“The waist is a terrible thing to mind.” – Ziggy

“Everything I want is either illegal, immoral or fattening.” – Alexander Woolcott

“I drink too much. Last time I gave a urine sample there was an olive in it.” – Rodney Dangerfield

With millions of Americans losing their jobs and, therefore, their health insurance and medical benefits being cut faster than the guest list at the annual Friends of the Taliban dinner, it has become progressively more important for Americans to take their health into their own hands. If David Letterman had a Top 10 List of Resolutions for a healthy 2002, this should be it:

No.10: Add at least one piece of fruit and one raw vegetable to your diet every day in place of some junk food. Too many of us have forgotten what any apple that is not a computer logo even looks like. In one move you will support farmers, cut your calories, and be loved by your bowels.

No.9: Get your cholesterol within the guidelines of the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Good cholesterol numbers protect against heart disease, help keep our arteries clean and sexy, and irk the hell out of anti-American terrorists every where.

No.8: “Practice random acts of kindness,” at least one every day. It can be as simple as giving up your seat on the bus to someone with a child, volunteering or give a little extra to your favorite charity without being asked. Donate blood. Such acts add grace to our lives, boost our sense of self-worth and make this a better planet. Think of them as social bran.

No.7: Wear your seat belt, regardless of whatever reason you have for not wearing it. It is more effective in preventing injuries than any SUV ever was. Wear it because you do not really want to know how much of your injury costs your health insurance will not cover, and because there are still a lot of people left in the world that you want to irritate by outliving them.

No.6: Get rid of some of the stress in your life, if necessary by not reading articles telling you to decrease the stress in your life. Stress is a hidden killer, and most of us harbor too much of it. There is no one answer to reducing it; each of us has to find our own answers, but recognition is the place to start. If you are always walking around like a cocked Glock ready to go off at the next person who steps on your shadow, do yourself and the rest of us a favor by getting more mellow in 2002. Help is on the Web, at your church, in focused time with your children, etc. You will be amazed at how much better you will feel.

No.5: Talk to your teen-agers every day about what is going on in their lives, about sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, depression, driving like lunatics, about how great they are and how much you love them. Their health should not be left entirely up to them.

No.4: Quit smoking, not just because every lit cigarette is a fuse attached to the end of your life, or because smoking makes you wrinkle faster than a grape in the sun, but because there has never been a better time to quit. There are new medications to help, new resources, and it has never been more likely that you can be successful. Remember this: one pack a day that you don’t smoke is the money for a trip to Daytona Beach every year.

No.3: Shut off the TV – make a rule that it cannot be on for more than a couple of hours a day. Potatoes should be raised in Maine and Idaho, not on our couches. And add this rule; no TV until you have exercised first. You should not sit on your rear until you have burned some of it off.

No.2: Exercise regularly, and wrestling for the TV remote does not count. Current recommendations are that we all exercise for 30 minutes, to the point of sweating, five times per week. It is estimated that obesity is causing illnesses that kill 300,000 Americans each year, and obesity has reached epidemic proportions among American children. Do it if for no other reason than that it makes it easier for people we love to wrap their loving arms around us.

No.1: Make a daily health schedule with each of Nos. 2-10 on it, and check it off when done. Unless the goals are in front of us every day, right there beside “Order Direct TV before the Super Bowl,” we will forget to do the healthy things each day. If we do all of these things there will be more of us around in future years to see if Dick Clark ever ages.

“Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.” – Plato

“Plato was a bore.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Erik Steele, D.O. is a physician in Bangor, an administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.