Wellness, Fitness, and Lifestyle Management

Health vs. Wellness  Health- A portion of it can be determined or influenced by factors beyond your control (genetics, age, family history).  Wellness- Largely determined by the decisions you make about how you live while making conscious decisions to control risk factors.

6 Components of Wellness:  Physical  Emotional  Intellectual  Social  Spiritual  Environmental

Physical Wellness:  Definition: To maintain overall physical health, engage in appropriate physical activity, and your ability to care for yourself.  To obtain optimum physical wellness, make choices that help avoid against illness and injuries.  Decisions you make now and the habits you develop over a lifetime will largely determine the length and quality of life.

Emotional Wellness:  Definition: Ability to understand and deal with your feelings  Attending to thoughts and feelings, monitoring reactions, and identifying obstacles to emotional stability.

Intellectual Wellness:  Definition: To pursue and retain knowledge and constantly challenge the mind.  An active mind detects problems, find solutions, and directs behavior.

Social Wellness:  Definition: Ability to develop and maintain satisfying and supportive relationships.  Requires participating in and contributing to your community, country, and world.

Spiritual Wellness:  Definitions: Possess a set of guiding beliefs, principles, or values that give meaning and purpose to life.  Focuses on the positive aspects of life and finds spirituality as an antidote for negative feelings.

Environmental Wellness:  Definition: Is the livability of surroundings  Your physical environment either supports your wellness or diminishes it.

Partner Activity: Read the short excerpt from the book Double Play by Ben and Julianna Zobrist. Then complete the handout analyzing the six wellness components and how they are interrelated.

Six components are interrelated and all contribute to overall wellness.

Assessing Your Wellness  How did your wheel turn out? Was it balance or unbalanced? Was it a large wheel or a small wheel?  It is best if our wheel is balanced and large. Heier’s Wheel

Behaviors that Contribute to Wellness:  Be Physically Active: Human body designed to work best when active. Benefits are both physical and mental, immediate and long-term.  Protects against chronic disease and lower risk of dying prematurely.  Choose a Healthy Diet: Provides necessary nutrients and sufficient energy without also providing too much dietary substances linked to diseases.  Americans have a diet too high in calories, unhealthy fats, added sugars, too low in fiber, fruits, and vegetables.  Linked to a number of chronic diseases: heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, Type 2 Diabetes, and certain types of cancers.

Continued…  Maintain a Healthy Body Weight: Requires a lifelong commitment to regular exercise, a healthy diet, and effective stress management.  CDC estimates that obesity kills 112,000 American each year  Short-Term dieting is not part of fitness or wellness  Manage Stress Effectively: Find effective ways to handle stress and incorporate them into daily life  Short-term- fatigue and sleep disturbances. Some cope by eating, drinking, or smoking  Long-term- less efficient functioning of immune system

Continued…  Avoid Tobacco, Drug, and Limit Alcohol Consumption-  Unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide are the top three leading causes of death for 15 to 24 year olds.  Tobacco kills about 440,000 American each year. Lung cancer is the most common form of cancer. Direct healthcare cost is $75 billion per year.  Protect yourself from Disease and Injury- Choose lifestyle strategies such as being physically active and managing body weight to help protect against chronic disease.