Decoding Wellness: Understanding the Many Dimensions of a Healthy Life

The Meaning of Wellness

We often talk about "wellness," but what does that mean?

There are many layers of wellness and many aspects that contribute to a healthier and happier life. The true meaning of wellness may vary from the physical foundations of nutrition and exercise to the nuances of stress management and preventive measures. Lasting well-being requires proactive choices to lead to a vibrant and fulfilling existence.

What does “wellness” mean?

There are many aspects of wellness: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, environmental, and more. While there is an agreement that wellness takes on many forms and has many components, there isn’t necessarily an agreement on how many components there are.

I am armed with the knowledge, education, and experience to help people with their physical wellness. This includes nutrition/diet, physical activity/exercise, stress management, and preventive measures to help reduce disease risk.

Stress management does have some overlap in other areas of wellness, but the focus is on the physical part of it.

What is wellness?

By definition, wellness is a state of being in good health, and it is actively sought. So, this doesn’t mean illness is absent, but being in good health and attempting to maintain good health.

Wellness isn’t the pursuit of perfection.

Let’s unpack that a bit more:

“Being in good health” could be the absence of or managing a disease. Many people aren’t necessarily “sick” but aren’t feeling their best daily. So many people go about their day feeling okay. They get through their day. They may have some “minor” aches and pains or feel run-down but tend to attribute that to getting older or being busy. Many people have no idea that they could feel so much better with some tweaks to their lifestyle – and still have the same commitments and busy schedules as before.

“Actively sought” means that we are ensuring that we are managing or reducing disease risk by doing something, some action, daily or regularly, to maintain good health. This includes choosing healthier food options, moving more with planned exercise, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and taking preventive measures such as getting routine health screenings or not using tobacco.

Wellness isn’t the pursuit of perfection – as if there is such a thing when it comes to health.

Wellness is outsmarting our genetics, our environment, and the easy-to-adopt less-than-healthy-habits.

Wellness is a choice, but it also requires action.

People say it is hard. Eating healthy is hard. Exercising regularly is hard. Quitting smoking is hard. Lots of things are hard. Most of us were frustrated when taking those first steps to become more mobile when transitioning from infancy to toddlerhood. But we persisted.

I had some frustrating experiences while learning to drive a stick shift/manual transmission, especially on those hills. But I mastered it.

There are lots of things in life that are hard. Giving up is easy.

We need to do things daily to maintain health, and we take it for granted. We do it because it is for our health. We brush our teeth, we shower, and we wash our hands. Most people I know don’t give up doing it because we didn’t brush our teeth perfectly or our hands will get dirty all over again. That would be silly. But people give up on a regular exercise routine or eating healthier because why?

And, yes, we are busy, but then who isn’t? “Busy” is our life today. But is it for things that are really important or just busy work? Likely both. Consider how much time is wasted daily doing things you don’t NEED to do. I will not call anyone out, but you know those time-wasters.

And why should we worry about this physical wellness anyway? People have challenged me and questioned me by asking about extending their lives. I have no illusion that I can help anyone live longer.

Is living longer the point? Perhaps.

Or is it living healthier longer? Probably.

I promise they will have a healthier life if they regularly address some of these wellness goals.

A healthier life means: How do you want to live in those last 5-10-15 years? Active and independent or sitting and having someone else help you go to the bathroom?

I’ve seen the latter and don’t want to be that person. I’ve seen the latter last for a long time. I want to stand up from a chair on my own.

I want to be the person who is hard to chase down rather than waiting for someone to visit me every few days.

Likely, you will still get sick because life happens. But reducing that chance or addressing illness in the early stages is much better mentally, emotionally, financially, and physically than waiting for it to take over and be the sole focus of day-to-day living. For example, catching a cancer diagnosis at stage 1 or even stage 0 has a much better outcome than finding it at stage 3 or stage 4.

Don’t avoid wellness. Embrace it. And feel better doing it.

What does wellness mean to you? What are your biggest wellness questions? What is your biggest wellness challenge?

Real World Nutrition Refreshed: I am revitalizing and updating my archive of blogs and re-publishing them. Stay tuned as I review, update, refresh, and re-share these posts to provide you with even more valuable information on nutrition, health, and overall wellness – and keep things timely. This blog was originally posted on Feb 10, 2021.