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Health vs Wellness: What's the Difference?

The 12 areas of life you need to focus on

Most of us grew up believing that our health depended solely on how much we ate and how much we moved. We learned about junk food and health food, burgers and salads. We learned to associate junk food with happiness and health food with sadness, creating conflicts and challenging emotions around eating. Likewise, movement, we were told, must be painful, lying within the realm of strict regimens and endless repetitions of motions we learned from the latest fitness guru. And while diet and movement do play important roles in our health, they are only a small portion of the multitude of factors that make up our health, and even more so, our well-being.


There is a key difference between health and well-being (wellness); namely, that health refers to our physical condition and lack of illness or injury. Wellness, on the other hand, is the holistic, comprehensive state of being, less of an absence of negative issues and more of a positive manifestation of mental, emotional, and physical goodness. If you are healthy, you might be disease-free, but you may still be depressed, financially strained, even eating nutrient-absent food or working a job that isn’t fulfilling. So you may be healthy but unwell—a state, I would argue, that most of us chronically exist in.


Luckily, once you begin to understand the factors that affect wellness, it becomes easier to make sustainable changes and bring balance into your life. Balance is key to wellness, which is why focusing heavily on health doesn’t necessarily ensure wellness. Experts on average attribute 6 to 7 “pillars” of wellness; the Institute for Integrative Nutrition divides wellness into 12 areas, laid out in a wheel, which they call “The Circle of Life.” On this wheel, the goal isn’t to achieve linear success by checking off how many pillars are supporting you but rather achieving balance by giving each piece of the wheel equal attention.


I personally like the completeness of the IIN Circle of Life and often use it to check in with my own sense of wellness. It allows me to see where I need to focus my energy and where I am doing well. These 12 areas of wellness include: joy, spirituality, creativity, finances, career, education, health, physical activity, home cooking, home environment, relationships, and social life. By checking in with these areas regularly and putting in effort to improve the quality of each area, you can begin to bring a sense of holistic wellness into your life and self.


You can use the IIN Circle of Life to check in with yourself as often as you’d like. Remember, as humans, we are dynamic, so once you improve one area it won’t necessarily stay that way the rest of your life. We grow, circumstances change, and maintaining balance is a dance we stay committed to throughout the seasons of our lives. I have had times when I’m cooking at home every night but deprived in my career; I’ve had times where my career is improving but my home cooking is lacking. Don’t be hard on yourself! It will take a while, but the more frequently you check in with yourself and the different areas of wellness, the easier it will be to know what you need and how to bring balance into your life and soul.


Try the Circle of Life here!


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