There are three considerations when looking at one’s overall wellness: spiritual, mental, and physical wellness. Each of these come with their own set of challenges when achieving proper health. What’s more, when one side is lacking, the others may falter as a result. Let’s take a quick look at the one side many people focus on most – the body.
When it comes to having a healthy body, you have to be just as vigilant as you would be with you mind or spirit. Constant upkeep and self fashioning is crucial when maintaining stature and overall health. Here are three tools every good warrior of proper health would be quick to equip!
A Food Log
One great tool that I have found to be endlessly useful is a food log – not only does this help with counting calories, but it provides you with nutritional information about your diet. I’ve found that iProfile, a web-based application, is one of the best. It allows you to both keep track of food and exercise, so you can see exactly the calories in compared to the calories out. It also breaks down your meals into the food groups satisfied, macro nutrients/micro nutrients consumed, and level of hydration (if you enter water). Finally, it is really easy to navigate through and when you create a profile, it provides a suggest calorie intake.
Regardless if you use iProfile or not, though, keeping track of what does into your body is a great starting place to becoming more healthy. Some might say this isn’t a “must”, but if you’re seriously looking to better your body, you want to have all bases covered. Understanding nutrition is a part of that.
A Place to Work Out
The second ‘tool’ here is a no brainer – you’ll need a good place to work out! Now, despite the simplicity behind this idea, it is actually very important. You might be thinking, “Oh, I can just use my living room” – and indeed you can. Just be mindful of the traffic and ‘feel’ of that area – having children running back and forth is no way to keep your focus. Likewise, if you’re too comfortable, you may find yourself being side tracked by things you would otherwise commonly do in that area – maybe watching TV or something of the like.
That said, choose somewhere new to do your work out. This doesn’t mean you have to spend money, though (I like the park down my street). As long as it’s a place you can get focus and pursue your workout regimen, you should be fine!
A Good Pair of Shoes (And Gear)
Lastly, you’ll want to be well equipped to face to the workout spot you’re traveling to. A weight room, for example, is a place you must wear shoes. The last thing you want to do is find yourself with a broken toe (or worse) because you forgot what type of gear an environment requires. If you’re doing yoga, be sure to get a nice yoga pad. If you’re going running, be sure to get a pair of shoes that supports your ankles. You get the idea.
With these three tools both literally and metaphorically equipped, you’ll be on your way to a better body. You’ll understand your body more and you’ll flourish as a result!
August 9, 2011 at 4:17 pm
In your first paragraph you say there are 3 aspects to wellness – spiritual, physical and mental. I would add social-worldliness as an additional aspect. If you think about yin/yang, you have physical / mental duality and then you have yin / spiritual and yang / social-worldliness duality.