Physical WellBeing: 6 Questions To Answer

If you care about improving your overall WellBeing, then taking care of your physical wellbeing is a MUST!

What is physical wellbeing definition?

My definition is:

Physical WellBeing is a state of living a healthy lifestyle by adopting healthful and safety related habits

To me, physical wellbeing is the right leg in the wellbeing body, as it represents one the key limbs you use in moving.

American Association Nurse Anathestics (AANA) defines it as:

A state of physical well-being is not just the absence of disease. It includes lifestyle behavior choices to ensure health, avoid preventable diseases and conditions, and to live in a balanced state of body, mind, and spirit.

Another definition to Physical WellBeing is:

Physical well-being consists of the ability to perform physical activities and carry out social roles that are not hindered by physical limitations and experiences of bodily pain, and biological health indicators.

As we did before, let’s find some keywords in these definitions

A State

As we mentioned in the WellBeing and Mental WellBeing definition before, Physical WellBeing is a state too, indicating that for the most part of it, or for the overall part of it, it’ll be subjective to your assessment.

Still each part or toolkit within the Physical WellBeing can be assessed objectively like minutes exercised, hours slept, calories eaten, etc

You

It’s about you not anyone else. It’s about your sate of living that healthy lifestyle, so you are going to be one of the most important factors determining your physical wellbeing

Higher Level

It’s more than just absence of diseases. It’s an upgraded level where you have more protection against being ill, and functioning to your optimum levels.

Health and Safety

It’s not just about being healthy it’s also about practicing safety habits that keep you safe and also healthy. Things like washing hands that keeps you safe from having diseases, or crossing the street in a safe manner to keep you safe from being hurt, or dealing right with sharp objects that keeps you safe from being injured and so on.

Is it Physical Wellbeing or physical wellness or physical health or physical activity?

Let’s look at them one by one:

Physical Activity: Is one toolkit of the physical wellbeing that includes different types of exercise

Physical Wellness is the same as physical wellbeing so they are used interchangeably

Physical WellBeing is the higher level of being healthy.

Physical Health is the normal level, a level lower to the physical wellbeing as per my WellBeing Spectrum below. It’s the normal level you should be at in the absence of diseases.

There are 4 different levels to your life in terms “WellBeing” which are ill-being, abnormal, normal, and wellbeing

Normal: Physical Health

Let’s start with Normal to better understand this. Normal here translates to having good physical health. This is you having no physical health diseases like diabetes, flue, hypertension, etc

Abnormal: Physical Illness

This is when you have a physical health diseases like diabetes, flue, hypertension, etc

Illbeing: Physical Illbeing

This is the worsening of your abnormal stage. This is where your diseases starts impacting your daily life.

When you are on this level, then you are probably are being discharged from work cause your illness interferes with it or your marriage is falling apart because of that illness, or you are broke because of it

Wellbeing: Physical Wellbeing

This is the upgrade of the normal stage. This is where you add immunity and more protection to your physical health.

This is the level where you are more immune to diseases, less sick than your friends or colleges, have less diseases or less severity of diseases comparing to others, and on the long run, more years than others.

Who should care about physical wellbeing?

In my opinion again, it should be everyone. All of us must include Physical WellBeing Improvement as a goal in our life and in the life of those we are responsible for.

This is valid for children, adults and old. Men and Women. Schools, workplaces, communities, and governments.

What are physical wellbeing challenges?

Factors affecting physical wellbeing varies according to:

1- Knowledge

How much do you know about physical wellbeing? This article and the other ones we have in WellBeing Toolkits will help providing you with all the information you need.

But also you’ll need further specific information like what should you eat or drink, how much exercise you should do, or what type of exercise, or how many hours should you sleep, etc.

Learning is your tool to overcome this challenge

2- Age

Age is one of the factors determining your physical wellbeing. Children can exercise longer than old. Adults have more information regarding their health, fitness, and safety.

Type and duration of exercise is different according to age. Same with nutrition and sleeping hours.

3- Health

Since we’re talking about physical wellbeing then health is one of the factors and challenges.

Being sick affects exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

4- Money

You can agree or disagree with this, but in my opinion, money can be a big factor and challenge when it comes to physical wellbeing.

To a major extent, healthy food is more expensive than non-healthy ones, in absolute price or relative value. A can of Pepsi can worth the same as a bottle of water but it’s sugary and tastier so it’s more tempting.

• Junk food is usually cheaper, in absolute cost or price than buying a healthy meal.
• Junk food is usually perceived as cheaper than making a healthy meal in terms of buying the food, and ingredients needed and then actually consuming time making it (Relative value)
• With exercise, you may need to buy equipment or a program to follow or buy gym membership.

With that being said, money could be a challenge like I mentioned but it shouldn’t be a showstopper. You can always find FREE alternatives, and that’s what I try to cover almost always.

How to assess and measure physical wellbeing?

As I mentioned in the definition, the overall physical wellbeing can be assessed subjectively by you using the simple following question from time to time:

On a scale from 0-10, 0 being low, and 10 being highest, how would you rank your physical wellbeing today?

Then you do the following:

1. Identify your current level
2. Choose a target level or number to aim for
3. Come up with corrective actions, implement them
4. Track in a week or a month by answering the same question again.
5. Redo steps 1-4.

On the level of physical wellbeing tools, you can assess yourself both “objectively” and “subjectively”.

Example: assessing exercise can be done objectively by counting minutes exercised each week, and can be done subjectively by assessing your satisfaction to the exercise that week or month.

In my opinion you should do both, because having the target minutes completed without being satisfied needs to be checked to make sure you’re on the right path.

Each tool we’ll have it’s own assessment tools so keep following us.

What can you do next?

The informing part is done, let’s get to the transforming part

Next Actions you can do today to begin your physical wellbeing improvement is as follows:

1- Identify Your Level

Before you can begin your journey, you need to know where you are right now, and for that you can use the general assessment question mentioned before to identify your current level:

On a scale from 0-10, 0 being low, and 10 being highest, how would you rank your physical wellbeing today?

2- Create a Goal

Perfect!! Your current level is identified, and now you have to set a destination for your journey.

Your current level could be 7 and the level you want to aim for is 8. If this is the case then you can create the following goal

Example:

• Improving my overall physical wellbeing to 8 by 2021.

So head over to your goals list in your system and add a goal for your physical wellbeing

3- Create Projects

For each goal to happen you need one or more projects. So now it’s time for you to plan how will you achieve your goal above, and what are the projects needed for you to achieve that goal

Examples may include:

• Decrease waist circumference by 5 cm within 3 months
• Increase water consumption to 7 cups a day
• Maintaining 3-5 times exercise each week

4- Next Actions

Amazing job so far! Now you have your goal, and projects. Next is to drill further down to the simple actions that you can start acting on now.

Examples:

• @Phone: Call the gym to ask about membership prices or times
• @Laptop: Take the sleeping quiz
• @Laptop: Buy a cheap work out program
• @Home: Read Atomic Habits book
• @Errands: Buy a waist circumference tape
• @Errands: Buy 2 dumbbells
• @Phone: Call my nutritionist to book an appointment
• @Errands: Do an In-body measurement to check fat%
• @Laptop: Search for online Body Mass Index calculator

Resources

Couple of resources that you can use are:

1- The WellBeing Coaching

We can interact with each other 1 on 1 using the WellBeing Coaching, and come up with a specific plan just for you and tack it down till its completion

2- Recommended Books

Check these 5 Physical WellBeing Books For Your Health and Fitness

Conclusion

• Physical WellBeing is a state of living a healthy lifestyle by adopting healthful and safety related habits
• It’s more than just absence of diseases. It’s an upgraded level where you have more protection against being ill and functioning to your optimum levels.
• It’s not just about being healthy it’s also about practicing safety habits that keep you safe.
• Physical wellbeing can be called physical wellness, while physical health is a lower level than the wellbeing one, and physical activity is one part of the physical wellbeing
• Everyone should care about his physical wellbeing regardless of age, sex, race, employment, or community rank
• Physical wellbeing is assessed subjectively while it’s toolkits assessed both objectively and subjectively
• Just reading isn’t going to improve your physical wellbeing, but taking action will.

References

• https://www.aana.com/practice/health-and-wellness-peer-assistance/about-health-wellness/physical-well-being
• Capio C.M., Sit C.H.P., Abernethy B. (2014) Physical Well-Being. In: Michalos A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2166