How do you measure how healthy you are? In this week’s Self-Love Practice: Measures of Health, we will explore many ways to evaluate how healthy you are and set healthy goals.
Video transcription:
Hello, Beautiful. This is Rachel Kieffer of Health Nut Girl, helping women fall in love with a healthy life. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Today’s self-love practice is measures of health.
Today I want to thank Christine for asking me the question that prompted me to share this practice. It also came out in our Women Health Circle discussion today. I wanted to talk about how we measure our health. The medical profession tells us to measure our health in numbers. They give us the BMI chart. Then we’re supposed to have a certain number or being a certain range to be considered healthy. They look at our weight. They look at our high blood pressure numbers and our cholesterol numbers. We get information that tells us whether we’re healthy or not. Those numbers are great for information and those numbers can be inaccurate when you look at am I healthy or am I not healthy. I’m going to give you a couple of examples:
One example is that I know women who can be outside the BMI range and can still be very healthy, very vibrant, very active, and live to a very old age — and in good health. I know women who are inside the healthy BMI range and they’re not healthy. So that range doesn’t always tell you if you’re healthy or not.
Another example is in Sardinia and Italy; which is considered to be one of the world’s five blue zones. That’s where a large number of the population live into their nineties and hundreds in excellent health. They’re fully functioning. They’re not bedridden. They’re not hooked up to machines in hospitals. They have active and vibrant lives into their nineties and hundreds. They find the people in this area have high blood pressure, but they’re able to live a healthy life even though they have high blood pressure. It does not affect their heart health. It does not cause them to have health problems that limit their lives. So those numbers are not always accurate.
I want you to think, even though the numbers are important, I want you to look at these additional measures of health and to focus on them. One is your energy level. When you get up in the morning, do you get up with excited energy to greet your day or do you have to drag yourself out of bed feeling tired and lethargic? Another one is your eating. Are you mostly choosing foods that are fresh, whole, full of nutrients, and very nutritionally dense? Or are you choosing a lot of foods that are processed, packaged, refined, and full of additives? Third one is your digestion. How is your digestion? Do you feel digestive discomfort often? Do you have digestive pains? Do you have constipation? Do you suffer from diarrhea? Do you have any kind of digestive issues or do you feel like everything is wonderfully moving and flowing with ease?
In September, at the Women Health Circle, we are dedicating the month to healing our digestion. And, to learning which foods, practices, cooking methods, and preparations that help to make our digestion healthy, strong, and thriving. So please join us. We would love to have you there.
How is your mood? Do you feel positive? Do you feel excited? Do you have a zest for life? Or, do you feel way down and depressed?
How is your activity? Are you someone who has an active lifestyle? Do you move a lot; I’m not just talking about official exercise time. Look at your whole day. Do you move a lot? Do you have an active lifestyle? How do you feel when you go up a flight of steps? Are you still feeling good or are you out of breath? Can you bend over to put on your shoes or is it hard for you to bend over? All those things are an indication of your healthy life, all measures of health, and there are many others. I just gave you a few examples.
I want you to make health goals. They can be a health goal that has to do with improving the numbers your doctor gave you. More importantly, I want you to set health goals that are including all the other measures of health. How do you increase your energy? What are some ways you can improve your digestion? What are some of the ways you can make yourself feel good and joyful and happy? All those things are just as important, if not more important.
I would love to hear from you. What is one way, one goal, you can give yourself to improve your health? Please let us know. Leave a comment, I would love to hear from you. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I will see you at the next video.
xoxo Rachel
