Here’s why being healthy requires money.

Have you ever wanted to pursue a healthy lifestyle but always find yourself failing at it? That might either be because you’re not committed enough, you’re lazy, or that you don’t have enough money to maintain it.

Now I know I may sound like someone who is making excuses. I am failing at maintaining a healthy lifestyle and I’ve always thought that I am pathetically losing every battle because I’m a bum who doesn’t want to move her ass off the couch thus, resulting to me being overweight in certain areas of my body. And by certain areas of my body I actually mean, my whole body.

Okay fine, I may not be overweight as of the moment but I do know that my body is not on its prime state and if it continues being so, I may go back to being “that fat kid”. I am not trying to condone those who doesn’t have the ideal body that our society imposes, I am honestly against bullying and body shaming; but let’s all be honest that being fat may expose one to more health risks than one who has a healthy body—and the same thing goes for those who are super skinny.

I grew up overweight and I didn’t start losing the unwanted weight until I was on my first year of high school. Numerous relatives from my father’s side are either overweight or obese and because of that, I want to keep a healthy body. However, I always seem to fail.

I recently realize that I am failing not just because of my lazy nature. I’m also failing because being healthy is a lifestyle. And this kind of lifestyle is not something that I can easily afford. I have tried lots of diet fads and exercise routines and although it may work for a certain period of time, I always find myself struggling to maintain it.

My search history would show how many times I’ve Googled “How to be healthy?” and every time, results would say the basics: eat healthy, sleep on a minimum of 8 hours a day, and exercise. While I don’t have much problem with the last two things, eating healthy is quite hard. Why you say?

Well diets would tell you to eat high fiber products and snack on fruits instead of chips and other unhealthy food. However, an average price of one apple is P25 and do you know what products I can buy for the same price?  I can buy pack of potato chips and even have extra money for a bottle of soda.

Take these menus as another example. On the left is the menu of a fast food chain and on the right is the menu of a healthy and organic restaurant.

As you can see, in a fast foodrestaurant, you can have yourself a complete rice meal with fries and drinks for less than P100 but in an organic and healthy restaurant, P100 pesos would only give you either 3 pieces of spring rolls, a plate of pasta,or a sandwich–I doubt that you’d get full from either of those 3. It doesn’t even indicate if it’s served with drinks so I’m guessing that you’d have to pay extra for that too.

Now I know that the drastic price difference comes all the way from the quality of ingredients used, the food preparation, and even the ambiance of the place. What I am saying here is that if you’re a broke AF college student like me, choosing the unhealthy food option is a no-brainer.

I think this is the reason why most of us fail at being healthy. It’s freakin’ expensive!

Am I the only one who feels like this? Let me know your thoughts on the comment section down below!

xxx