Wellness for the Ages

Wellness Overview

How do you define HEALTH in your life? How about WELLNESS? Think about a time in your life when you felt healthy. What was that like? How did you feel? What do you think it would take to get back to that feeling?

Let's dive deeper into the definitions of health, wellness, fitness, and physical activity. This lesson will cover how these terms are defined, and more importantly, how to apply them to yourself, friends, family, coworkers, and/or clients.

Health

is a term used broadly to include everything from environmental health to the health of populations. Historically, this has referred to the absence of disease. More broadly,

Wellness

can be defined as a lifelong process that at any given time produces a positive state of personal well-being; of feeling good about yourself; of optimal physical, psychological, and social functioning; and the control and minimizing of both internal and external risk factors for both diseases and negative health conditions.

Wellness is achieving the highest level of health possible in each of several dimensions and wellness can be thought of on a continuum. Think about a time when you've been ill or unwell, think about where you are now, and now think about where you'd like to be - this is the process of discovering your own personal wellness on a continuum. It's not always a discrete, "I'm healthy now" or "I'm unhealthy now". Most of us live in the spaces in-between those two states. Let's look at that continuum and the dimensions in more depth. That way you can begin to develop your own plan to move toward your own optimal vitality!

Wellness Continuum

In this video blog, Dr. Mark Trager, gives a basic overview of the Wellness Continuum:

Another continuum, the Illness-Wellness Continuum was first developed by Dr. John Travis in 1972 and published in Wellness Inventory in 1975. His goal was to show that treatment of patients merely on the presence or absence of disease was a short-sighted goal for the medical community. His continuum helped spark the "prevention" movement in healthcare and promoted preventive treatments. Read more about Dr. Travis and the continuum here: John Travis (Wikipedia)

Dr. Travis believed that it is more important which direction you are facing (your goals) than where you actually are on the continuum. With that, let's look at the Dimensions of Wellness which can help you define areas for attention and goal-setting to attain a greater wellness balance.

Dimensions of Wellness

The Dimensions of Wellness are the areas of our lives that we spend time in, write goals about, and struggle with. There are many models of the wellness dimensions. Some of these include six dimensions, some have seven, and others include many more than that. The primary idea for all of the wellness models is to aim for balance in the dimensions, according to your goals. This means that you don't have to focus all your attention on say, Financial Wellness, but to be optimally healthy, you shouldn't ignore it either.

Here is a Dimensions of Wellness model that covers eight of the primary dimensions. Read basic definitions of each dimension below.

At the Brescia University College in Canada, they've related the importance of these dimensions to overall mental health. Click here to see their Dimensions of Wellness model: Brescia's Mental Health & Wellness Page. Once there, click on each dimension for 1) signs that you are healthy in that dimension, 2) signs that you should attend more to that dimension, and 3) strategies for enhancing that particular wellness dimension in your life.

The Physical Dimension of Wellness

Sedentary lifestyles are the most formidable wellness challenge across the age continuum. Not being active or attending to the physical dimension of wellness, puts more people are at risk for premature death and/or disability than any other risk factor (smoking, poor diet, etc.).

Physical Activity is any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in an expenditure of energy. By contrast, exercise refers to planned or structured physical activity done to achieve and maintain fitness.

Let's watch a video explaining the benefits of physical activity and exercise for a long, independent life for aging adults. In addition, you'll see the four types of recommended exercises and how they relate to everyday lifestyle activities.

1. Endurance Exercises
2. Strength Exercises
3. Stretching Exercises
4. Balance Exercises

Fitness

Physical fitness relates to one's ability to perform moderate to vigorous physical activity without undue fatigue. Physical fitness involves minimal competence in all five components of physical fitness:

1. Cardiorespiratory Endurance is the ability of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems to provide oxygen to working muscles during sustained activity.
2. Muscular Strength is the ability of your muscles to exert force.
3. Muscular Endurance is the ability of your muscles to contract repeatedly over time.
4. Flexibility is the ability to move your joints in a full range of motion.
5. Body Composition is the relative amounts of fat and lean tissue in your body.

The Physical Function Continuum

Having good physical fitness will increase your chances of staying on the "functional" side of the Physical Function Continuum.

Very similar to the wellness continuum, this Physical Function Continuum was first outlined by Waneen Spirduso, EdD in Physical Dimensions of Aging, Human Kinetics.

This continuum tool describes the difference between being an Athlete, being Active Now, just Getting Started, being someone who Needs a Little Help, and being someone who Needs Ongoing Assistance.

See the International Council on Active Aging's page on the Continuum of Physical Function for a description of each category, as well as, goals, needs, and activity programming ideas for people in each category of the continuum.

Essentially, your goal for maintaining physical fitness is to keep your physical function and independence as you age!

Lifelong Personal Wellness

Giving attention to lifestyle factors that affect your lifelong personal wellness can pay dividends many times over in increased health, fitness, function, and overall quality of life. Specifically, there are many benefits of a wellness lifestyle - see the extensive, but not all-inclusive list below!

Benefits of Wellness for Aging Adults

• Increased energy level and productivity at work and school
• Decreased absenteeism
• Decreased recovery time after an injury or illness
• Expansion and development of intellectual abilities
• Increased ability to cope with stress and resist depression
• Improved muscle tone, strength, flexibility, and endurance
• Better self-confidence
• Delaying of the aging process
• Improved overall body function and regulation

Elements of Lifelong Personal and Interpersonal Wellness

The path to lifelong personal and interpersonal wellness involves embarking on a interconnected and wandering path leading to these key goals:

• An overall healthy lifestyle of physical activity, good nutrition, and stress management
• Healthy habits that promote mental wellness and reduce cognitive declines
• Effective daily communication with people in our lives
• Cultivating and maintaining supportive relationships

Before starting on this new path to wellness, you can customize your efforts by understanding where you are in your readiness for change. Understanding the stages of behavior change and what stage you are in for any particular behavior, will help increase your chances of making positive lifestyle changes!

Stages of Behavior Change

First outlined by James Prochaska in the late 1970's, the Transtheoretical Model outlines these Stages of Behavior Change that people go through when trying to alter their choices and behaviors. The steps of this model are general and people will often slip backwards a few times before reaching action, maintenance, and terminations stages for a particular behavior.

1. Precontemplation - no current intention of changing
2. Contemplation - recognize a problem and begin to think about change within six months or so
3. Preparation - within a month or so of taking action toward changing that behavior
4. Action - begin to execute behavior change
5. Maintenance - conscious efforts, attention to detail, and commitment to maintain behavior for six months or more
6. Relapse - not an original stage, but returning to old patterns happens often due to overconfidence, daily temptations, stress, emotional distractions, and putting oneself down
7. Termination - new behavior is integrated into the way you live and risk for relapse is minimal

Goal Setting the SMART Way

Once you are in the PREPARATION and ACTION stages of behavior change, it's time to plan! Making a plan for change is an important part of truly changing your life. Setting goals that really do set you up for success is an important part of that plan. Use the SMART Goal-Setting method to ensure that your goals are written an understandable, measurable, and truly attainable way. The components of SMART Goal-Setting are:

• S - Specific = What exactly do you want to accomplish? Identify a very specific goal that you have for some area of physical activity (behavioral or performance).
• M - Measurable = How will you establish if you’ve met the goal?
• A - Action-Oriented = What are you going to do?
• R - Realistic = Is the goal achievable for you?
• T - Timeline = When will you meet your goal and when will you re-evaluate to see if you've met the goal?

It's best to start with a short-term goal that has a target date less than 3 months away. You can even set a short-term goal for a day or a week. Next, think about small steps, behavior changes, and/or daily objectives that will help you attain your short-term goal. Lastly, combine a few short-term goals to get to a long-term behavior change goal (6 months to over a year).

Here is an example: Let's say you have a short-term goal of increasing your aerobic fitness by walking four days a week. In the SMART Goal-Setting format, the goal may look like this: (S) Increase aerobic fitness (M) from fair to good on the 1 mile walking test (A) by walking for 30 minutes four days a week. (T) I will accomplish this goal by XX/XX. (R)You have to ask yourself if the goal is realistic.

Use these goal setting guidelines to set goals that you know are achievable within your time frame. As needed, revisit your goals to ensure that you are giving yourself enough but not too much challenge. Having the right mix of ease and challenge is the key to staying on track with your healthy lifestyle changes.

Let's Practice

Practice developing a short-term goal related to your fitness goals:

• S: My goal is to
• M: (How can you measure the above statement to know if you’ve achieved it?)
• A: (What will you do to meet goal?)
• R: (Is this goal realistically achievable for you and why?)
• T: (What date do you project you will you meet this goal?)

Justify your goal: (Why do you want to accomplish this?)

Now, it's time to put your plan for lifelong personal wellness into action! Next are some tips that will get you started working on your physical dimension goals.

Get Up and Get Moving!

Here are some tips that can help MOTIVATE you to get out there and keep up with your lifelong active fitness program:

• Team up - people who exercise regularly often team up with at least one other person (friends, family, co-workers, fitness club members).
• Use exercise as an energizer - tired from the demands of work?....you may find that doing a little exercise may actually energize you. Use the 10-minute rule - go and exercise for 10 minutes, if you still feel tired, give your body some rest. You'll most likely feel more energized and continue with your workout.
• Start your day with a workout - you are less apt to have "life" get in the way of your exercise and fitness plans for the day.
• Break up your workout - sometimes short bursts of exercise can keep you motivated. Try 10 minutes during your break, 15 minutes at lunch, and another 10 minutes in the afternoon. All of this adds up to a pretty good workout for the day.
• Variety! - ...it is the spice of life you know! - try different modes or types of exercise. You could even try something new like a seasonal activity. For example you could try snow shoeing in the winter instead of just doing your summer hiking.
• Revel in your successes - the more you celebrate your accomplishments, even the little ones (I woke up and DID my 6am workout!), the more exercise will really feel like an accomplishment and not a chore. When this happens you'll begin to look forward to your exercise sessions for the challenge they will provide you.