The Winding Road of Wellness

As a dietitian, I spend a lot of time thinking about, talking about, and working with food. Part of my goals include helping optimize resources to facilitate wellness through nutrition -- translated in English, helping people use their money, time, and talents to make better nutrition choices that help them be healthier. This is a good goal, but it's not enough to achieve true wellness.

What is wellness anyway?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines wellness as “The condition of good physical and mental health, especially when maintained by proper diet, exercise, and habits.” I think that this is a useful definition, but it seems a little incomplete to me. In another definition, the McKinley Health Center at University of Ill at Urbana-Champaign defines wellness as “a state of optimal well-being that is oriented toward maximizing an individual’s potential. This is a life-long process of moving towards enhancing your physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental well-being.” To me, this is one of the most comprehensive definitions of wellness that I’ve seen. I put an emphasis on life-long because wellness is about each of us, at every stage, of life making an effort to make choices that lead to healthier lives.

This comprehensive look at wellness in these six areas, I believe, can help a person achieve a greater level of wellness. I've often seen images of the wellness wheel, which includes some of these very concepts. In an activity, you mark along the spokes (each of which represents an area of wellness) of the wellness wheel where you think you are on the continuum in each area. Next, you connect the dots creating an often misshapen wheel, which I imagine (mine anyway) would weave back and forth across the road...my own winding road of wellness.

So how to do that? Start small...perhaps make a short note of how you're doing in each of these areas. What things could you do differently? How can you get the skills or knowledge (ex. take a class, make a friend who knows how, find a mentor, PRAY) needed to do better in a particular area of weakness? Then, make a plan and be proactive...move down the winding road in the direction of wellness.