With a shutter I remember Christmas our main hired hand dropped out of work rotation for health reasons. It was right after school let out for Christmas break—funny how things like that always seemed to happen on dairy. Sixteen and oldest of kids left at home, I was called on to fill in. Halfway through first day, I realized I had somehow never noticed exactly how much that particular worker did.

For five solid days I either worked or slept, milked or slept, fed calves or slept until I felt very much like old Dunkin’ Donuts guy who meets himself coming back in door with greeting, “Time to make donuts” only to respond, “I made donuts.”

At time I didn’t realize there were other sixteen-year-olds who weren’t getting up before dawn to go out into cold and haul buckets around for hours on end. Sure my classmates didn’t live on dairies, but most of them either lived on farms or worked for other people who did.

In fact, in our little town, working hard wasn’t unusual—it was norm. You went to school, you went to church, and you worked. Simple as that.

The work ethic was learned early on simply by watching everyone else working around you. For example, I remember following my parents around barn when I was no more than five, begging them to let me do something. They could’ve assigned me to scrape muck off feeders, and I would’ve been happy because that meant I was helping, I was contributing, and that’s what made you somebody on farm.

Health and Fitness for Life

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Health

Health is a funny thing. It is given to us as a child and we enjoy it without any appreciation for having ability to do what we want to physically. We run, jump, skip and just have a ball with energy and fitness we have without having to work for it.

Life

As we grow into our early twenties, most of us slow down from our most active years and don't get as much 'natural' exercise. We walk less, definitely run less and for most part, 'settle in' to a more comfortable life of going to work and, eating on run, then getting home in time to watch TV all night. (not too much exercise in that, except for thumb - changing channels)

Fitness

As we approach and enter our thirties, we tend to gain a bit of weight, lose some muscle composition, and begin to notice that climbing a couple of flights of stairs leaves us 'catching our breath'. This is beginning of a long, downward spiral of loss of health and fitness that slowly sneaks up in us - next thing we know we are in our early forties and some of our friends are talking about best blood pressure pills or anxiety reducing medications over lunch. What has happened?

Simple Daily Strategies

The best way to stop plight of health decline is to begin with some simple daily strategies. One of biggest reasons that health improvement products are everywhere is that humans have a tendency to look for 'quick fix' and avoid having to commit to any long term fitness activity. We begin a diet or fitness program that lasts for twelve weeks and three days into it we rationalize that timeframe of program doesn't justify commitment - so we quit and forget about our health until next reminder shows up.

The solution is to create a short list of simple daily strategies that will keep us involved with making healthy choices, without causing us to give in and give up. Some examples of this strategy are to take stairs instead of elevator, park a block from work and walk extra five minutes, throw a couple of apples in your bag to take to work so you stay away from vending machine.

Some other ideas are:

- Do a little yard work instead of sitting down on couch after work.