In the spirit of both honesty and self-improvement, I've got a little something today not only for homesteaders, but for those of you who lean more towards prepping as well.

(Don't want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!)

Now, let's first get this out of the way. Prepping means different things to different folks. For some, traditional homesteading is prepping. Learning skills like baking bread from scratch, canning, gardening, or how to butcher a chicken or a pig prepares you for self-reliance and sets you on the road to self-sufficiency. For others, prepping also delves into BOBs, BIBs, MREs and stocks of water, gasoline, and ammo.

I've often heard it said that not all preppers are homesteaders, but all homesteaders are preppers. And yet, I've met a few homesteaders who do not store water, gasoline, or ammo, and have no idea what a BOB or a BIB is. So clearly, people define prepping in different ways.

Regardless of what you include in your definition of being prepared, I think there is something we need to get real about:

If your aim is self reliance and self sufficiency—whether that's in order to run a farm or run for the hills—you need to be healthy.

I will let that sink in for a bit.

Because here's the thing.

Some of you are saying, yeah, duh.

Some of you are saying that's the entire reason I started homesteading/prepping: because I wanted to get healthy.

But let's be honest: some people spend way more time talking about it than actually doing it. Some of us know people like this. Some of us are people like this.

And believe me, I get it. It's much easier—and a lot more fun—to talk about living off the land than it is to actually live off the land. It takes far more time and way more effort than what most people realize when they're just talking about it.

Get real about your abilities

I'm all about being super honest, right? I am not above occasionally stopping at Starbucks if I happen to be in town and grabbing a treat. I don't always choose the old fashioned, simple way and I don't make every single thing that we eat from scratch.

But friends, you cannot run a farm or run from zombies if you're eating more junk, processed food than not. You cannot run a farm or run from zombies if you lounge on a couch or sit at a desk for the majority of your awake hours.

You need to move your body. Or in other words, you need to walk the walk instead of just talking the big talk.

There is nothing more obnoxious than a homesteader or a prepper telling you how to take care of physically taxing issues on your homestead or how to deal with the zombies when they can't even climb a flight of stairs without getting winded.

There is nothing more ridiculous than a homesteader or a prepper thinking that when the time comes they will, by virtue of being a Homesteader or a Prepper, be automatically ready to handle what's thrown at them. Tell me again how you're going to spend all day hunting for your food when you don't even have a clue where the rabbits, deer, and turkey are right now?

Live right now like you're going to live when things get hard or challenging or tough. In other words, jump into it right now so you have to deal with things that are hard and problem solve the challenges.

I say that because we have learned so much in our 8 years here on the farm. It blows my mind that there are people out there who think if times get tough, they will just automatically know how to do things on their property. Or that secret property they're going to run off to. Or that they're going to be able to handle a exponential increase in physical activity when right now they can barely lift a bag of cat litter. Or that they're somehow going to be able to deal with the elements when right now their exposure to any elements is only from the house to the car and the car to work.