The Case for the 5 Factors of Health

The traditional definition of health is, “the absence of disease.” While that’s a simple way to state it, the absence of disease is low-hanging fruit when it comes to living a healthy life. Your body can be absent of disease while still leading a life of misery and discontentment. It’s important to see health in a holistic sense. True health must be seen as something much more than existing without an acute or chronic sickness. To me, health and vitality are synonymous. Vitality isn’t just living without sickness, it’s living with vigor and purpose. Vitality is waking up every day knowing there’s a reason for it and making the most of the opportunity. Vitality is improving yourself so that you can impact the things around you. Vitality is acting as a source of energy for other people and other things. 
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The way to vitality is taking control over how we eat, sleep, train, think, and connect. While the purpose of this journal isn’t to serve as a log for training or nutrition, the focus on health is critical in the pursuit of living effective, productive, and fulfilling lives. 
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When you focus on these areas of health you are quite literally optimizing yourself as a human being. Someone with great habits in these 5 areas will operate at a higher  capacity than someone who neglects caring for themselves in these ways. If you want to live a powerful life, you must back it with habits that power your body. 

There’s no endgame here. It’s not about getting to a perfect body or being able to lift a certain weight. The process is the point. Focusing on these 5 factors is what fuels you to live each day with passion and purpose.

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, man can attain perfection. - Plato