Are You Healthy? (what does that even mean?)

What comes to mind when I ask you this question:

Are you healthy?

My guess is, if your answer is "yes," you started running down a list of physical metrics that support your answer.  Like, your recent bloodwork was good, you exercise regularly, you "eat right."

I'm also going to guess that if your answer is "no," you also ran down a list of physical metrics that support your answer.  Things like, I don't workout enough, I don't eat "good" enough, my A1C is too high.

But here's my other question:  why, when I asked about health, did you only focus on your physical health?  (Unless of course you focused on other things and if that's the case, good for you!)  

We seem to live in a world where when we think of health and wellness, we only think about our physical body.  But in reality, there are eight different aspects of health.  Yeah--I didn't know that either.  Any idea what they are?  See if you can guess...I'll wait...

How many of these did you get:  physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, vocational, financial, and environmental.  

Eight different aspects of health.  I think that's really important to remember, and I'll tell you why.  First of all, there is so much more to us than just our physical bodies.  We all have relationships to nurture, jobs to do, money to manage, and brains to build.  And, of course, we all have feelings and emotions that are incredibly important to attend to as well.  

And secondly, we live in a world that equates weight with health.  So when we focus predominantly on physical health, we tend to focus far too much on weight.  And that can be really damaging to the other aspects of health. I've seen time and time again clients who are essentially engaging in disordered eating in order to achieve a weight that (supposedly) makes them physically healthy (I say supposedly because weight loss does not always result in a marked improvement in health.  In fact, weight loss very often leads to weight gain, and this cycle can damage your physical health) 

That's not health.  

I can't say that often enough or loud enough.  Damaging your emotional health for the sake of physical health isn't health.  Period end of story.

On this week's podcast, we're talking about what being healthy actually means, and how to make sure you're doing what contributes to good health for you.  Spoiler alert:  it may not be what the rest of the world says it is.  

I think this is a really important topic as we head into the holiday season (because I'm guessing you have parts that are concerned about all of the holiday treats in your near future and whether or not eating them is "healthy") and of course into January (when diet culture BS will be in full-swing!).  Take a listen!