Maintaining Your Physical and Mental Well-being for Life: Summary and Outlook

Maintain your physical and mental health for life

For academic intelligence, your genetic makeup determines the limits of your intelligence-your potential. Within those limits, your parents, your school experiences, and other environmental factors will determine the extent to which your potential can be realized. Like academic intelligence, physical intelligence is also determined by your genes, which set limits on your weight. Your environment, habits, and mindset will determine your weight within those limits.

In terms of academic intelligence, you're always learning, and not just in school. Sometimes learning is effortless, like a baseball fan who can memorize the average batting averages of his favorite team's players. Other times, like when you want to learn how to design a computer program, require extraordinary concentration. But you can't learn every day, all day long, and become the next Bill Gates.

The same applies to bodily intelligence. Sometimes good eating and exercise habits become second nature, but at other times they require more conscious effort. This effort differs from "dieting," which involves strictly limiting your daily food intake to try and break the genetically predetermined weight limits.

If you follow the guidelines in this book, you'll be on the path to increased physical and mental well-being. As you continue, you'll reach a healthy weight that makes you look and feel good about yourself-and all of this won't happen through dieting. You'll overcome the barriers that have caused you disappointment in the past, and you'll be able to maintain this weight sustainably. It requires consistency and planning, but your health and well-being are worth it.