Fitness vs. Health vs. Wellness

Do your personal goals revolve around working out to stay in shape (fitness) — or working out for your mind, body and spirit (wellness)?

Fitness focuses on your physical health including nutrition, strength, conditioning, flexibility, and body composition with specific markers based on body size, gender, body type, training style, and training age. Fitness is a component of wellness, but wellness isn’t a component of fitness.

Health is a state of being – physical, mental, and social well-being. Primary determinants of health include the social, economic, and physical environments, and individual characteristics and behaviors.

Wellness (well-being) includes fitness but it’s broader. Wellness considers all of your choices and how they create your entire lifestyle. Wellness includes many facets, and looks at the way they interact to create balance or imbalance. Think of wellness as a web, then plucking it one part creates reverberations across the rest.

Wellness is the state of living a healthy lifestyle. Wellness is considered a conscious, self-directed and evolving process of achieving full potential. Wellness is multidimensional and holistic, encompassing lifestyle, mental and spiritual well-being, and the environment. Wellness is finding a balance between all of these and enhancing a sense of happiness.