Importance of being "well"

We all strive to be healthy, we are told to manage our weight, monitor our diet, and stay away from unhealthy habits, one can add many more items to this list that are recommended to us to remain physically fit or healthy. There are tangible methods to monitor our physical health, we can get our blood work done to make sure all levels of essential markers, like cholesterol, hemoglobin, minerals, and sugar levels are within limits, get X-rays or other scanning results like MRI or sonography. These all will tell us that everything within our body is okay and we are physically fit, but does this mean we are "well"? Is there a difference between being physically fit and feeling well? Of course, there is a difference.

One can be physically very fit, with all numbers within the recommended limits, and not feel well, or there may be some numbers off the mark indicating that you are physically not fit but still feel well. Being physically fit is just one of the aspects of feeling well, they both can go together, but it's not necessary. We need to look at them separately and work on each independently. 

Wellness is more about how we overall feel about ourselves and our surroundings rather than what are our medical statistics. Wellness is decided by a variety of things including our physical health, relationships, social and professional settings, our own expectations, burdens, past incidents, and our overall mental health. We may struggle in our department of wellness even after doing great in the department of physical fitness. If that happens, it is always a good idea to seek professional or expert help so that someone can guide us on how to deal with the issues we are facing in the wellness department. The problem with wellness is that it is very person-centric, completely different than physical fitness. We can find a lot of recommendations about eating well, and gym routines that are standardized to achieve particular goals related to physical fitness and may work for most of us. However, it is not easy to find such standard recommendations for wellness as what may work for me may not work for you, because what works for us depends a lot on our background, social, economic, professional, and emotional settings at that point in time. This is why achieving physical fitness has become a much more standardized practice compared to achieving overall wellness. In today's individual-centric world where we spend a lot of time on social media or consuming a variety of content directed towards us focusing on our mental health is more important than before. Working towards it actively, and if needed, having a wellness coach or mentor is not a bad idea. It not only supplements our physical fitness but improves our quality of life, we find more fulfillment and happiness in our day-to-day activities. Let's give equal importance to our wellness as much as we give to our physical fitness, they both go hand in hand, without wellness we may be physically fit on paper but not in reality, we may appear fit from outside but a total wreck from inside. Let's work towards having a wholesome quality of life where we feel good internally and externally, focusing on wellness can help us to achieve this. Think about it.

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It's simple pedometer, but it changed my lifestyle

Nowadays various fitness devices are being launched every day in the market. Some of these are really popular, there are also many apps for cell phones which can measure and store your physical activity data. I guess there is a very compelling reason why these things are so popular and I can say this from my own experience. When I got this little device called a 'pedometer' as a gift from our company, I never thought that it was going to change my lifestyle so much. For people who don't know about this device, the pedometer measures the number of steps you take by sensing the motions of your body. It gives you a record of how much you move in a day. I consider myself a physically active person who prefers to walk or use a bicycle rather than using a car or scooter. I was under the impression that walking ten thousand steps per day would be easy for me but when I started using the pedometer, this belief was crushed. When I looked at the readings of my pedometer I realized how little people like me walk in their day-to-day lives. I was just hitting the mark of six thousand steps per day. To achieve my daily target of 10k steps I decided to walk to the office at least one way rather than taking the bus and also made sure that I do some exercise at home to make up the remaining steps. Since I can see my progress in numbers, it made me very conscious and I try to make sure that I walk enough every month or every week to complete whatever target I set. This was never the case before, I used to walk or do some exercise but there was no data for me to check if I was doing enough. With this device, I can quantify my physical activity and it made a lot of difference. Basically, this data pushes me to set new targets and work towards them.

Nowadays we all complain about how modern technology is affecting our lives. Most of the time modern technology is blamed for many bad things happening in our personal lives. Some of our health problems are also blamed on our addiction to many of these gadgets. Our sedentary lifestyle, changing modes of communication, or too much addiction to video games is often highlighted as a reason for some of our problems. However, it is also true that each of these things has contributed something positive to our lives. We can use these things for our own benefit, they assist us in staying informed or being more physically active, the choice is really ours. Lack of enough physical activity is really a problem for many of us. Compared to our previous generation there is a lot of physical comfort in our lives, and different modes of transportation are very easily accessible to our generation. Our children are going to face this problem more severely than we do, this sudden change in lifestyle has created a lot of health issues like obesity, high blood pressure (hypertension), type-2 diabetes, and other lifestyle-related health problems. Apart from an unhealthy diet, lack of enough physical activity is one of the reasons for these problems. We get tired without doing much physical work. Many of us don't find time because of our very busy schedules to go to the gym or to do some simple exercise at home. We all think that we have some genuine reasons for our inability to spare some time for physical exercise. Maybe those reasons are valid but definitely we all should try to incorporate some sort of physical activity in our day-to-day life. Walking is one such thing that most of us can include in our day-to-day life, just try to walk to any place that is at a walkable distance (20-30 minutes per day). No need to walk one hour or 10 miles per day and get really exhausted but instead of taking an elevator take the stairs, if the destination is just a couple of blocks away then walk instead of going by car. These small changes can reduce our need to take out separate time for daily physical activity. I am offering this suggestion as it worked for me, maybe everyone can't walk to the office or take the stairs instead of the elevator, everyone has to come up with their own way of being physically active. My pedometer has helped me a lot in this case, so much that every day I am eager to see that magical 10000 number on it which indicates that the target achieved for the day. It gives me some sort of happiness and a sense of achievement, and the next day I am on my quest to achieve that task all over again. I am sure everyone can find some driving force that can push them to become more active. After all, we have to do it for our own health. Let's try to become more active and more healthy. It is good for our body as well as our mind. Remember that old saying "A healthy mind resides in a healthy body."

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

What Is the Definition of Beauty?

Humans are beauty-conscious, and this definition of beauty differs from individual to individual. We all (or most of us) love to see beautiful things around us and also appreciate their presence. The definition of beauty changes drastically from person to person, and I think that's why it's said that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Therefore, one thing is clear: beauty is a human-made concept like morality or religion, etc. It's different for different people; it depends on how you look at things, what your perspective is, and how you relate to the things you are looking at. There is no standard definition for beauty; one can say that whatever appeals or pleases your mind is beautiful for you.

Today, I see obsession in females about size zero figures, high heels, and many other things that are supposed to make them look beautiful. The same thing is true with men who want waxed bodies, looking like those Greek statues. To cater to this mentality, there are almost racial advertisements selling fairness cream that try to say that having fair skin means being more beautiful compared to dark skin. Nothing wrong with being fashion-conscious or having a desire to look beautiful, but it's a problem when you stereotype the term 'beautiful' and pressure people to fit in that description. All this so-called glamour and aggressive advertisement on the internet and television has changed the concept of physical beauty totally. Females are starving themselves to look thin, boys are taking steroids to look muscular, and high heels, to a certain extent, are okay, but if you look at some of the high heels girls wear nowadays, it's impossible to imagine standing after wearing them. I wonder how people walk after wearing them. Our definition and conception of beauty are heavily conditioned and influenced by the images we see on posters, magazines, advertisements, and movies. We only think a particular body shape, color, or height is beautiful; all other is substandard and should be altered by whatever means possible to match those so-called standards to qualify as beautiful. Even if we look at the images of most gods and goddesses in India, they never look old; they are all in so-called perfect physical shape and are visibly attractive.

Everyone has to find their own comfort zone, where they are fine with their weight and looks. It should be a healthy weight range; it should not be 20 kg above or below the recommended body weight for a person's height and age. The concept of fair skin being more beautiful than dark is so ridiculous and racist. I hope many people who think like this get over their extreme obsession with fair skin; it really sucks. Many girls in India or in some Asian countries suffer just because of their skin color. They fail to get a proper match in the marriage market. A fair-skinned groom fetches a better price in the same market compared to a dark-skinned groom just because of his skin color. Apart from the dowry problem, there is inherent racism involved in such match-making exercises.

Beauty indeed lies in the eyes of the beholder, but some companies and their allies are trying to prejudice the vision of that beholder, and they are getting quite successful in this. I feel that's not right. For me, everyone is beautiful physically, and I have not seen an ugly person in my life.

Thanks for reading, and please share your views.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)