Health as Priority

Health demands the same resolve as any other important aim.

You can approach health in two ways: as something that happens to you, something your genes grant or deny, something luck brings or takes away. Or as something you build, actively, every day. Most people choose the first because it feels easier. Until it no longer does.

What strikes me in conversations is how many people treat health as something for later. When you retire. When you're less busy. When you've lost weight, quit smoking, gotten more sleep. It's always around the next corner. Health is the thing you do once everything else is sorted.

But that's the lie. Health has to come first, not because it's morally superior, but because everything else depends on it. Energy. Clarity. The ability to do work that matters. Your body is not an aspect of your life. It is the infrastructure your life rests on.

My father said this in different words. He saw nutrition not as something you consume because you're hungry, but as continuous conversation with your body. What you take in determines what your body can do. Not mystical, not alternative, but straightforward biochemistry. You are what you've eaten, and you feel like how you've been fed.

The practical question is: how do you prioritize health when your day is full? Not by starting diets or paying for gyms, but by getting the basics right. Drinking water. Sleeping. Movement your body actually needs, not what an app tells you. Food that is genuinely food, not products in packaging with ingredient lists you can't pronounce.

This requires taking positions. Saying no to things. Waking a bit earlier. Telling your cousin you can't stay out late because your body needs recovery. It's countercultural, because our culture sacrifices health for speed.

But the alternative is real. Not necessarily living longer, but living well. With energy. With clarity. With the body you need to do what you want to do. That price is not high. It's only paid in advance.

Sources: Jaap Huibers, nutritional foundations in RTV Utrecht broadcast format