Health, fitness, wellness... what do you want?

The terms “health” and “fitness” are used together so often they have become synonymous in many people’s minds. However, this is a trap that can lead us down a slippery path – thinking that unless we are super fit like all the shiny muscled people on the motivational posters, we must be falling short of the mark.

Which I’m sure makes some of us think “why bother trying at all?”

Am I right? Can you relate to that? Have you found yourself in a black and white mindset of “I can’t ever look like that guy/girl, so I may as well just enjoy my beer, chips and burger on the couch tonight…”

Well, whether you can or can’t ever look like that guy or girl is really beside the point, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be looking more to be the optimal version of ourselves instead of striving to be someone else? And in that vein, shouldn’t we be focused on the things that are important to us, ourselves, rather than getting swept up in fulfilling other people’s values?

That leads me to ask – what is important to you? What are you passionate about? And therefore, how can you attain it? Maybe your life goal is to be a professional athlete, so you need to be extremely fit. Perhaps your dream is to be an author, so you don’t need to reach a star level of fitness, but you want to maintain a certain level of health and wellness. Maybe you’re interested in sports, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re interested in living a long life, or maybe it’s more important to you to party hard, live fast and die young! Nobody else can tell you what’s right for you.

What I’m trying to say is – don’t fall for the propaganda that will try to tell you that you have to be a fitness model or superstar athlete to be worthy, or even healthy! Spend some time discovering what you want from life, and go and get that instead! If that means being a fitness model is the most important thing, go for it! If not, that’s ok too! Let’s build a world full of people living their own truth, instead of being miserable trying to live up to society’s false expectations.

And let’s not fall into that trap of thinking that fit equals healthy. I have known many high-level athletes who are super fit and very unhealthy. I also know some pretty healthy people who don’t have a high level of fitness. There is a reason that “health” and “fitness” are two separate terms.

So what about the concept of “wellness”? Do you think that falls under the “health” category, or does it describe another area altogether? Feel free to comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and will respond back soon with another blog post – a summary of what the terms “fit”, “healthy” and “well” mean to me.

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