
I like to use the definition of health as defined by the World Health Organization, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” Much in the same way, wellness cannot be defined as simply the absence of disease. It is much more than that.

Wellness is characterized by growth and development in all aspects of your life. It is about recognizing that your wellbeing is more than having general fitness and taking vitamins. Nothing in your body is separate, and all things that make up who you are, are necessary for wellness. It is a holistic philosophy that encompasses your mental, physical, spiritual, and social health.

An analogy to better visualize this principle is the relationship between light and darkness. Light does not appear suddenly because there is a lack of darkness, but the lack of light certainly brings darkness. But for there to be light there must be a source.

For light, a spark and some fuel are needed to create the light which makes darkness disappear. For wellness, intent and knowledge are needed for you to begin making the changes in your lifestyle that bring you energy, health, and happiness.

## How to Have Wellness

Though wellness applies to a broad swath of areas to be healthy in, to attain wellness you can break what you should do down into three categories. You need to eat right, move right, and think right (also known as the Triad of Health).

The reason I, and many others, break wellness down into these three basic categories is because they encompass much of our health and overlap each other. Moving correctly and eating correctly are largely for your physical health, but they also have a profound influence over your mental health. While thinking correctly is largely responsible for the other aspects of our wellness, such as our core identity, personal legacy, seeking and connecting with our spirituality, developing a proper lifestyle, and maintaining relationships.

All three are necessary and the lack of any one of them can lead to imbalance and illness.

We’ll begin with eating right and moving right because they are easier to master and lay a foundation for your mental health. It is much more natural to have a clear, positive mind when you have proper nutrition and exercise. Although that is not to say that you only need to focus on you physical health, and keep in mind that a negative mind can destroy even the healthiest body.

### Eating Right

Eating correctly is essential for wellness. With a proper diet you will maintain an optimal weight, have the energy to thrive throughout the day, and improve mental health such as having a clearer mind and being in a better mood. The inverse is true for those who eat unhealthily.

Eating correctly gives your body correct combination of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates necessary to fuel your unique physiology. It provides your body with the building blocks it needs to restore the body and produce energy such as enzymes and vital nutrients. It also brings in all of the probiotics (literally “good-bacteria”) that aid your bodily functions and keep you in balance.

However, it can be difficult for people to eat correctly not because it takes too much effort, but because there is a lot of misinformation out there. Let me clear some of that confusion.

The simplest place to begin with eating correctly is to cut out all processed foods (which includes fast food). Processed foods strip down natural ingredients into their most basic and unhealthiest forms, and usually many synthetic ingredients and chemicals are added as well.

Processed foods often have:

- Low nutritional content
- MSG
- High levels of corn syrup
- Trans fats
- Synthetic chemicals to enhance flavor, color, texture, and shelf life
- Supplemented synthetic vitamins that are no replacement for the real thing

The processed and chemical ingredients in processed foods to a lot of damage to one’s health and also have addictive properties, making it even more difficult to make the switch to healthy eating. Also, the chemicals added to processed foods are in no way natural and shouldn’t be a part of anyone’s diet.

So, do yourself a a favor and eat whole foods. Furthermore, as much as you can the whole foods you eat should at least be all-natural and free range. If it is within your means, organic, grass-fed, and wild-caught foods are always the best. Foods of this quality are free of pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and heavy-metals (in fish). Also, foods like this are denser in essential nutrients and enzymes.

Eating foods that are in season locally is also important for a good diet. It promotes shopping for local produce which is fresher, and keeps your diet rotating so you don’t eat too much of one food and develop an intolerance to it.

To eat the correct portions of food groups you should follow your gut. Eat the amount of carbohydrates, proteins, oils, and fats that makes you feel the best. Unfortunately there is not a catch-all guideline to follow on how much of what to eat because everyone has a unique physiology that is able to change. But it is especially important you are actually eating proteins and fats. Ignore the studies that say you should avoid fats, you should only avoid synthetic fats and manufactured polyunsaturated fats like corn oil, safflower oil, and soy oil. Also studies that correlate red meats with cancer are falsified and in the correct portions red meats are extremely healthy.

(To be clear, the classic Food Pyramid model is not at all a guideline on how to eat. It was manipulated by major food industries who of course wanted their products to be eaten more, and has been under constant change.)

If you want to take your nutrition to the next level and be given specific vitamins and supplements along with tips on exactly what you should eat and what you should avoid, consider visiting our office. We offer Nutritional Counseling which uses lab testing of your blood, hair, and urine to find where your dietary imbalances are and what you can do to correct them. Or if you do not have access to me, I suggest you find a professional who uses a similar, objective approach.

If you are looking for a self guide on how to eat properly and cut through all of the media nonsense, I highly recommend Paul Chek’s “How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy!”

### Moving Right

Moving is another important component of wellness. Getting the right type and amount of exercise has benefits such as maintaining weight, improving posture, building strength and function, pumping the body to move nutrients, fluids, and promote elimination, and exercising improves mental and emotional health (starting to see a connection?).

To exercise correctly, it is very important that each person is looked at as a unique combination of strengths, weaknesses, stresses, and imbalances.

Remember, on a cellular level all stress gets processed by the body in the same way. It is interpreted as destruction that requires healing. So if someone has high levels of stress from their lifestyle and diet and they decide they want to begin doing heavy workouts to loose some weight, a lot more damage than good is going to be done. The body is already too damaged and cannot handle the extra load that heavy exercise puts on it, it needs to heal first.

Unfortunately, many people do not understand this and cannot figure out why, despite all the exercise they are doing, they can’t seem to loose more than a few pounds. They leave the gym every day feeling worse than when they went in and are loosing energy through their day, but they keep going because “No pain, no gain.”

Along with having too much stress to really be working out, many people do not have the proper function. Their abdominal wall is dysfunctional, they have major postural imbalances, and their movement patterns are sloppy and putting stress on the wrong parts of the body. Exercising without a solid foundation in how to move and how to stabilize parts of the body, especially the core and low back, can very easily lead to injury.

So, to move right, you really need to understand your needs and begin exercising from there.

For people that have too much stress and lack the energy to work out need to begin working in. Meaning they need to do exercises that are easy enough that their breathing and heart rate do not rise, and their sympathetic nervous system is not activated. This reduces stress and pumps the body to move nutrients and eliminate waste.

Good exercises for working in simple, rhythmic, and flowing such as:

- Walking
- Tai-chi
- Qui-gong
- Low-intensity yoga

Again, an incredible, comprehensive resource of what exercises you can do to work in and get the how and why on exercise is “How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy!” by Paul Chek.

Once one has the energy and health to begin working out it is essential that they practice perfect form. This includes the placement of their body, range of movement, muscle integration patterns, proper stabilization and core activation, and breathing pattern. Also, all of the exercises (and stretches) that one performs should be working towards improving balance in their body. Areas that are the weakest and most dysfunctional need to be focused on the most so that the benefits can carry over into the real world.

There is not enough space in a single blog post to cover all of the details of proper exercise. But, if a lot of what I am writing is news to you and you do not have the knowledge of how to move properly (which most people do not) I recommend that you seek out a professional to train with. The only people I can honestly recommend to train, who I know will be thorough and give you the proper exercises are CHEK Practitioners. They perform a full evaluation to asses your function and find imbalances so that they can give you a custom exercise program that most benefits you.

At my office, both me and my son are certified CHEK Exercise Coaches, but my son primarily handles the exercise clients. We offer Corrective Exercise programs tailored to your needs at any level, whether you just got out of physical therapy or you are seeking intense sports specific conditioning. If you are interested, please give our office a call or visit our contact page.

If you do not have the means to train with a professional, at the very least put a lot of focus on your form (Elliot Hulse is a great guide and we have some videos as well), and listen to your body to see if you can work out or if you need to work in instead. Though I said that some are too unhealthy to work out, do not confuse that for some people should not move. It is very important for your health and stress levels that you move enough during your day. Like I said above, if you aren’t ready for heavy exercise, even simple walking is an excellent way to start moving and begin on the road to wellness.

### Thinking Right

Having the right mindset and outlook on life is the final piece of the wellness puzzle. Although nutrition and exercise play a large part in our mental health, they alone are not enough. Your emotional, or limbic system, has the ability to trump all other systems in the body and alone can cause illness and even death. So it is important that your mental health alone is considered.

Thinking right is also responsible for ensuring that you cultivate a healthy lifestyle, are spiritually connected, and have healthy relationships.

One way to develop a healthy mental/emotional state is simply to practice being positive, such as this guide by Huffington Post: [7 Ways to Practice Positivity and Optimism Every Day](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/faisal-hoque/7-ways-to-practice-positivity-and-optimism-every-day_b_5606981.html). One of my personal favorite techniques to generate positivity is to write down three things every day that you are grateful for. They can be as important as family and as seemingly insubstantial as cat videos on YouTube. The only rule is that you cannot repeat things you have said before. I like this practice because it makes you seek things to be grateful through the day, or on rough days it lets reflect and notice your day may not have been all as bad as you thought.

Meditation is another way to greatly improve your mental health. It has been shown to have many benefits such as reducing stress, improving cognitive function, and improving your ability to focus and stay a positive, egoless state even in difficult situations. Here is a great guide by Zen Habits for how to begin meditating: [Meditation for Beginners](//zenhabits.net/meditation-guide/).

Another technique to reduce stress and develop mindfulness is one that Eckhart Tolle teaches in his book “A New Earth” which, in a nutshell, is to take a fully conscious breath at times throughout your day. Especially when you are feeling stressed, angry, or fearful, observe as you take a full breath. Pay attention to how the air feels coming through your nose and how it fills your belly, then chest, then how it feels as you exhale. At this time you can also focus on the warm slightly tingling sensation in one part, or all parts of your body (this is your body’s innate energy) to take you out of your mind and put you more in the moment.

I have to recommend that you read “A New Earth” in it’s entirety, it is one of the most concise, accurate, comprehensive, and practical books on what the ego is and how to stay in the present moment to find peace.

Just how exercise and nutrition can help you have a clearer mind, thinking correctly can also help you have the awareness and devotion to eat and move correctly. It goes both ways and is completely interrelated. With a clear, positive mind it will be easier to do the things you need to because you will see the reasons to be healthy and want to continue doing so, rather than being frustrated, stressed, and seeking escape and immediate gratification.

Along with being healthy, you will adjust other parts of your lifestyle such as getting the right amount of sleep, being fulfilled with your work or having the drive to find work that fulfills you, and consuming media and information that helps you grow and be positive.

With this mindfulness you will also be more present and less judgmental in relationships (including with strangers) thus improving your social health. You will also begin to recognize who you enjoy being around and who you may need to avoid so as to not be burdened by unnecessary judgement, stress, and negativity.

Also, you will feel more connected to whatever you view as the source of life (whether that is a god of any religion or science for you, you can be aware of and connected to it through your day). This will greatly improve your sense of peace and purpose through your day.

I hope you can see the reciprocating nature of all of these aspects of wellness. The more you work on any aspect of your wellness, the easier it is to improve and continue working on all other areas.

## Conclusion

Hopefully by this point I have answered the initial question of this post, why is wellness important? I also hope that I have given you the foundational information and resources you need to begin on your path of wellness.

Keep in mind that my office provides nutritional and exercise programs that are tailored to your unique physiology, goals, and needs. These programs also include practices you can implement in your daily life to improve all aspects of your wellness. If you are interested, please give my office a call.


health

The 3 Steps to Wellness

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