Guest post by Kim Travis
Kim Travis is the director of marketing at EDCare, an Eating Disorder Treatment center that offers comprehensive care for athletes with eating disorders.
We’re living in a time that’s hyper focused upon body image, physical exercise, dieting, and health. Wellness fads come, go, and come again. We sign on to a cleanse or a diet, do it for a little bit, hop off the wagon, then back on the next one that enters the mix. It’s a cycle of contrived healthiness that’s more out of trend following habit than a true desire to optimize our health.
What we fail to realize is that this constant push for our bodies, minds, physical appearances, and whatever subscriptions to betterment we’re buying into are taking away from the truth of what wellness really is: balance.
Where do we draw the line? What constitutes as enough in our journey for self-fulfillment and chasing the dragon of physical and mental ideality? Most importantly, are we hurting ourselves while trying to achieve something so wildly arbitrary? Our bodies and minds are limited, finite things that have extraordinary capabilities, but we’re still human and that limit is what makes us so. The essence of keeping our mental and physical health intact is not in treating them like they’re invincible, but embracing the very limitations that make us us.
Hit the gym, go for a run, eat healthy, do a cleanse, fast for a meal, do whatever your body calls for in its own journey toward blossoming health. Remember that someone else’s wellness path doesn’t mean it has to be yours. In fact, it shouldn’t be yours. Gain advice, help, and accountability from a trusted group of people who want to see themselves well and see you well. This support system is vital in ensuring that your wellness network is moving forward together, each individual helping the other, promoting balance along the way. It sounds strange, but having a healthy perspective to approaching health is essential in splitting wellness from illness.
