This could be the most important health and fitness article you read this year. It's also one of those articles that everyone (including me) needs to read and reread, but most skip over. They think they "know it" already, or they believe the content doesn't apply to them.

Your willingness to live out this single commitment is key to your current and future health. Your refusal to accept it will leave you physically and mentally far from your best.

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VIGOR(ESS) Commitment #1

I am 100% responsible for my health and fitness.

Stare at that statement. Let it sink in. Hold the full weight of 100% responsibility in your hands until its meaning seeps into your soul.

100% means 100%. Total. It leaves no room for anyone or anything else to be responsible. No other person or company is responsible for your health and fitness. Just you.

Responsibility is Action

Talking about taking 100% responsibility is easy and exciting. You can probably find hundreds of feel-good memes to share on social media that sound sweet until you have to put substance behind the sayings.

Taking 100% responsibility is something else entirely. Taking responsibility means taking action. Not only when it’s easy or convenient. Not just when you feel like it. Taking responsibility is taking action whenever it’s necessary. 

Most of the time, you won’t feel like doing what you should do, and you will feel like doing what you shouldn’t.

When I Googled the definition of responsibility, I got three definitions. Each is applicable in the context of your health and fitness.

Responsibility:

the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization.the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something.

Can you see how responsibility requires action? When you take 100% responsibility for your health and fitness, you find a way to:

Weight train at least three times per week every week.Move frequently throughout the day.Eat plenty of protein with every meal.Get at least seven hours of sleep each night.Avoid foods and alcohol that wreak havoc on your health.Take your supplements.Get a full metabolic assessment each year.

Notice how each of those bullet points starts with an action verb? You cannot sit on your rear and claim to be responsible. A responsible person always “has a duty" to do what needs to be done, and avoid what ought not to be done.

Victimhood Chic

Every day, food companies get blamed for making people fat. Doctors get blamed for not knowing what their patients' ailments are early enough. Spouses get blamed for not making the other partner happy. Bosses get blamed for not promoting their employees. Parents get blamed for setting and holding boundaries with their children (especially those who are 25 years old and still living at home without a job). Pharmaceutical companies get blamed for everything else (sometimes it’s warranted, sometimes not).

Side note on that one: I’m not one to chastise the pharmaceutical industry. Like any other industry, there’s some shady stuff that goes on, sometimes as the result of greed. But it would be stupid of me to make a blanket statement about “Big Pharma” when some of their drugs cured my childhood leukemia.

Heck,