Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Good news! The Miami Boat Show is com­ing soon!

As a Florid­ian and boater, I love attend­ing these kind of events, and wan­der­ing among and on board water­craft of all types, sizes and prices. It’s astound­ing how many dif­fer­ent choices a poten­tial pur­chaser has in boats. (Not that I’m in the mar­ket, but I love to look.)

Why so much diver­sity? Do we really need hun­dreds of mod­els of boats?

Per­haps we could do with a lit­tle less com­plex­ity, but much of the vari­ety reflects the dif­fer­ences in how boats are used. There is no per­fect boat. Each ves­sel is a com­pro­mise of form and fea­tures as the designer seeks to accom­plish a best fit for the craft’s intended use.

A lit­tle more cock­pit space for fish­ing means a lit­tle less liv­ing space inside. More inte­rior room and sta­bil­ity mean less speed. More sophis­ti­cated elec­tron­ics means a higher price. (It seems that a lot of things I like mean a higher price!).

Every­thing is bal­anced in an effort to pro­duce the best “total pack­age,” a com­plete boat suit­able for its intended use.

Your life and health are like this too.

As you design them, you’ll need to make trade offs. How do you cre­ate your best life and good health? How do you bal­ance time, money and atten­tion to achieve what you want in the total pack­age?

Do you spend a lit­tle less time at work and a lit­tle more time with your fam­ily? How about prepar­ing more healthy meals at home and eat­ing less fast food? Or could you decrease your TV view­ing and increase your exer­cise?

Many, per­haps even most, peo­ple aren’t will­ing to make these trade offs for bet­ter health. Could you be one of them?

Have you ever said or thought any of these state­ments?

• I have no time for exer­cise.
• I don’t have the money to join a gym.
• It’s too hard to eat right.
• It costs too much to buy healthy food.

But, the truth is, these are not state­ments of fact. They’re actu­ally ways of jus­ti­fy­ing the choices you’ve made — ways of excus­ing your­self from choos­ing to make the trade offs nec­es­sary for bet­ter health and well­ness.

Really what you’re say­ing is:

• I choose not to make time for exer­cise.
• I choose not to find the money to join a gym by spend­ing less else­where.
• I’m not will­ing to fig­ure out a way of healthy eat­ing that works for me.
• I choose not to spend more money to buy healthy food.

So stop excus­ing your­self.

Be hon­est. You can be healthy and well if you want to be.

You can make the choices or trade offs needed to bal­ance your health with the rest of your life. Grab a copy of “More Health Less Care” and get started.

You can do it!