Physical Wellness
everything needed for a healthy body—nutrition, exercise, sleep, and appropriate health care.
As I continue to speak about wellness this year, I want to shift my focus to physical health by emphasizing a foundational concept. We are worthy of honoring our bodies. And “honoring” does NOT mean signing up for complicated stressful expensive diets and exercise programs. Honoring simply means recognizing that our bodies deserve loving care—care beyond sexual objectivity and outer appearances. Our bodies are living breathing beautiful creations consisting of complex mind-boggling systems: skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, urinary, and reproductive. Think about that.
Our bodies are truly amazing!
And so…exercise, nutrition, sleep, and proper healthcare are ways of caring well for ourselves, ways of saying, “I am worthy.”
Although I value physical wellness, I do not always understand all aspects of it. With so much information, programs, and products available about nutrition and exercise, I find it difficult to sort through what is best for me. What I do know, is that I feel my best when I remain active, eat well, and get enough rest. Focusing on the foundational basics keeps physical wellness manageable. As I have grown older however, I have had to stretch beyond the basics and learn how to muscle up and lose ab flab, areas I didn’t pay attention to before. To stay strong and healthy I knew I would need accountability, community, and coaching, as I don’t do so well as the Lone Ranger at anything.
Got Muscle?
This is why I joined CrossFit. I am not suggesting everyone join CrossFit. I’m simply saying that this program is what works for me. My initial InBody scan, that shows the percentages of muscle, fat, and water, revealed I was below average in muscle and above average in fat (all stomach). Nothing I didn’t already figure. As a little side note, growing up as an athlete in the ‘80s, I never learned about strength training, as girls had no reason to go into the weight room. And nutrition was not part of my sports programs. That all seems so absurd to me now.
At any rate, even though I have learned much over the years about physical wellness, most recently I have needed to customize my habits to my uniquely older self. As a result, I have been showing up consistently to CrossFit for one year now, and am proud to say that I have gained 7 pounds of muscle and lost 5 pounds of fat! My goal is to hit 60 pounds of muscle before I turn 60 (that’s 3.1 more lbs.) and to lower my fat mass a few more pounds. To do this, I will add more cardio in the mix and learn more about nutrition for women of my age. “Generally” speaking: curb the carbs, eat protein, protein, protein, and drink about half my weight in water every day.
Physical Strength = Mental Strength
Feeling stronger has affected my whole being as I have gained confidence in doing harder things outside the gym, believing that I am more capable as I overcome difficult workouts. It’s a beautiful thing to exchange “I can’t” for “I can.”
My body, my being, beautiful, holy, worthy of honor.
Coach Rebecca
I have come to love CrossFit, the very program that has brought me to tears a few times, but the very program that continues to help me feel stronger and better. I truly appreciate and love the accountability, community, challenging workouts, and coaching. So to touch on physical wellness I’d like to share an interview with my CrossFit Coach, Rebecca Taylor. Her perspective on physical health goes far beyond the gym, as she speaks about it being a lifestyle, not for the sole sake of looking good, although that’s always a nice perk, but for a far bigger purpose: Because we are truly worth it!
Be Momentous! 🌎
Do you believe that you are worthy of caring well for your body? Listen to my interview with Coach Rebecca and ask yourself if there are any areas of physical wellness—exercise, nutrition, sleep, healthcare—you can pay more attention to; and if so, what’s the best way for your unique self?