Every day we are accosted with endless prescriptions for how many calories to eat, how many hours of sleep to get, how much we should exercise, what products to buy, and essentially how to live our lives.

I possess an erratic sleep pattern, eat way too much of what I shouldn’t, and exercise minimally or excessively depending on my mood. So far, I can claim to have lived a decently healthy and well-balanced life.

This leaves me with the question of the significance of serving sizes or recommend hours of sleep.

Are the models that today’s top nutritionists, scientists, doctors, and economists urge us to emulate realistic or even relevant to our everyday lives?

The habits that we, as individuals, develop with respect to our personalized schedules and lifestyles, which could be considered unhealthy in comparison to the suggested lifestyle, can’t be all that bad, seeing that most of us make it through the day undamaged physically or mentally for the most part.

I have a feeling that today’s experts have forgotten that we aren’t quite on Superman’s level and that they have developed lifestyle behavior plans that don’t quite correlate with a normal human’s wants, needs, or capacities. Besides, who has the time for eight hours of sleep a night, five servings of vegetables a day, or five hours at the gym a week?

The prescriptions we encounter can be somewhat overwhelming and often end up compartmentalizing our lives. I am content to view these prescriptions more as guidelines and stick to my slightly less “healthy” regime.