It is of para­mount im­por­tance for both men and women of all ages to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to their bod­ies. How­ev­er, it has been sta­tis­ti­cal­ly proven that women are do­ing a bet­ter job of this than men. Why is that?

I have been in the Health and Well­ness in­dus­try for over 40 years. My reach ex­tends to re­gions like Ger­many, Cana­da, USA and the Caribbean and I can safe­ly say that most of the peo­ple I have worked with, es­pe­cial­ly in groups, were fe­male.

Could it be that the pack­ag­ing of most Health and Well­ness pro­grammes ap­peal more to women and sub­lim­i­nal­ly con­di­tion men to view self care as a fem­i­nine con­cept? Could it be that the lessons that men are taught from an ear­ly age by their par­ents/guardians or by cul­tur­al ref­er­enc­ing to ‘man up’, make them view seek­ing av­enues for self care as an in­di­ca­tion of weak­ness or fem­i­nin­i­ty? I am not sure, but what I do know, is that men need to ‘turn it up’. We are too com­fort­able in an un­healthy body. Many of us look old­er than we re­al­ly are and, in most cas­es, this hinges di­rect­ly on a bad di­et and a lack of ex­er­cise. The com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor I hear al­most dai­ly is “I re­al­ly want to start an ex­er­cise pro­gramme but I just don’t have the time or I just don’t have the mon­ey”. This is just an ex­cuse in my view be­cause of­ten­times it’s eas­i­er for these men to spend hours clean­ing their cars or lim­ing with ‘the boys’ im­bib­ing ex­pen­sive al­co­hol, than to al­lo­cate min­i­mal sums to­ward a gym mem­ber­ship or an ex­er­cise pro­gramme. Even a five-minute walk is of­ten viewed as a mon­u­men­tal task. Some­thing is un­equiv­o­cal­ly wrong with this pic­ture.

A look at our so­ci­ety re­veals an alarm­ing rise in heart dis­ease, hy­per­ten­sion, obe­si­ty, Alzheimer’s and di­a­betes. With the right nu­tri­tion and ex­er­cise, these dis­eases are all pre­ventable. De­spite such fright­en­ing trends, some men still refuse to take their health se­ri­ous­ly. This must STOP!

First­ly, weight man­age­ment is crit­i­cal. Avoid short­cuts like en­er­gy drinks or weight loss sup­ple­ments be­cause in most cas­es they don’t help—nev­er have and nev­er will—and can ac­tu­al­ly be more detri­men­tal to one’s health. In­stead, keep it sim­ple: fo­cus on nat­ur­al foods, por­tion sizes, and very spe­cif­ic ex­er­cise regimes. Lifestyle choic­es are es­sen­tial to suc­cess­ful health and well­ness. Every­thing in cur­rent health lit­er­a­ture sug­gests that main­tain­ing a healthy body weight via a good di­et and ex­er­cise can min­imise heart dis­ease and oth­er afore­men­tioned lifestyle dis­eases and even re­duce/pre­vent anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion.

We were not cre­at­ed to be un­healthy and rid­dled with dis­eases and I think that men re­quire a shift in con­scious­ness to fos­ter a dif­fer­ent mind­set to­wards bet­ter health and well­ness.