As we approach the holiday season and you might start getting bombarded with messaging around dieting and fitness to stay “on track” with your health goals and look at different things to make you eat less during the holidays, I wanted to write about what does it mean to even be healthy. I believe there’s so much messaging out there so it’s really confusing to know what healthy is.
Note that there is no one way to create a healthy person, and health depends on your needs. For example, if you love eating almonds because it might be healthy for you to add such protein to your daily diet, it could be unhealthy for someone who has a nut allergy. Eating almonds can even be deadly for them. Healthy really varies from one person to person.
Another example is somebody who may have multiple sclerosis. Doing heated yoga would not be the healthiest option for them because having heat can exasperate their symptoms. For you, however, doing heated yoga might fit into your healthy lifestyle. So before we say that one way is better than the other, it’s important to explore what your needs are because that will help define what health is for you.
Ways People Assess Their Health But Aren’t Good Determinants
These ways are usually enforced by the fitness industry, which is widely unregulated. So, one the things I believe does not determine a person’s health is their weight because it might not actually determine how healthy of a person you are. Next is how productive you are or how many days you work out. Lastly, how many calories you might burn when doing certain exercises. These do not make you healthier than the next person.
Ways That I Like To Use To Assess People’s Health
Energy is one of the ways I like to assess a person’s health. If your energy is feeling high, you are probably in a good state. Next is your mood. If you are crabby or not feeling well mentally, your health might not be as great. Finally, another way to assess your health is how you actually feel about yourself. If you are not feeling so great about yourself even if you are working out or eating perfectly, having good mental health is important to determine if you are really healthy.
These Things Can Contribute To The Three Ways I Like To Use To Assess People’s Health
Sleep can contribute to your energy, mood, or how you feel about yourself. I feel like sleep is something that’s starting to be talked about more as in the past it wasn’t discussed as a way to be contributing to your health. When we sleep, our brain actually gets to shut down and rest, and so does our body. When we sleep, rest also helps our body to recover from anything that might have happened during the day. Sleep is an important determinant for your healthy as they’ve shown that if people do not sleep well, they have a way lower life expectancy. It’s something that’s vital for your mood and energy and this is one thing to assess if your mood or energy is feeling off.
Your environment is also another thing. Where you live can determine whether you are in a healthy state or not. So if you live somewhere with a higher economic status, you are more likely to be in better health as there will be less stressors on you, such as having a roof over your head that is stable.
Your family and friends are also important for your environment. If you are with people who cross your boundaries a lot or add a lot of stress to your life, that can also contribute to your health. You could be moving, eating, and sleeping well, but you still have a lot of stressors in your life, it could lead to a breakdown of your body and a shorter life expectancy. Work is another area regarding stress that you could look into because I think we know that when we work at a place where we are unhappy, we get really stressed out and it can affect our energy and mood, and overall health.
Another thing that can affect your energy, mood, and how you feel about yourself is your food intake. I do not mean eating less because most of the time, you need to eat more food than what you think you need to eat. When you are eating more food, you will have more energy. Also, if you haven’t eaten enough food, you might be “hangry.” So it is really important to eat enough food to sustain yourself so that you can feel well.
Food gets to be another weird spot for people talking about what they think the best diets are. But really, the most important thing to do is to eat food that is nutrient-dense, but also the food that you love. For me, I do not like kale at all. It is a super nutrient-dense food, but I do not like it so I do not eat it. I can get nutrients from other foods to support myself. If you eat food that’s nutrient-dense and you actually like it, you will feel a lot better. But if you eat food based on what people say are diets that will work, you will not get to enjoy your food that much and it will impact your overall energy and health. If you are spending a lot of your mental energy trying to decide what you want to eat all the time and trying to stay in certain food rules, that will be really difficult. Just eat what you love and those that are nutrient-dense to improve your energy, mood, and overall health.
The final thing that contributes to your energy, mood, and how you feel about yourself is the movement you are doing. You also have to ask yourself why you are moving. If you are moving to look a certain way, movement might not be enjoyable for you. You want to move to feel good so choose an activity you can commit to and be consistent with. You will see results in your mind and body if you are consistent with that workout routine. So choose something you love doing and you will see the impact it has in your energy and mood.
Conclusion
I hope this helped you start to think about how to define what is healthy for you because it is dependent on who you are, your lifestyle, and what you are trying to get out of your life. If you are starting to notice that you are losing joy, you might want to assess one of these areas – environment, sleep, food, and movement – and notice if you are doing certain things because of societal or family pressures. If you are doing those things because of such factors, it is going to impact your health. Remember that you have to really define what health means to you and stay committed to that unapologetically so you can feel better from day to day.