The uncomfortable truth about trust, credibility, and what your trainer's body is already telling you. Let me ask you something. Would you hire a financial advisor who's drowning in debt?...
We make health way harder than it actually is.
Spend five minutes scrolling fitness Instagram and you’ll drown in arguments:
“BMI doesn’t mean anything.”
“Overweight people with good blood work are healthy.”
“Grip strength predicts longevity.”
“You need to strength train.”
“You need Zone 2 cardio.”
“Your VO2 max is too low.”
“Your ApoB is killing you.”
“You’re not hitting 10,000 steps.”
“You need more protein.”
“Seed oils are poison.”
The list never ends. I will admit, these will serve as great headlines for my next instagram post…
But here’s what’s actually happening: everyone’s arguing about proxies and calling them health.
Proxies Aren’t Health—They’re Measurements Pointing Toward It
Grip strength is a proxy.
VO2 max is a proxy.
Body fat percentage is a proxy.
Blood pressure is a proxy.
ApoB is a proxy.
Your six-pack is a proxy.
None of these are health. They’re indicators. Some point in the right direction. Some don’t. Some contradict each other completely.
So what is health?
It’s simple.
Health is the quality of your life for the longest time you can live it.
That’s it. Everything else is just a tool to get there.
What “Quality of Life” Actually Means
It doesn’t mean happiness. It doesn’t mean looking good. It doesn’t mean having the highest test scores on your bloodwork.
Quality of life means capability.
Can you get off the floor without thinking about it?
Can you travel without pain or limitation?
Can you play with your kids? Chase them around?
Can you do the things you actually enjoy—whether that’s wrestling, hiking, golfing, gardening, lifting, or sitting on your porch with a book?
Can you say “yes” to life?
Can you live independently?
That’s quality of life.
Length of Life Is Exactly What It Sounds Like
How long can you maintain that capability?
Because neither variable works alone.
A 95-year-old who lives to be 100 but spends the last 20 years unable to wipe their own butt? They got length without quality. That’s not health.
A 35-year-old who’s incredibly fit but has destroyed their body chasing peak performance, joints destroyed, addicted to overtraining, constantly injured? They have quality today and sacrificed years tomorrow. That’s not health either.
Health lives at the intersection of both.
Here’s How This Cuts Through Every Argument
Instead of asking “is this healthy?” ask:
Does this improve my quality of life?
Does this improve my length of life?
Does it improve both?
Walking? Probably both.
Resistance training? Probably both.
Good sleep? Definitely both.
Smoking? Neither.
Extreme cutting for a six-pack? Improving body composition (a proxy) while tanking energy and longevity. That’s not a win.
The tradeoffs become obvious.
The Real Problem: Congruence
We’ve become obsessed with the scorecard instead of the game.
People chase biomarkers, performance metrics, body fat percentages, and fitness achievements like they’re the goal. They’re not. They’re the tools. And worse — most of the people selling these proxies as health aren’t actually living the outcome they’re selling.
There’s a word for this gap: congruence. It’s the alignment between what you say and how you actually live. We’ve written before about why congruence matters in coaching — people notice when someone says one thing and does another. They feel it before they even realize it.
The same thing happens with how we define health.
When someone tells you they “want to get healthier” and mention they want to lower their cholesterol number by 10 points (because that’s what their doctor said). They mean they want to feel better, move better, live longer, and be able to do life without limitation. That’s what every human actually means when they give a proxy. The issue is that we’ve been taught to hyper-focus on proxies, instead of outcomes.
But the fitness and healthy industry keeps selling them grip strength. The nutrition world keeps selling them a macros spreadsheet. The supplement companies keep selling them the next biomarker-lowering powder.
And none of that is congruent with what the person actually said they wanted.
The Scorecard vs. The Game
When you’re focused on the scorecard — the metrics, the numbers, the proxies — you stop asking the question that matters:
Is this actually making my life better?
A metric can improve while your life gets worse. Your VO2 max can go up while your knees deteriorate. Your cholesterol can drop while your energy drops. Your body composition can improve while your relationship with food becomes obsessive and joyless.
Congruence between what you’re doing and what you actually want — that’s the signal. Not the metric.
If you’re chasing a proxy that doesn’t lead to better quality of life or longer life, you’re just keeping score on the wrong game.
That’s the health game.
Everything we do at NEHP—the programming, the coaching, these blogs, the systems we build—comes back to this: we’re helping you live better for longer. Not prioritizing metrics for the big picture. Not obsessing over the scorecard.
The only thing that matters is whether what we’re doing moves the needle on your actual life.
