Key Parts of Physical Balance

EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR US.  You should move your body regularly, and challenge it appropriately.  There are many benefits to exercise, which we'll get into in a second, BUT, we shouldn't exercise solely to lose weight.  

Being healthy feels fantastic and will spare you from painful chronic diseases and extend your productive working life. At the same time, "fanatics" who obsess over physical health usually are compensating for psychological unhealth. Easy to spot are because despite investing copious amounts of energy and time into physical health, they never can quite resolve all of their illnesses and symptoms. Lots of vegans are like this, and I once upon a I time was too. Personally, getting my body physically healthy was a big part of getting my mind on track and reach that balance.

“Preoccupation with physical health” is so ingrained in our psyche as an inherent virtue, from billboards to commercials to magazines, that we have been tricked again. The line between servitude and mastery is blurred, and we can’t so easily see the difference between obsession and healthy interest. In other words, it is precisely in those things that people cannot easily distinguish between obsession and healthy interest that we can see the influence of a deity. The deity, in this case the idol, will not teach you how to use itself with moderation. There is nothing built into physical fitness itself that will teach you “physical health isn’t the most important thing in the world.” Even though we all intellectually agree that is true. Those that are psychologically healthy aren't negligent of their health, but they also don't spend every waking moment concerned over improving it further.

Finding a balance

Two almost perfectly physically healthy individuals may a resting heart rate of 80/120. The psychologically healthy person would be fine with that, end of story. The psychologically ill individual would be obsessed with getting it down to 60/115. It's a striving after perfection. The fear of death association comes from, I assume, the association with death and imperfection. With perfection and immortality. Yet, here we are, thriving in a society that worships fitness at the same time as the obesity rate increase rapidly. We don’t really believe physical fitness is different from perfection, hence why we condemn ourselves to perpetually drift away from it. It’s the same move every culture has taken to exalt their god, by keeping themselves beneath it. All of us who unconsciously propagate an ideal, the ideal of an ever elusive “physical perfection”. are cutting to the heart of psychological imbalance. Imbalance relies on the appearance of balance, it disguises itself as order. Jung viewed physical health as a pillar of human happiness and well-being, while noting that the body and mind are deeply interconnected. Are we exercising to attribute our ego to the toxic vanity society? A study in 2025 which looked at the effect of physical exercise on ego depletion found that physical exercise serves as a key protective factor that helps college students maintain self-control and build psychological resilience against stress-induced ego depletion.

Physical helps you feel better and mental can help you push yourself/ stay committed etc. Physical and mental health work together. You can't have one without the other. A severe physical limitation would have you spiraling downwards mentally while a mental problem would keep you away from healthy behaviour which leads to an unhealthy body. After all the heart is a muscle, and a strong muscle will always out perform a weak one. Aka, your heart will be better at circulating blood if it's in good shape, thus allowing more blood to get to "injured" places in the body, thus healing them faster. Also, increased exercise causes decreased fat in the body. Fat clogs arteries making blood flow slower. Your body also has to work harder in general to support the extra weight. So, decrease your fat and you'll increase your performance in all areas.