Nutrition and Wellness/Chapter 1: Wellness and Food Choices

Chapter 1

Wellness and Food Choices

- Wellness: Reaching for your personal overall best level of health.
Wellness doesn't mean having a perfect body or being free of any health problems!

Practicing Wellness

The 3 categories of wellness:

Physical Health
Emotional/Mental Health
Social Health

Steps to Improve Wellness

Water (without water: Tired, flaky skins, etc.).
Recognizing/Accepting responsibility for your own health.
Sleep (without sleep: More likely to get sick/body can't function).

Physical Health

Physical Health refers to normal functions of your body systems.

Includes bright, clear-eyes, firm skin, clean teeth and healthy gums, good muscle tone and erect posture.
Also means having enough energy for daily living, a normal growth rate, resistance to illness, and the ability to relax and sleep well.

Taking action for Physical Health

- What can you do to maintain or improve your physical health?

Follow a varied and healthful eating plan with many different foods, including fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Consume about 8 cups of water/fruits each day... + if needed.
Include plenty of physical activity.
Eat breakfast, good hygiene, precautions... such as your seatbelt.
Regular medical/dental checkups.
Avoid tobacco, alcoholic beverages and drugs (harmful).
Keep informed about nutrition and wellness.

Mental and Emotional Health

You need to learn how to cope with anger, frustration and dissapointment

Your mental/emotional health includes how you deal with your daily life and how you feel about yourself, people with good mental/emotional health often have better physical health - and they enjoy life to the fullest! Benefits of having healthy mental and emotional health includes:

Helps you cope with change, face your problems, and handle anger, frustration, and disappointment in an acceptable way.
You are able to work towards your goal.
With emotional well-being comes a sensitivity to others, open-mindedness, self-esteem, and self-confidence.

Social Health

Social health involves your relationship with others. You have a high level of social health when you:

Praise and accept others
Enjoy friends of both genders
Are helpful and considerate
Accept rules and be responsible
Handle conflict in a constructive way
Communicate well
Handle peer pressure

Nutrition and Active Living

Your lifestyle includes how you live your life and all the things you do; Nutrition and Active Living are 2 partners for a healthful lifestyle. Nutrition is how the food you eat affects your body.

The food choices you make today will affect your health and quality of life for years to come.
Follow the golden rules = 60 minutes of excersises

Many influences on your food choices

People around you
Culture - The shared beliefs, values, and behavior of a group of people
Food Supply
Schedules, energy, budget - aka - resources: Things such as time, money, and personal energy that help you reach a goal/or complete a task.
Advertising and media
Knowing about food, nutrition, and wellness
You - Your age, attitudes, emotions, health, and goals all affect what you choose to eat

Steps to Wellness

Practicing wellness can affect you positively today and into the future. Making responsible decisions and setting realistic goals are important skills to master.

Action Plan

An Action Plan is a step by step approach to identifying and reaching your goals.

Set realistic goals, what's your goals? Is it realistic? How will it be to achieve?
Decide on a plan (If I have to ask how, you are missing detail!)
Identify small achievable steps (how will you work your way up?)
Take action (When will you start?)
Stick with it (How will you make sure you don't give up?)
Get support (Who will you be your support system?)
Check your progress (How do you know its working?)
Reward yourself