The key to upping your physical wellness game

When it comes to Physical Health, there’s A LOT of information out there. There’s one person saying to eat only vegetables and one person saying to eat mostly meat. There’s a cohort out there saying that running is the best and another that says running is the worst. With cooking, there’s advice that says cook with this oil and not that one. With beauty and skincare, there’s a whole other message of look out for these ingredients and this product is truly anti-aging. There are mediterranean diets, ancestral diets, paleo diets, ketogenic diets, Whole30 diets. There’s yoga, pilates, CrossFit, running, biking, spinning, dancing. In this saturated space of what to eat, how to exercise, and what to put on your face, it can be tough to comb through it all and find something that’s right for YOU.

Why are we even talking about Physical Health? Being that Revive primarily offers mental health services, you may be wondering why we’re even talking about this. Your mental, emotional, and physical health are so interconnected that we would be missing a significant component of your overall well being if we didn’t emphasize this. Physical Health is an umbrella made up of physical activity (fitness and exercise), nutrition (food and home cooking), and health (hygiene and primary care). Like last week’s slice of the wellness pie, how you take care of your physical health is going to be different than how someone else does.

“This worked for them, so it’ll work for ME!” Figuring out what information is trustworthy and what’s just a fad (has Sugarbear Hair worked for anybody!?) takes a lot of effort. For many of us, we see or witness a result from someone else (a friend, family member, influencer, celebrity) and want it to work in the same way for us. If it were that easily translated then your ongoing effort would come to a strict hault. However, because we’re all so different, components of our Physical Health need to be individualized.

Taking Inventory. If you’re on a quest to take care of your Physical Health, doing away with this “one size fits all” mentality is one place to start. A moisturizer your friend swears by might make you break out. Maybe your cousin is a marathon runner and you have “bad” knees. When we take inventory of what doesn’t work for us it can help steer us in the direction of what does.

A homegrown approach. I’ll use home cooking as an example to describe how bringing intention to your physical health is part of individualizing it. When we cook at home there’s a personal experience to it that doesn’t come with going to a restaurant or ordering out. We connect to our meal at the very beginning steps, starting with ingredients (chopping, slicing, mincing, pounding) and we make it come together (sauteing, stirring, roasting). Our intended outcome is to make something to feed ourselves and sometimes others (and hopefully it tastes delicious!). When we’re with our food from start to finish there’s a lot of care that goes into it. If we take this homegrown approach to other aspects of our Physical Health it may bring more meaning and care to the process.

What is one thing you’ve tried to improve your Physical Health? What worked and what didn’t? How can you take a more intentional (or homegrown) approach to what it is you want to improve?

Stay Well,
Catherine at Revive