No matter the volume of health-related content deposited online on the internet daily and how these contents are broken down to cater to everybody, people are still gonna be obese and people are still gonna die from lifestyle-related diseases, that is just a sad reality. You could be fit as a fiddle and have a lot of people around you who do not share the same zeal nor have the will power to make the lifestyle changes their health needs, which goes to prove that living a healthy lifestyle is a personal decision.
One time I tried to discourage an already overweight friend of mine from drinking fizzy drinks, and she was quick to remind me that it is her body and not mine and she could eat and drink whatever she wanted. What she said to me was in fact true, I mean she is an adult after all and can do whatever she likes with her body. But they say it is all fun and game until someone gets hurt and end up getting bedridden for an ailment that is totally avoidable and then the friends and family now have to partake in the burden of taking care of them and catering to them.
A lot of young people do not take their health seriously because they think they would be forever young, they believe in living in the moment (YOLO) but they fail to understand that we get older and our body gets weaker each day dawns. What happens when your life philosophy changes from YOLO to something more conservative when your body had already started suffering from the YOLO lifestyle you had lived? LOL
You think you are always going to be as strong as you are in your youth, your sight is always gonna be as sharp, your metabolism is always gonna be as sharp they are in their youth, their sight is always gonna be as sharp, their metabolism is always gonna be as sharp. One of the curious things about the bodies of living organisms is, they start ageing immediately they are born and this is the same with us, humans.
We aren't wrong when we see growth like that - growth- but we are wrong when we think it is just that. I am sure we were all thought about the law of diminishing returns in elementary economics. As we grow, we ultimately peak somewhere and then start heading south from there. Everything sort of grows till the cells in our body can no longer renew and regenerate, so they stop growing and start deteriorating.
I know we are all going to die someday whether we live fit and healthy or we live recklessly, there is no running away from it as this is the fate of every mortal but nobody says you have to be very old and weak at 60. Wouldnt you rather be healthy late in life and take yourself wherever you wanna go instead of waiting on people to take pity on you and take care of you? There are things you can do to reduce the speed at which your body deteriorates, you wouldn't want to be a burden to yourself and your loved ones at just 60 - 70.
I knew a YOLO gentleman once, we called him WHY-WORRY?. His name is both a question and an affirmation. A question demanding why worry, why not just enjoy life? An affirmation of the positive side of life, living free like a bird, not letting the problems of the world stop you. The problem is, WHY-WORRY demonstrated his love for life by drinking and smoking. He was a heavy drinker and an even heavier smoker, although he always kept it neat and civil, never seen drunk or with a stick between his fingers out in the open. He was presumed to be living his best life, and I have no doubt he might have been until he became sick.
Sadly Why-Worry was diagnosed with kidney failure and had to go through dialysis for months while sourcing for funds for a transplant. Unfortunately for him and his family dialysis is such an expensive procedure to keep up with for long and when family resources ran out, they started sourcing for funds from friends and well-wishers.
Soon enough, they caught a lucky break, got some funds and a matching donor too, and a couple of weeks later he was flown to India to have his transplant.
The transplant was successful and Why-Worry came back from India after two months in India. He was recuperating just fine and was living according to the doctor's instructions now, he has a new lease on life and he wasn't gonna mess it up.
Everything was looking good for him and we had even forgotten he had a life-threatening ailment once but all that changed when we woke up one morning and heard that he had died. Barely 8 months after he had come back from India, he was said to have had a little complication and since there was no money to go back to India to check what the problem was, he made do with the doctors back home and it wasn't long, he passed.
Mr Why-Worry lived a life of YOLO in his youth, but when he wanted to make changes to his lifestyle, there was no time. His lifestyle came back to haunt him, his finances, his family and his loved ones. In the end, his burden was shared amongst everyone that cared about him. There is a lesson to be learnt here.
What does YOLO mean? It was very hard to stop someone who has been smoking heavily for years but it is not impossible. As you said sometimes something needs to happen for them to stop. My father was a heavy smoker once but he managed to stop after my mother got diagnosed with a stroke. My husband is still smoking quite a lot but he already managed to improved his drinking habit. I am proud of both of them and myself.
I am once a heavy smoker to but I managed to stop. It is not easy but if I can do it I believe anyone else can. The most important thing is those surround them.