I define “health” like this:
The Definition of Health
Health, noun, The ability to meet the demands of your life with abundant energy, to rest and recover fully, and to be as adaptable as needed to how demands may change over time outside your control, or to how you may choose to willfully change the purpose of your life.
But how do you know you are healthy?
What are more specific things you look out for to verify you are on the right track?
Many of us can get lost in tactical details and proxy markers, looking at our weight, waist circumference, sleep metrics, HRV, testosterone, estrogen, ApoB, VO2max, microbiome testing, and so on.
While proxy markers are necessary in some respects and tactical details matter greatly when we are in the weeds of optimizing something, we need a North Star to govern the constellation of markers we are tracking, or to check in on when we aren’t tracking anything.
This is your North Star:
You are meeting the demands of your physical and cognitive pursuits with abundant energy and clarity, high libido, low anxiety, and pain-free ease of movement.
We can derive some guiding rules from this.
You Should Rarely get Sick
For example, you should rarely get sick. You can regard each sickness as docking a chunk off your energy score:
You were likely missing energy and resources to defend against the illness.
Your body may have purposefully become inflamed to calm you down because it didn’t have the energy to do what you were trying to make it do.
Regardless of why you got sick, recovering from the illness will take a considerable chunk out of your energy budget.
The downtime associated with the illness has to be counted against your healthfulness through taking points out of the energy score.
The Energy-to-Anxiety Ratio
Another rule you can derive from this is that you want a high energy-to-anxiety ratio. A state that is abundant in energy is one in which the top layer of that energy is used to direct the bulk of the energy into the right places and toward the right uses. As you start to lose energy, often the first thing you may notice is that what energy is left goes into the wrong places because you lost the energy that you needed to control the rest.
If your energy is spent on worrying about things you cannot control, this is a lower energy state than if it is spent on taking charge of the things you can control.
It may feel like the same amount of energy is buzzing through your body in each case, but that is because the additional energy it takes to direct the flow of the bulk of your energy doesn’t feel like a buzz. It silently flows through you, increasing the gracefulness of the bulk energy. You may not feel more energy. You may instead feel that your energy burns more cleanly, flows more calmly, and is more available to your purpose.
Libido and Life Force Energy
You can take a broad view of “libido” to think of it as life force energy. If you are purposefully directing your life into pursuits that do not involve sex, I am not arguing that you have to be tortured with sexual desire to be healthy. But you should feel that this underlying life force is abundant and under your purposeful direction.
Pain-Free Ease of Movement
You should feel comfortable in your own body, and appear to others that you are comfortable in your own body. It shouldn’t hurt to sit still or to move, and your movement should reflect your intention.
Expectation Management
Properly interpreting the North Star requires some skill in expectation management.
If you feel overwhelmed and totally unable to meet your goals, is it possible that you are just trying to do too much?
There is always an easy way to find out if you are doing too much: do a little less and see if everything gets better.
April 24, 2026 347 2
