Definition of Wellness

Borrowed from http://www.definitionofwellness.com/

What is the definition of wellness? More than ever before, we hear this word in the news, on billboards, in conversation and even at work. Interestingly, there is no universally-accepted definition of wellness. There is, however, a set of common characteristics seen in most thoughtful attempts at a definition of wellness. We generally see a reference to a “state of well-being,” which is vague, to say the least. Also frequently seen is a “state of acceptance or satisfaction with our present condition.”

The truth is wellness is a tough word to define. That said, we’ll leave it to Charles B. Corbin of Arizona State University who gives this definition of wellness: “Wellness is a multidimensional state of being describing the existence of positive health in an individual as exemplified by quality of life and a sense of well-being.”

Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a more successful existence.

• Process means that improvement is always possible
• Aware means that we are continuously seeking more information about how we can improve.
• Choices means that we consider a variety of options and select those in our best interest.
• Success is determined by each individual to be their collection of life accomplishments.

Dimensions of Wellness: Physical Wellness

Borrowed from http://www.definitionofwellness.com/

The physical dimension of wellness encourages cardiovascular flexibility and strength and also encourages regular, physical activity. Physical development encourages knowledge about food and nutrition and discourages the use of tobacco, drugs and excessive alcohol consumption. Physical Wellness encourages consumption and activities which contribute to high level wellness, including medical self-care and appropriate use of the medical system.

As you travel the physical wellness path, you'll strive to spend more time each week building endurance, flexibility and physical strength. Sometimes the path may become narrow and treacherous-you'll become more aware of the hazards around you and you'll begin to take safety precautions so you may travel your path successfully. The physical dimension of wellness entails taking responsibility and care for minor illnesses and also knowing when professional medical attention is needed.

By traveling the wellness path, physically, you'll be able to monitor your own vital signs and understand your body's warning signs. You'll understand and appreciate the relationship between sound nutrition and how your body performs. The physical dimension of wellness provides almost immediate beneficial results-both physical and psychological. The physical benefits of looking good and feeling terrific most often lead to the psychological benefits of enhanced self-esteem, self control determination and a sense of direction.

• As you travel the wellness path, you'll begin to believe that - physically.
• It's better to consume foods and beverages that enhance good health rather than those which impair it.
• It's better to be physically fit than out of shape.

Steps for Improving Physical Wellness and Fitness

Borrowed from http://www.definitionofwellness.com/

Physical wellness is the ability to apply your knowledge, motivation, commitment, behavior, self management, attitude, and skills toward achieving your personal fitness and health goals. A wise person once said, "Those who think they have no time for exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." Physical wellness can be maintained by applying the knowledge and skills of sound nutrition, exercise, and safety to everyday life.

• Exercise three time a week, 20-30 minutes per session
• Use the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator, and walk whenever possible
• Get consistent and adequate sleep
• Use seat belts and helmets, and encourage others to do so
• Learn to recognize early signs of illness
• Listen to your body
• Practice safe sex
• Eat breakfast - it's the most important meal of the day
• Eat a variety of healthy foods
• Stop smoking and protect yourself against second-hand smoke
• Control your meal portions and try to eat smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day
• Use sugar, salt, fat, and alcohol in moderation

Physical Wellness Assessment

Borrowed from http://www.definitionofwellness.com/

The physical dimension of wellness involves encouraging regular activities that produce endurance, flexibility and strength. Read each statement carefully and respond honestly by using the following scoring:

Almost always = 2 points            Sometimes/occasionally = 1 point           Very seldom = 0 points

_____  1.  I exercise aerobically (vigorous, continuous) for 20 to 30 minutes at least three times per week.
_____  2.  I eat fruits, vegetables, and whole grains every day.
_____  3.  I avoid tobacco products.
_____  4.  I wear a seat belt while riding in and driving a car.
_____  5.  I deliberately minimize my intake of cholesterol, dietary fats, and oils.
_____  6.  I avoid drinking alcoholic beverages or I consume no more than one drink per day.
_____  7.  I get an adequate amount of sleep.
_____  8.  I have adequate coping mechanisms for dealing with stress.
_____  9.  I maintain a regular schedule of immunizations, physicals, dental checkups and self-exams.
_____ 10. I maintain a reasonable weight, avoiding extremes of overweight and underweight.
_______ Total for Physical Wellness Dimension

Score: 15 to 20 Points -  Excellent strength in this dimension.

Score:  9 to 14 Points - There is room for improvement.  Look again at the items in which you scored 1 or 0.  What changes can you make to improve your score?

Score:  0 to 8 Points - This dimension needs a lot of work.  Look again at  this dimension and challenge yourself to begin making small steps toward growth here.  Remember:  The goal is balanced wellness.

Eating Healthy Shouldn't Be That Hard

Forget everything you have ever heard about healthy eating for a moment.  Chances are much of what you think you know about healthy eating is more fiction than fact. People are bombarded with messages of what not to eat or what to eat that are often conflicting and confusing.  So let’s back up a few steps and boil healthy eating down to 3 easy steps to start with.

Planning the Meal

Choose at least one food from four of the key food groups of MyPyramid: protein, whole grain, fruit, vegetable, dairy and healthy fats. This will help assure you have a balanced meal.

Sample Healthy Meal:

• Cheese-filled whole wheat tortellini (dairy and whole grain)
• Topped with chunky vegetable pasta sauce (vegetable) and a drizzle of olive oil (healthy fat)
• Side of grilled chicken breast (protein)

Portioning appropriately

Often it is not just what we eat but how much we eat.  An easy way to get used to eating the right portions is to use a divided picnic plate.  The meat and starches go in the two smaller sections, while the fruit and veggies fill larger half plate section.  What about mixed dishes like the one above you say?  Get a cereal bowl that holds no more than 2 cups. Fill the bowl once and avoid going back for seconds.

Vary the Colors You Eat By Adding More Fruit and Veggies

• The more variety of color you eat over the day, the more likely you are getting a variety of health promoting nutrients.
• Red fruits and vegetables are a good source of the antioxidant, lycopene, for cancer prevention.
• Deep orange veggies are good sources of vitamin A for healthy eyes and skin.
• Dark greens are good sources of lutein, an important nutrient for eye health.
• Blue and purple fruits and veggies are full of antioxidants that support brain and heart health.

The Challenge

For the next four weeks, try adopting these simple steps into your daily routine. Once you have mastered these, you will be ready for the next level.

No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake Recipe

Recipe Ingredients

Crust

6 whole lowfat honey graham crackers (2‑squares each), crushed to fine crumbs

2 Tbsp butter, melted, and mixed with 1 Tbsp honey

Filling

1 box (3 oz) strawberry-kiwi flavor gelatin

2⁄3 cup boiling water

1 tub (16 oz) 1% fat cottage cheese

2 bricks (8 oz each) fat-free cream cheese, softened

2 Tbsp sugar

2 tsp strawberry extract or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping

1 pt (about 12 oz) fresh strawberries

2 Tbsp strawberry jelly, melted

Garnish: small mint leaves

Recipe Preparation

1. Coat an 8 x 3-in. springform pan with nonstick spray.
2. Crust: Mix crumbs with butter mixture until evenly moistened. Press firmly over bottom and 3⁄4 in. up side of prepared pan. Place in freezer.
3. Filling: Dissolve gelatin in boiling water in a 1-cup measure. Purée cottage cheese in food processor until creamy. Add gelatin, cream cheese, sugar and extract; process until smooth. Pour into prepared crust; smooth top. Cover and refrigerate 4 hours, or until set.
4. Topping: Wash and dry berries; remove stems. Quarter each lengthwise and place in a bowl; add jelly and gently toss to coat. Remove sides of springform pan; place cheesecake on serving plate. Spoon on berry mixture; sprinkle with mint leaves.

Planning Tip: Can be made, without the strawberry topping, up to 3 days ahead. Refrigerate covered. Prepare Topping just before serving.

Nutrition Facts
Yields 12 servings
164 calories per serving
2g Total Fat
1g Saturated Fat
11mg Cholesterol
420mg Sodium
23g Total Carbohydrates
1g Dietary Fiber
11g Protein

Five Things Toddlers Teach Us About Back Pain Relief

Toddlers Hold the Key to Pain-Free Living and Healthy Aging

Toddlers may have to rely on grown-ups to teach them how to tie a shoe and use the potty, but when it comes to knowing how to sit, stand, bend and walk with ease, we can take our cues from these agile little ones . Moreover, toddlers, in spite of their tender age, hold the secret of how to age comfortably. Sound nutty? Read on.

All healthy babies teach themselves how to stand and walk by falling down enough times to discover the central axis or "plumb line" along which they must arrange their bones in order to balance a heavy head on top of the spine. A comparison of people in the world who age into their 80's and 90's with long spines and no back pain with the typical person who experiences chronic back pain, reveals that the back pain sufferer is far more likely to have veered off from this axis. The shocker is that true natural alignment is surprisingly different from what your mother may have taught you about sitting or standing "up straight."

Five Things Toddlers Teach Us About Back Pain Relief
 

• One of the first things toddlers learn when standing on their own is that their bones do the primary job of holding them up, not muscle strength. Without aligned bones, they fall down.
• Toddlers do not actively lift up their chests, nor do they slouch. To do either would cause them to lose their balance.
• Toddlers don't have firm "abs" or sucked-in bellies. Their relaxed belly muscles on the surface allow breathing to be free and natural, as well as their skeletons to align themselves. Only with aligned bones can the deeper "core" abs provide stabilizing support.
• Toddlers do not pull their heads up and back. The fact that their heads are proportionately larger and heavier at their age forces them to discover how to delicately balance the skull on the spine (somewhat like a bowling ball on a stick).
• Toddlers don't breathe into their upper chests, but rather experience a gentle natural breath in the lowest and broadest part of the lungs, filing the back, as well as the front of the body.

Children are losing their natural alignment at increasingly younger ages due to a long list of influences that include such things as poorly designed strollers, car seats and desk seats in school which often cause the pelvis to tuck in a "sad dog" position. Hours spent slumped in front of television and computer screens cause muscles in the front of the hips and torso to be trained to shorten in an unnatural, chronic way that becomes habitual in all that they do. To counteract our society's ever-growing tendency towards slouching, we have developed an entire culture of exercise and fitness that is based on the belief that strength and flexibility are qualities that must be worked at to be maintained. However, authentic strength and flexibility are simply the natural byproducts of living a normally active life in an aligned body, where muscles remain elastic and joints have full range of movement. People who age into their 70s, 80s and beyond with elongated spines and flexible joints, as well as those small women in the world who successfully carry heavy loads on their heads without developing problems, have never lost the skeletal alignment they first discovered as toddlers

Things You Can Do to Align Like a Toddler

While specific instructions for how to realign in a natural way is beyond the scope of this article, some simple explorations can help you get started. Keep in mind that the steps outlined below may feel awkward, weird or just plain wrong at first, especially if your muscles are accustomed to doing the work of holding you up.

• Locate your sit bones or "butt bones." Sit on a firm, level surface. Slide your right hand, palm up, under your right buttock. Let your weight come down onto your hand and roll around until you feel a boney "knob" pushing into your hand. This is one of your sit bones (there's another one on the left side). A baby or toddler always sits perched on these sit bones.
• Park your pelvis in neutral. Bring your weight directly onto both sit bones. (Pulling the flesh of the buttocks out behind you may help you do this). Bring your awareness to the pubic bone, where two bones of your pelvis meet low in the front. Slowly move the pubic bone upward, away from the seat, noticing the rounding that comes into the spine. Notice, also, how your weight has rolled off the back edge of the sit bones. Now press the pubic bone downwards into the seat until you experience the rising length that comes into the spine. This will give you a sense of how the position of the pelvis determines the stability of everything above it.
• Relax Your Belly. This can be one of the most difficult things to do when we have been told constantly to "suck it in." However, tightening the "abs" (rectus abdominis) interferes with natural breathing. Give it a try. Suck in and hold your tummy in for a few seconds, long enough to notice that you've stopped breathing. Now relax your belly ever so slightly, then a little more and a little more, and you will experience how breathing returns quite naturally. (Don't worry. Your deeper core abs can only do their job when this surface tension is released)."
• Let your chest settle "in" instead of lifting "up. This can be hard to accept if you've been taught to sit up straight by lifting your chest. However, lifting your chest not only arches the spine, it compresses the spinal cord through which every nerve in your body passes. For many people, longstanding back problems are resolved almost immediately when they learn to "settle" the chest and open the back. Pay attention to how your back widens and relaxes as you do this. Note: It is essential that you park your pelvis in neutral first, or releasing your chest will put you into slouching mode instead.
• Let your neck be soft and free. Perhaps the most difficult instruction of all requires that you stop "working" to hold your head up. Try this for yourself. Lift your chin and notice how the back of your neck (and your cervical spine) shorten and compress. Slowly drop your chin and feel your spine lengthening through the back of your neck. Again, this is likely to feel weird when you first experience these new ways of inhabiting your body. Put the emphasis more on how you feel than what you believe you should look like.

Slouching and sitting "up straight" represent opposite ways to be off the central axis. This simple fact explains much of the tension and pain experienced by millions of people today. Truly good posture aligns along the center and is comfortable, loose, easy and relaxed. Living in an aligned body adheres to fundamental laws of nature that govern physics, engineering and architecture. By re-learning how to return to what you once knew (in other words, embracing your inner toddler!) you will be able, once again, to rely on the structural framework of an aligned, living skeleton to provide all the support you need to be naturally strong, flexible and pain-free.
By Kathleen Porter

About the Author: Kathleen Porter has traveled the world researching natural skeletal alignment in people who have never lost what we all once knew as healthy toddlers. The author of Sad Dog Happy Dog: How Poor Posture Affects Your Child's Health & What You Can Do About It, and Ageless Spine, Lasting Health: The Open Secret to Pain-free Living and Comfortable Aging, she has taught principles of natural alignment through the University of Hawaii at Hilo, the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon and is currently on the faculty of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. For information visit www.naturalposturesolutions.com.

What Is BMI?

Body Mass Index (BMI) is a number calculated from a person's weight and height. BMI is a fairly reliable indicator of body fatness for most people. BMI does not measure body fat directly, but research has shown that BMI correlates to direct measures of body fat. Calculating BMI is one of the best methods for population assessment of the overweight and obese. Because calculation requires only height and weight, it is inexpensive and easy to use for clinicians and the general public. The use of BMI allows people to compare their own weight status to that of the general population.

It is important to remember that weight is only one factor related to risk for disease. If you have questions or concerns about the appropriateness of your weight, you should discuss them with your healthcare provider.

The BMI ranges are based on the relationship between body weight and disease and death. Overweight and obese individuals are at increased risk for many diseases and health conditions, including the following:

• Hypertension
• Dyslipidemia (high cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides)
• Type 2 diabetes
• Stroke
• Gallbladder disease
• Osteoarthritis
• Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
• Some cancers (endometrial, breast and colon)

Balancing Calories

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whether you are consuming carbohydrates, fats, or proteins, all of them contain calories. If your diet focus is on any one of these alone, you are missing the bigger picture. When it comes to maintaining a healthy weight for a lifetime, the bottom line is calories count! Weight management is all about balance...balancing the number of calories you consume with the number of calories your body uses or "burns off."

• A calorie is defined as a unit of energy supplied by food. A calorie is a calorie regardless of its source. Whether you are eating carbohydrates, fats, sugars, or proteins, all of them contain calories.
• Calorie balance is like a scale. To remain in balance and maintain your body weight, the calories consumed (from food) must be balanced by the calories used (in normal body functions, daily activities and exercise).

If you need to tip the balance scale in the direction of losing weight, keep in mind that it takes approximately 3,500 calories below your calorie needs to lose a pound of body fat. To lose about 1 to 2 pounds per week, you will need to reduce your caloric intake by 500-1,000 calories per day.

An interactive version is found at mypyramidtracker.gov where you can enter the foods you have eaten and physical activity you have done to see how your calorie intake compares to your calorie expenditure.

Calories In - Calories Out

Calories In = Food and beverages
Calories Out = Body functions and physical activity

If you are maintaining your weight your caloric balance status is "in balance." You are eating roughly the same number of calories that your body is using. Your weight will remain the stable.

If you are gaining weight your caloric balance status is "in caloric excess." You are eating more calories than your body is using. You will store these extra calories as fat and you'll gain weight.

If you are losing weight your caloric balance status is "in caloric deficit." You are eating fewer calories than you are using. Your body is pulling from its fat storage cells for energy, so your weight is decreasing.



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How Are You Doing on Your New Year's Resolution?

The Nuts and Bolts of New Year Resolutions

Clear Purpose-For a dream to become a goal, it must be specific. Being thin is an image, losing 10 pounds by March 1 is a true resolution. Be clear on what you want to achieve.

Be genuine-Make a New Year resolution that you have a real, serious, bona fide intention of keeping.

In writing-Describe precisely what you want, how you will earn it, when you will have it, and the benefits you’ll receive from achieving your resolution. Write the details, but don’t make it complex. When you put it in writing, you increase your chances of moving to the next step.

Keep it in mind-While we are blessed with a permanent memory, we are cursed with lousy recall. Writing your resolution goes a long way towards achieving it.

Stay committed-Without commitment, you can say, “Farewell dream and Hello Mediocrity!”

Stay committed-It moves you ever closer to your resolution and ultimate success. Commitment is the heartbeat of your goal.

Accept accountability-Commitment means you own it. You are responsible for taking the resolution that’s on paper and turning it into a desired outcome. Owning it means taking responsibility for changes, risks, failures and successes.

Pursue you resolutions with an open heart and believe deeply in your ability to enjoy the rewards of resolutions and dreams achieved.

Article source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary Ryan Blair

Dry Skin: Strategies When You Wash

• Skip long, hot showers. Hot water strips oils from the skin.
• Use a gentle cleanser or shower gel with moisturizer that contains ceramides, hyaluronic acid, lanolin, mineral oil and petroleum jelly.
• Exfoliate to rid of dead skin cells and apply moisturizers to re-hydrate.
• Go for unscented, soap-free or mild soap cleansers.
• Pat your skin with a towel after you shower or wash your face or hands, leaving them damp. Apply a moisturizer within three to five minutes of washing to lock moisture in your skin.
• Drink plenty of water and eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

Dealing With Shorter Days and Less Light

1.        Sit in front of a full-spectrum fluorescent light in the evening. The light with increase the serotonin levels in her brain which will give you a brighter out look. Full-spectrum lights are available at most discount retail stores.

2.        Develop a hobby that you can enjoy indoors. Maybe scrap booking, needle crafts, learn a music instrument. Try getting involved in activities away from your home. Church, community or support groups.

3.        Get exercise. Invest in a few exercise videos and some hand weights. Bundle up and go for a brisk walk. Consider taking a yoga or step class.

4.        Light candles. Seeing the flicker of fire and smelling a pleasant aroma also increases serotonin in the pleasure center of the brain.

5.        If you like to cook, try a eating more hardy one-pot meals with a lot of vegetables and protein.

6.        If you like to bake, winter is the perfect time to bake a batch of cookies. The extra heat from the oven is most appreciated.

7.        Read new books or surf the web. Winter is an excellent time to stay at home a quietly provide yourself with intellectual stimulation.

Acknowledge and maybe even embrace the seasonal changes. Winter is a time for me to slow down and quiet down. I tend to be more reflective about my life and relationships. It is my time to set goals and plans that can be carried out when the days are longer and the weather is warmer.