This personal health plan is supposed to address the following 9 health framework content areas:
Frankly, I find this a rather odd way to categorize health content (at least with regards to a personal health plan). In particular, the first category of personal health would seem to be something of a catchall for aspects of health which are partly reflected in the other categories. On the other hand, exercise and mental health are not called out individually for some reason, while nutrition is.
In any case, this is the format
we have been given, so I will do my best in the rest of my plan to
address each of these areas below, with some fudging as necessary to
get the assigned areas to cover what I think they should.
As I stated in the introduction, it seems at first glance that the title of this category is something of a catchall. However, based on the health framework it seems sensible to break this category down to cover exercise, mental/emotional health, and social health - since these issues aren't obviously covered elsewhere. Since each of these issues are pretty important, I'm going to give them each their own subsection below.
I think that it is hard to overstate the importance of exercise on overall health. Personally, I know when I stop exercising for more than 3 or 4 days that my energy level goes down, by mood becomes noticeably more lethargic, and my ability to focus on tasks like homework starts to diminish. This is aside from the longer term physical effects of weight gain, diminished cardio and muscular fitness, and various other health issues.
Unfortunately, it is far too easy to put off exercise since exercise takes time and, in the short term at least, exercise can leave you with a little less energy. So, getting the proper amount of exercise is largely a matter of putting long term gain ahead of short term convenience (a condition of emotional maturity).
Current Status: Right now, I'm managing to go to the gym once or twice a week on average. At the gym I typically spend about 45 minutes on the treadmill - including a 35 minute interval of running book ended by two 5 minute intervals of quick walking as a warm up and cool down. I also do a round of moderate stress weight lifting on each visit.
Aside from my workouts at the gym, I do a fair amount of walking around school, and I get in several hours of juggling every week. Juggling is more mental exercise than physical, but the bending down to pick up drops does help keep my back limber - which is an issue for me. On rare occasions I also do some running around my neighborhood - if it is a nice day out and I don't want to go to the gym. The downside to running outdoors is that the pavement is harder on my shins and my knees than the nice, springy treadmill.
Right now, I weigh 186 pounds. As a six foot tall male, this
is a little above the optimum range.
Goal: My goal on exercise is to maintain about the same level of intensity, but increase my workouts to 3 times a week and get a little more variety into it. For instance, last night I did my first aerobics class - and although it wasn't quite as intense a workout as running on the treadmill, it was a nice change of pace. Additionally I want to do a little more running outdoors and maybe a little bit of swimming. I am using my Spring break (which is when I did this plan) as a good time for increasing my exercise schedule.
I don't plan to increase my workout intensity very much because I
don't think that high intensity workouts are that important to overall
health. From what I have read, doing consistent exercise with
greater frequency is more important than longer, harder workouts.
Since I am not currently intending to be a competitive athlete, I'm
aiming my workout level at maximizing health benefits without putting
unnecessary stress on joints or on my free time. Of course as my
fitness improves I do want to increase my goals a bit to keep myself
challenged - I just don't want to go overboard about it.
My weight goal is to get below 180 pounds (that is to lose at least
6 or 7 pounds), and to convert some of the remaining fat into
muscle. This should get me well within my optimum healthy weight
range.
Maintaining good mental, emotional, and social health is not a
straightforward proposition. Daily life is stressful, and it
takes a lot of presence of mind to put what little spare time one has
into mentally, emotionally, and socially fulfilling activities rather
than just vegetating in front of the TV. Additionally, emotional
fulfillment is an aspect of every piece of ones life, and so
maintaining emotional health is partly a matter of setting up the sort
of life that makes you happy, and partly finding ways to be happy with
the sort of life you have set up.
Current Status: I
recently changed careers, because I found my last career as an engineer
and programmer to be not be very fulfilling. Towards the end of
my previous career I spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at a
computer screen, trying to find the motivation to do the tasks I was
assigned and wanting to be somewhere else. I chose teaching as a
new profession because I thought it would be more motivating, because I
wanted to spend more time interacting with people, and because I wanted
to have a little more vacation time each year to pursue other interests
(like traveling, writing, and programming for fun). So far, I'm
finding being a student to be even more time consuming than being an
engineer - and so my free time quotient has actually gone down.
However, I've also found the work to be more motivating than my old job
was, and I'm definitely finding it to be more interactive. I'm
also finding that I enjoy kids - which I was honestly a little unsure
about because my prior experience with teaching has been rather limited.
All in all, I still rate my mental and emotional environment as not
what I want it to be. The recent changes in my life have
introduced a lot of stress, as well as a lot of challenges. Also,
I have not used my spare time wisely for self actualizing activities,
and my social life is limited. On the other hand, I'm finding
class to be fairly self-actualizing, and I'm making a lot of new
friends with my fellow student teachers - so overall I consider my new
situation to be a definite improvement.
Goal: I'm taking this summer off - meaning that I have no work or school plans whatsoever (other than taking one more section of the math CSET test to qualify as a math teacher). This will be by far the largest vacation I've had in the last 25 years, and one of only two vacations that I've had in the last 20 years which was longer than 2 or 3 weeks. I plan to spend at least a few weeks traveling with my wife, and another couple of weeks visiting with family. Otherwise, I plan to devote the remainder of my time to personal projects (like working on my website), catching up on housework, getting in shape, visiting friends, juggling, and just generally finding myself.
I think my summer vacation will be a good time to find my center. The trick will be to remain centered when the busy school year starts again next Fall.
We are all consumers of the health care industry.
Additionally, as future teachers we are also health advocates for our
students. Finally, there are community health coverage issues
that are political in nature, where we all have a hand in saying how
they will turn out.
Current Status: Right
now my status as a health care consumer is in transition. My wife
and I are currently paying about $750 a month under COBRA to maintain
the health coverage that I used to get from my old company for much
less. I'm hoping to send my wife back to work this summer at a
company that offers a health plan. If not, we may have to
continue with COBRA until I get my first teaching job more than a year
from now. It is a painful prospect! I am only glad that my
old career has given me a financial cushion to deal with the
problem. I can't imagine how it must be for most of my much
younger and poorer fellow teaching students who are uninsured and just
one modest health crisis away from poverty.
My current status as health advocate is minimal. I am, however, a strong supporter of the Democratic party - both as a voter and a contributor. Right now the Democrats seem to be the only party interested in addressing the enormous number of people who have fallen through the cracks in the current health insurance system (many of whom are children).
Future Goal: As a teacher, there are a number of areas in which I intend to contribute to the community health of my students:
At 42, I am well past the age where accidents are the number one cause of death for my age group. Also, I am constitutionally a cautious person. I seldom speed and I'm known to put on my seatbelt just to drive across a parking lot. My biggest safety challenge right now is to get my wife to put on her seat belt and drive with both hands (or even use one hand - sometimes she likes to drive with her knees).
On the other hand, I am approaching the age when people can get
injured more easily, and when recovery from even minor injury can be
much more difficult.
Goal: As far as injury
prevention is concerned, part of my goal with my workout regime is to
build muscle and bone strength to help prevent injury, and to make
recovery quicker if I do get injured. I also try to avoid
excessive workout stress which is likely to cause injury.
Additionally, in my workouts I try to be especially attentive to
strengthening my core, as otherwise I am somewhat prone to back and
neck pain. In that area I'm also trying to be better about doing
simple stretching exercises during the day to head off problems.
I don't generally drink alcohol, I've never smoked or chewed
tobacco, and I've never taken recreational drugs. My only
personal health goal in this area is to maintain my current
practices. I am fortunate in this regard, because it is a
challenge for me just to cut back on eating pop-tarts - I can't imagine
trying to kick a difficult habit like smoking. My mother has been
trying to quit smoking since I was a kid and hasn't had much success,
and she's no slouch when it comes to good health habits and self
control.
Maintaining good nutrition is difficult - not because it is hard to know what food is good for me, but because paradoxically the food that is worst for me is often the food that tastes best.
Current Status: For the past few months I've been trying to eat better than I used to. When I was an engineer, I ate out roughly 6 times a week (including lunch every day at the company cafeteria or nearby restaurants). Since becoming a student again, I've been eating out less - both in order to save money and to avoid the huge fat and carbohydrate filled meals that are common at most restaurants. I've also been trying to eat healthy snacks like nuts and fruit every day instead of pop-tarts and cookies (which saves money too). Finally, I've been trying to eat at least one fruit and one large serving of vegetables every day. This is a big change for me since I like carbohydrates a lot more than I like vegetables.
I still eat out once or twice a week, and I still buy the rare box
of pop-tarts or a few Mrs. Fields cookies. I don't consider this
to be an issue so long as I'm
moderate about it.
On the negative side, as often as not my big meal for the day is a frozen dinner. Most of these dinners tend to be pretty high in carbohydrates and pretty low in nutritional value - and they often don't include any vegetables. Also, there are some days when I don't meet my goal of having a fresh fruit that day.
Goal: I want to be
more consistent in my fruit and vegetable intake. Eating my daily
fruit is mostly a matter of being more vigilant about grabbing an
orange, banana, etc. from the fruit bowl every day. However,
having a serving of vegetables every day is going to require that I
spend more time cooking, or that I at least limit myself to frozen
dinners that include vegetables (and some fairly nice ones do have some
vegetables). Or, I can just get into the habit of microwaving
some frozen vegetables at the same time I nuke the frozen dinner.
Doing more cooking is a difficult goal to reach, since my wife and I
have no children to cook for and little free time to cook for
ourselves. However, this summer I'm going to try to cook for
myself 2 or 3 times a week and I'll see if I can turn this into a
regular habit. Also, I think having more regular meals together
might be a good thing for our marriage since they would encourage
eating together at the table instead of in front of the TV.
As far as caloric intake is concerned, I feel that I am doing fairly
well in this area since my weight has stayed pretty steady. I
feel if I am more consistent with my exercise, lower the carbs just a
bit more, and avoid too many episodes of binge eating, I will
eventually lose the 6 or 7 pounds that I want to lose to reach my goal
weight range.
Maintaining a healthy environment in today's world is largely a matter of practicing political activism and taking personal responsibility for ones impact on the world. Also, there are changes one can make to keep ones personal environment more healthy.
Current Status: My wife and I make a habit of recycling whatever we can, and disposing of toxic materials like used batteries in an environmentally safe fashion. We also try to conserve energy, because energy usage correlates to the generation of carbon dioxide (a leading cause of global warming) and other pollutants.
From a personal standpoint, we try to maintain a clean house to
decrease our exposure to dust and molds that can aggravate
allergies. Personally, I also try to avoid unnecessary sun
exposure since skin cancer is a real concern in my family history.
Future Goals: As a
teacher, I will have an opportunity to be an environmental advocate to
the kids that I teach. Again, as a math teacher one way to do
this is via statistics and other real life math applications.
Also, for my next car I intend to buy a fuel efficient hybrid vehicle
because I care about the environment, I want to save money on gas that
is only going to be become more expensive over time, and because I
think they are pretty darn cool.
In the health framework, a large portion of the section on family living deals with childcare and sex education. Well, my wife and I are too old to have children and it's way too late for sex education. However, our family life is still important to us, and we both put a lot of work into keeping our relationship healthy.
In fact, one of my goals in leaving engineering and becoming a
teacher was to have more time to put into my family, and we do have
some work to do in that area. I'm going to leave off details
(because some things really are personal), but suffice it to say that
the key elements that we need are time, effort, and connection, and
that this is something I very much want to put more time into.
I feel like the changes in my life during the last few months have been all about individual growth and development. And let me tell you, it has been a lot to take in in a short time.
Current Status: Let's
see... I've just changed careers. Since then I've been
working really hard on getting my teaching credential and learning to
be a good teacher - with a little bit of time left over for stuff like
starting a website, staying in shape, and trying to strengthen my
marriage. It's been an awful lot of change after really feeling
like I was going nowhere for several years.
Future Goals: Despite
all the recent changes, I have a number of personal development areas
where I'd like to put more focus on in the future:
All of these goals are pretty long term, and could take years to
come to full fruition. For that matter, my priorities could
change as well. Individual growth is seldom in a straight line.
As a 42 year old married man, communicable diseases (such as sexually transmitted disease) become relatively less of a threat, and chronic diseases that are associated with aging start to become much more of a worry. In particular, as we age we become more vulnerable to heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. Even the threat of Alzheimer's (which my grandmother started getting in her early 60s) is not such a remote threat anymore. It's rather depressing!
The best defense against all of these chronic diseases is diet and
exercise (see above for my goals in those areas). Still, even
with the most healthy living styles there are no guarantees - and even
if one stays healthy one is still going to have to face illness among
the people one loves.
It doesn't seem all that long ago that I hardly knew anybody who had died or who had even been really sick. Well... my father died about a year ago from injuries sustained in a car crash a year earlier (which was pretty tough), all my grandparents have died of age related illness (the last less than a year ago), and by now I've known a couple of very close coworkers who have died or become very sick from sudden and unexpected illnesses such as cancer or stroke. It changes your perspective on things, that's for sure.
Goal: I don't have a
special goal for dealing with chronic diseases and illness among myself
or my family. Such things must simply be dealt with when they
occur (although vigilance about ones own state of health so problems
can be addressed early is certainly a good strategy). I guess my
main goal is to live life to the fullest, because the only thing sure
about life is that it doesn't last forever.
A personal health plan is pretty much inseparable from a personal
life plan. Lately I've changed a lot of my life plans so that I
can focus on the things that are important to me - including being
physically and emotionally healthier. And although I can't say
that this assignment was on the top of my fun list, writing it has made
me think about a few things and maybe helped me put some of my ideas on
personal health into perspective. To whoever is reading this, I
hope you have gotten something out of it to.