Healthful thinking... in sickness and in health?

I am often reminded how fragile life is and how precious a gift it can be. I am just as often, able to forget and take for granted the gifts I have been offered and I abuse the life I have been given.
I want to focus on maintaining an attitude of necessary, healthful living without having to have a fear of dying to keep me honest.
As many of you know, I spent the greater part of last year dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety. I haven't really talked about just how bad it was, I didn't want to worry anyone or make anyone feel like I was pulling a "poor me" moment, but I can tell you now, I have never felt so horrible for so many days consecutively in my life. The only way I can explain how it feels to someone who hasn't experienced it, is like this; take your worst break-up experience- the one that sent you into a crisis of life changing proportions, the one that shattered not only your heart but your soul and the idea of who you thought you were... take that feeling and add it to the feeling of the death of a close friend or family member and all the pain, loss and absence of joy that goes with it and then tack on top, a fear so profound that the idea of finding out you have a life threatening disease would probably feel better than this.
It's all of those feelings, all at once, all the time. For months. In the happiest year of my life- the first year of my first child's, I felt like I was living in a black box.
My life was a dark room. "One, big, dark room." Yes, I can laugh about it now and make jokes like that, but a year ago today, I guarantee you I was awake at 3am just as I am now, probably clutching my baby in a dark, sleeping house afraid I'd die of a stroke or that an earthquake would hit and kill us, or someone would break into our house and I'd be helpless against them, or some other equally horrifying scenario that wouldn't stop playing itself out in my mind.
That constant feeling of dread caused me to change my life, my thinking, my actions day to day and all for the better until the anxiety began to melt away under the light of knowing I was the one in control, not those rambling images of doom and I was able to do it without medication. The entire experience still terrifies me a little and I'm doing all I can to ensure it doesn't happen again with my current pregnancy.
So often, I think the only time we care about our health (both physically and spiritually) is when it's gone so far down into self destruction that we have to do something in order to stay alive.
As I sit here awake at 3:15am, babysitting my blood sugar levels and hoping I don't crash... I am reminded that I knew better and worked very hard last year to ensure these issues didn't come back. I knew how to prevent what's happening right now and I chose to eat that pie anyway, even though I didn't have enough solid protein to back it up.
I took for granted a simple rule because I felt fine and now I'm sitting here at 3am trying to make sure it doesn't crash dangerously in my sleep. I don't want to be someone who "knew better" and did whatever I felt like anyway and end up hurting myself because of it.
This whole situation got me thinking about our culture in the metaphysical world and the constant presence of abandon we seem to see consistently. I often call them the "faire pagans", but we're all guilty of it- we all say we're on a divine path, that our bodies are temples and that we honor ourselves as we do our divinity- and yet, we'll smoke, drink, use drugs, fatigue our bodies with too little sleep, we don't give honor at all, in fact, we defile ourselves consistently!
Why is it such a challenge to do what is best for ourselves when times are good? Being the people we are, shouldn't we be the first ones in line to be healthy, to live balanced, holistic lives that honor ourselves as temples of the Gods and not so often abandon our own safety for the pleasure of a few moments? Why then, does it seem that the pagan community as a whole, suffers from this more than most? Cakes and ale doesn't mean get drunk off your ass and sleep with your coven. Praying to Bacchus doesn't give you the excuse to destroy your liver, abandon your marriage vows and party like a frat boy till you throw up and then laugh about the fact that you can't even remember half of it ...and yet, this seems to be the case so much of the time in our culture.
How can we maintain a healthy understanding of consequence that allows us to stay on track without the anxiety of worst case scenario thinking to keep us honest and on target with our meditation, diet, exercise, writing, ritual, whatever it happens to be? It seems to be all or nothing and I know it's not just with me, but with most people I know, regardless of spiritual persuasion.
So, my question is... how can we fight the inner rebellion against whatever we know we aught to do for ourselves both physically and spiritually to create a peaceful union between body and spirit and maintain that union even when things seem just fine? What is our attraction to doing the opposite for our well being?
Even a single celled amoeba can figure out how to avoid hazardous obstacles- why is it so very hard for us?
From smoking, to drinking, diet, sedentary lifestyles, lack of spirituality, toxic friendships, destructive relationships, we- humans in general, constantly put ourselves in harm's way and then try to defend our actions through some sort of personal declaration of independence; "I am my own person and I'll destroy myself if I feel like it". Even when I was ultra goth and tragic that mentality didn't make any sense and as I smoked my cloves and drank my jack, I defiantly stated to the universe; "I don't care!"... Well, now I do. I do care. I always did actually, I was just sad for a long, long time and somehow the self destruction felt like I at least had control of something at a time when I felt I had no control over anything.
Now that I realize the illusion of my consciousness, I understand I always had control. So then I ask myself, why is it so easy to step back into a state of reaction instead of acting intentionally for the sake of good health? I honestly don't have a good answer for this.
We all hold onto something- some defiant part of our minds wants to hold onto it, to own it, we use it as an identifier or a rebellious, foot stamping "because I can" statement. Some people smoke, some drink, some procrastinate, some never finish anything, some never start anything. Some "wish" they could do things but never act to make them happen. Some look at others and judge instead of holding the mirror to themselves. Some people do one good thing a month and they say, "it's better than nothing" and some people get angry and stressed at everything instead of approaching life from a positive place.
What is your excuse to hold onto your vice... whatever that vice happens to be... and what would it take for you to quit doing it to live the complete life you want for yourself? What would it take to give up that destructive habit before it kills you or makes you so sick you have no choice but to act?
Are you willing to find out how sick it can make you before you bother to do something about it, or can we just agree that it needs to stop now?
I personally don't want to wait to find out what it would take to get me to change. I'd rather just change and never get to that point of "hitting bottom" so to speak, I just can't seem to maintain that desire.
What are your thoughts on this? Does anyone have any meditations or advice on how to build this resolve to withstand the "easier" times? I think we could all benefit from knowing how to better keep ourselves in check.