Fit? Healthy? Or Fit+Healthy?

As an amateur endurance athlete, I am profoundly impacted by the recent unfortunate incidents involving some of the fittest runners & cyclists succumbing to cardio-related exigencies. 

It forced me to introspect hard and while doing so, several questions popped up in my mind:

• What does being fit truly mean?
• What does being healthy truly mean?
• Is being fit the same as being healthy?

I am no expert so there are no definitive answers. I also think answers to the above are much more contextual and layered. So, I got into doing some bit of research on these. Here is what I found. 

What does being fit truly mean?

Being Fit = Ability to perform a certain type of physical activity like exercises, running, cycling, swimming, hiking & so on. 

Eg – A person is fit to run a triathlon. A person is fit to lift 100 kgs. A person is fit to swim 2km. A person is fit to summit Mt Everest. 

Fitness is easy to define and there are quantifiable ways of measuring and tracking fitness. At any point in time, the current state of fitness is definite and the future goals can also be definitively articulated. 

Eg – A runner’s journey starts with building the ability to run for 30 mins. And thereafter progresses to being able to run 5k, and then 10K. At this point, the person is not yet ‘fit’ to run a full marathon, but can train to become ‘full marathon fit’ with time. 

What does being healthy truly mean?

Being Healthy = A state of complete physical, mental, and emotional well-being. And, this is not just the absence of any disease. 

Unlike fitness, health is a tough thing to define and there aren’t quantifiable ways of measuring and tracking health. The absence of simple and easy parameters to measure health is the culprit. When it comes to assessment of health, the answer is always contextual and qualitative 

At any point in time, it is tough to definitively say that a person’s health is average/good/excellent. Further, it is tough to articulate future goals around health and work towards it.

Is being fit the same as being healthy?

Being Fit is NOT EQUAL to being Healthy. 

Eg – A person who can run an ultra marathon may not necessarily be healthy. 

Being Healthy is NOT EQUAL to being Fit.

Eg – A healthy person may not necessarily be able to run a half marathon. 

Health is a much broader area and covers not just the physical aspects of the body but also mental and emotional well-being. Being Fit definitely helps towards being healthy and being healthy definitely helps towards being fit, but they are definitely not the same!

And, all of this brings us to two more questions:

• Which category do we belong to? 
• And more importantly, which category do we want to be? 

At a broad level, it is very clear that health and fitness are critical and it is best to be Fit + Healthy rather than just being one of them. 

But, there has to be a higher-order thinking beyond this. The answer to the above questions, therefore, is purely personal in nature. It is a personal journey of introspection that we all MUST undertake and thereby evolve to FIND our own answers. 

---

PS: The views mentioned above are purely personal in nature. I am neither a medical practitioner nor a certified endurance coach. These thoughts are purely out of my personal experience and research. The objective of this piece is to just nudge my fellow amateur endurance athletes to think in this direction.