Maximize Your Health ROI: Weighing Both Benefits AND Costs

The Reward

Imagine you have two suitcases sitting in front of you. Suitcase #1 contains $1 million, suitcase #2 has $800 thousand. You can choose to have either one. Which do you pick?

Of COURSE you’d want the cool million, right? (Unless you are worried about throwing your back out from the extra added weight. Remember, lift with your legs, not your back!)

The Investment

But everyone knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and it turns out you gotta put in some time, energy, and even money of your own if you want to have one of these suitcases.

In order to get the suitcase with $1 million, you’ll need to:

• Invest $100 thousand up front.
• Start working 20 hours per week.
• Wait 50 years.

But to get the suitcase with only $800 thousand, you’ll need to:

• Invest $20 thousand up front.
• Start working 4 hours per week.
• Wait 10 years.

Does this have any effect on which suitcase you’d pick? Sure, there’s some of you that still would do everything it takes for the million, but I’m willing to bet that you would take option #2 and get 80% of the first suitcase by investing only 20% as much.

What Does This Have to Do With Fitness?

Well, the benefits of health are difficult to quantify. Although you can make ballpark estimates of your own physical attractiveness, social status, energy, and longevity, you would be hard-pressed to back it up with specific data. (Longevity is the easiest one to measure, but you can’t get an accurate estimate until you are already dead. D’oh!)

I believe wealth is as important a goal as health is for the vast majority of men, but is much easier to measure due to the invention of widespread standardized currency. By using a metaphor of cold, hard cash, I think you can better understand the benefits of your personal fitness relative to the investment you make in it.

The bad news is this: to become the healthiest, fittest man on the planet will require an enormous amount of effort, time, and will power on your behalf. In fact, you probably won’t have time to fit much else in if this is your goal.

But here’s the good news: you can still become extremely attractive and energetic with a much, MUCH smaller investment. The things you need to change to achieve this admirable goal (diet, exercise, stress reduction) are much easier than you might imagine, but that doesn’t mean you can just sit on your ass and wait for it to happen by itself!

The LMVM Difference

The reason this website is different from all other blogs focused on men’s health is that it is the only one (that I know of) that is focused on getting you “suitcase #2” rather than “suitcase #1” when it comes to your health and isn’t afraid to brag about it. In a world where everyone is talking only about benefits, I am proud to focus rather on giving you the best return on investment.

Instead of killing yourself to become a “millionaire,” you can now devote more of your willpower to your other passions. Once you have the suitcase, you can still follow your dreams, travel the world, spend more quality time with friends and family, or just splurge on a nicer ride. Whatever else you want to fit in is possible!

So What Can You Do to Get “Suitcase #2?”

I break this topic down into much more manageable pieces over the rest of this website. But the main takeaway I want you to get is that becoming strong, healthy, and attractive doesn’t need to be a hellish and tortuous journey, characterized by starving yourself and spending long, lonely hours at the gym.

The natural state of a human being is to be in great shape. You can still see this in societies that have retained traditional lifestyles. Similarly, all wild animals are fit and healthy in the wild, and only grow fat when they are kept in captivity and fed unnatural diets.

The key to achieving this almost effortless state of supreme physical health lies in:

• Understanding how your body has evolved to thrive.
• Applying those principles to your modern life.
• Maintaining a healthy balance between work and relaxation; physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

So which “suitcase” would you rather have? Let me know in the comments either way!

Tagged as: pareto principle, simplicity, wealth