Wellness is a paramount aspect of living your best life and regaining your identity after a substance abuse disorder. Above all, it goes beyond just not being sick and focuses on identifying your ideal well-being. In addition to this, wellness improves our ability to be mindful. Physical wellness will be the focus in this post.
There are a number of sub-groups to wellness: physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, environmental, financial, occupational, and social. According to the World Health Organization wellness is, “”a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Wellness is an important topic to discuss in regard to recovery for a number of reasons. First off, because it can help a person avoid relapse. Figures from the National Institute on Drug Abuse indicate forty to sixty percent of people who go into recovery will relapse within one year. The flip side to this statistic is that as much as sixty percent of people in recovery don’t relapse. Another reason wellness can be helpful is that it offers people recovering with the necessary tools to create a healthy lifestyle. Recovery is a lifelong process that takes place gradually. The further into recovery a person goes the greater their opportunity to build good habits one after another.
Physical Wellness
Similar to how a number sub-groups go into a person’s overall wellness, there are different components that go into physical wellness. The pieces that make up a person’s physical wellness include: regular exercise; learning and maintaining a healthy diet and nutrition plan; avoiding drugs, alcohol, and tobacco in excess; appropriate use of medicine when needed to promote optimal health; and self-monitoring to recognize the warning signs of poor health.
Remaining physically active is an important element to ensuring your body is in optimal conditioning. Some of the benefits associated with physical activity include stronger bones and muscles, reducing your risk of diseases and stroke, and higher energy levels throughout the day. Nutrition is a very important aspect of physical wellness which we maintain by eating a well-balanced diet. Be sure you’re eating a variety of nutrients along with fruits and vegetables to both prevent illness and keep your body operating at its peak level. Here are some tools to practice physical wellness and below are some concerning facts about most American’s diets:
- Processed foods make up close to 70 percent of the U.S. diet.
- Americans spend 10 percent of their disposable income on fast food.
- The average American consumes 130 pounds of sugar in a year.
- More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese
