ve seen people suffer for years, and, I’ve seen people go out like a light. Staying healthy was always a better choice.
I’m trying to get fit to keep up with my kids lol
It’s about feeling good enough to enjoy the time you have here, while you have it.
What’s the point of brushing your teeth? They just get dirty again
Being healthy increases the odds of living longer, Being unhealthy does the opposite.
But there are no guarantees and life is fragile.
Increasing your odds of dying early ONLY because all humans die is a pretty fucking stupid way to go about life.
Kronos was the first parent to realize that maybe swallowing is not a 100% reliable way to stop conception.
I spend a lot of time around old people, in the 80’s and 90’s. There are no obese people in the cohort, they are long gone by that point. Everyone I know that age is thin.
To not suffer when you are older
Realistically, there’s not really any health reason to never eat fast food. Basically anything that isn’t literally toxic is fine in moderation. Eating fast food 1, 2, hell even like 6 times a month isn’t going to realistically do any damage to you, especially if you’re eating a modestly sized meal (that’s the biggest key). You’re not going to experience anything short or long term from that.
Eating unhealthy food as a significant percentage of your diet over an extended period of time is what’s going to cause problems and most likely shorten your lifespan. Your body will be completely fine getting subpar nutritional value from a meal every so often. Your body will not be fine having subpar nutrition more often than not.
If we die anyway, why bother living?
You feel better physically and mentally. When you get in a habit and you get healthy, you notice a significant difference in your quality of life. All of us are born, and all of us die, but only few of us live – said by someone.
Quality of life when you’re old.
I want to be as healthy as I can to enjoy my late years as happy and pain-free, as I can.
I do eat what I want on Sundays. I even drink on Friday and Saturday. I eat what I want in vacations. I’m not trying to live too restricted when I’m young, either.
I have the same view on money. It’s a balance of fun and investment.
holding out till they develop a cure for aging.
Quality of life. You can still live a long time eating like crap. But will your life be better? Will you be happier long term by being too fat to enjoy a hike or bike ride or just not die from a flight of stairs? What about just fitting into a seat on an airplane or at a baseball game? Will your children enjoy the fact that you won’t ever have energy for them or that you can’t fit into a rollercoaster seat with them?
So you don’t feel like shit the last 20 years.
The goal is to be healthy so you can enjoy your life. When you’re I’ll you’re often stuck in bed, bound by tons of medical appointments, in pain, etc, or die before you get to do things you want.
It feels good being healthy. It also feels good drinking a 6 pack. People just pick the ‘yumm’ they prefer.
My grandma is in her 80s, she had a very healthy lifestyle, lived a great and healthy life. Now she eats junk food and ice cream almost every day, she says “I’m tired, I’m over life, nothing to look forward to anymore, what should I maintain this old body for, I’m done, it eases the pain and I might as well enjoy the last few years I have with a big ol’ bowl of ice cream”
When you live healthy, you’re trying to avoid dying from the avoidable things. Obviously if your family has a history of cancer you won’t be able to stop it from happening eventually (we can’t stop genetics yet), but if you die earlier than that because you got diabetes and never changed your diet, then that’s just shitty overall, right? You could’ve lived to 80 where a genetically unavoidable sickness could’ve killed you, but you died at 50 instead because your pancreas gave up halfway through your life and your blood sugar could not go down fast enough to prevent necrosis of your body parts and sepsis.
Additionally, we’re all saving for retirement so we can have really fun times with our families once we’re done working. It’d be lame if you plan to travel the world, but because you never exercised or stretched you lost the ability to bend over without feeling pain in your spine. Good luck walking around the house without some kind of walker, much less getting on a plane for international flights. Imagine if your partner kept themselves in shape and could have great fun with their grandkids doing anything and everything while you’re that one grandparent who does nothing but sit down whenever they visit.
None of this means you should never eat fast food or not work out for weeks or months at a time. That’s fine every once in a while, but you need to make sure your fuel is clean and your maintenance is done properly and on time. Your body is a machine, and letting it rust and dry out is not going to help if you’re trying to live past 80.
To live better before you die. Extremely healthy is probably overrated, but staying somewhat fit and eating somewhat well will make you feel so much better.
Prolonging the inevitable with the least amount of suffering.
What’s the point of doing anything? You could slip in your bathroom, hit your head wrong and die tonight. You could get hit by a car tomorrow.
The point is to live as well as possible, and health necessarily affects your quality of life greatly at all stages of life. I’ve met 35 year olds who looked like 60 year olds and I’ve met 90 year olds as active as a 50 year old. We try to be as healthy as possible to have the best quality of life, best mental health, least amount of pain…
Yes you could abstain from fast food and exercise regularly only to die next week. But since that is a big unknown, you just assume you won’t and try to be healthy anyway.
You’re getting the same 200 responses, so I guess I’ll play devil’s advocate-ish.
If you knew, with absolute certainty, you were gonna die at 27, then live like a rock star and go out with a bang.
If you knew, with absolute certainty, you were gonna die at 45, then live it up, but don’t get too crazy until your early 40s.
If you knew, with absolute certainty, you were gonna live to see 85, then eat your fruits and veggies, exercise, and try to avoid alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Might as well feel good during your long life, instead of in poor health and in a poor mood.
The thing is, we don’t know. It’s a gamble. We hope we live to see 105 or after. And living healthy isn’t just about living to 105 or after. It’s about the feeling of hope for the future. And feeling hopeful about the future is the entire point of continuing to go on. Not as individuals, but as a species.
NASH, diabetes, spondylosis, high blood pressure, and other chronic conditions will have you in a lot of pain and restrict your diet to the point of having to eat very bland foods to stay alive. Someone in a loved one’s family got gangrene in their penis because of diabetic neglect and had to get it cut off. They eventually died of septic shock.
You can’t guarantee a painless death but your habits can all but guarantee a painful one.
Fast food is not necessarily bad for you, and not eating it doesn’t necessarily make you healthier so you’re simply talking to some people that don’t know what healthy even means.