Fitness Health

Healthy Habits In Your Everyday Lifestyle Will Help You Balance All Dimensions Of Wellness

Your personal fitness health is dependent on more than just what kind of exercise you are doing. Health and fitness go hand in hand and measuring one’s level of fitness health can be determined many ways.

What is health? Webster’s dictionary defines health as “a healthy state of well-being, free from disease”. The World Health Organization goes a step further. They define health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

Health, or good health and fitness, should be a place of balance where all dimensions of wellness come together. I believe the dimensions of wellness are:

• Physical
• Mental
• Social
• Spiritual
• Nutritional
• Medical

At various times in our lives, we may have many of these in place, but most times we are in imbalance. And we may, at various times, seek out ways to increase our well-being by hiring a personal trainer, visiting a nutritionist, being pro-active in our annual medical tests, or even speaking to a spiritual adviser.

Maintaining all of these aspects at all times may be an impossible goal, but it all comes back to balance. Making sure that most of the dimensions are being satisfied at most times.

Let’s focus on physical health. The first thing I ask my clients when they come in for a session is, “ How’s your body?” Every day it’s a different story and that’s the beauty of being a Pilates instructor. It’s never the same thing twice!

How do we determine if we have good fitness health Fitness testing is one way of decidedly measuring one’s capacity for endurance, flexibility, muscle strength and body fat composition. You need a fitness professional or an exercise physiologist to administer the tests and they can be costly and time consuming.

Another way is to administer your own kind of fitness tests. Can you walk at a quick pace and talk easily? Can you make it up a hill or incline easily? Do your feet hurt at the end of a day? Do you think you have healthy habits and good nutrition? How's your sex drive?

Can you reach way up high to that top shelf and way down low to pick up something off the floor? Use these self-administered fitness tests as a kind of barometer for your own personal well being.

If you are not satisfied with how you feel in your every day life, consider the inventory of wellness listed above. Pay attention to your body every day to discover your level of fitness health and if need be, make some changes in your lifestyle.

End of article.

Return to Everything-About -Pilates home page from Pilates Fitness Health article.