What Is Physical Wellness? Physical wellness is all about maintaining a healthy physical state and involves our ability to perform physically demanding activities. It promotes taking care of our bodies by eating healthy and working out and encourages us to listen to our bodies to reduce our chances of developing illnesses or injuries and achieve optimal health. We only have one body, so it is important to appreciate it and recognize how crucial it is for us to care for and strengthen ourselves!
Did you know…
- Exercise is associated with improvements in brain performance! Cardiovascular exercises, such as running helps form new brain cells, enhancing brainpower!
- Exercising increases productivity due to the extra endorphins released!
- Exercising 3 times a week for 45 mins can help slow down the aging process and keep you looking youthful for longer!
Check out these awesome ways to foster physical wellness:
- Watching what we put into our bodies! Food is fuel, so it important to provide our bodies with healthy and nutritious foods to keep us going throughout the day!
- Exercising! Exercising is shown to prevent health problems, boost energy, reduce stress, and strengthen us, so try to aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily! Also, physical activity doesn’t only mean running! Go take a walk around the park, play soccer with your friends, or even play with your dog!
- Building healthy habits! Although any step in the right direction is amazing progress, it is important to try to build lifelong habits! In addition to eating right and staying active, getting enough sleep, reducing stress, and working towards ending any unhealthy relationships/behaviors can help our bodies feel better and physically well!
What the students had to say: To gather opinions and information for this article, we collected responses regarding physical wellness from local high school seniors. When asked about physical activity the students believe that they are leading active and healthy lifestyles while some admitted to needing improvement and encouragement to join active school sports like basketball, lacrosse or cheerleading instead of the very popular gaming club. The students who were not involved in after-school extracurriculars expressed their love for dancing which has grown to tremendous popularity on social media and it’s great because dance or any movement including bike riding counts as long as it’s moderate to vigorous activity. The students also believe in the importance of sleep although they admit to not actually getting enough rest due to phone activity or too much on the mind.
Contributors: Health & Wellness 2nd PD
Resources:
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/physical-wellness#:~:text=Physical%20wellness%20is%20about%20doing,and%20side%20effects%20of%20treatment.
https://www.nih.gov/health-information/physical-wellness-toolkit