HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 1

Improving and Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle

Wei Wei Zheng

Pasadena City College

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 2

Abstract

According to the book’s health self-assessment, I scored in the ideal range for two out of seven

of the health categories. In specific, I had proficient scores in social and personal health. In the

rest of the categories like physical, emotional, environmental, spiritual, and intellectual health it

stated that my health risks were showing. To be exact, I scored 11 in physical health, 13 ‘in

emotional health, 14 in spiritual health, and 10 in environmental health. Therefore, the focus of

this paper will be on improving my physical health, emotional health, and environmental health

because my spiritual health is close to the borderline of proficient. The importance of

maintaining a healthy lifestyle is no longer about an individual. My lifestyle choices can affect

other people. Most importantly, it may affect the people I care about around me, which is why

maintaining a healthy lifestyle is so important. There are currently three dimensions of health

that I need to maintain, which is my social, personal, spiritual, and intellectual health. By

maintaining these health aspects, I will continue those lifestyle choices. However, I will improve

on physical, emotional, and environmental health.

Improving and Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle

An individual’s health lifestyle choices affect the wellness and six dimensions of their

own health. In order for an individual to achieve a healthy lifestyle they must improve or

maintain these six dimensions of health, which include physical health, social health, intellectual

health, emotional health, spiritual health, and environmental health. Maintaining these aspects of

health can lead to longer lifespans that are free of diseases. It can lead to a heathier and happier

life. Today, an individual’s lifestyle choices do not only affect oneself, but the people around

them as well. After taking a self-assessment on my own health, I have found three areas of health

that I could improve on, which are physical health, emotional health, and environmental health. I
HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 3

set myself three goals to improve these categories of health. I hope to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep

each night, recognize when I’m stressed, and recycle materials that I purchase.

Out of all three of my goals, getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep is the most important because it

affects my overall health and wellness. Personally, this is a very difficult goal, but also a very

important goal. I am currently taking 7 classes total and 6 of the classes are on quarter system. I

have a ton of workload and I find it hard to sleep 7 to 8 hours. However, I can see it as taken a

toll of my health as I have extremely poor energy. With little to no energy I cannot achieve the

other aspects of physical health. Thus, it is critical that the first step to improving my physical

health is getting proper sleep. My sleep reflects on my ability to exercise properly or eat proper

meals. I am productive, but I’m also drained. I depend on caffeine and energy drinks to get

through the day, which cannot be healthy for my body. Instead I want to cut down on caffeine

and energy drinks. I plan to not procrastinate on any school work, which will give me more time

to sleep. As the rest of our society, I am also addicted to electronics, which have also taken a toll

on my sleep. I often check my e-mails and text messages, which often takes away about 30

minutes to an hour of my sleep. I plan to set my alarm and put away my cellphone the moment I

head to bed. However, it will be a hard balance between this goal and my next goal because

getting proper sleep takes time away from my next goal.

My second goal is realizing when I’m stressed and taking time off from my daily duties

to find a way to relieve this stress build up. I’m often preoccupied in school work, which stresses

me out. However, I often choose to ignore how stressed I am even though it takes a toll on my

emotional health. To graduate college, I set aside my time for friends, which was my stress

reliever. I distanced myself from my closet friends to focus on my life goals. As a result, I am

achieving the grades I wish for, but I’m stressed and unhappy. According to American
HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 4

Psychological Association, “if you experience stress over a prolonged period of time, it could

become chronic—unless you take action” (APA). Chronic stress can cause a person to feel

fatigue and irritated for no reason. Worse of all, chronic stress causes wear and tear to the body

itself. For example, when an individual is sick chronic stress can make it harder or longer for a

person to recover. In order to improve my emotional health, I want to try to use my Friday’s or

Saturday’s to spend time with my friends. The only hard part is finding a balance to school work,

friend time, and sleep.

My last goal deals with my lifestyle choices that may affect the people I care about in the

long run and that is the environments health. I often drink Dasani water bottles due to my lack of

time to wash canisters. However, prior this course I did not think about the impacts of throwing

away each bottle for the convenience. According to Rebecca Lake (2017), “the American

Chemistry Council estimates that the average consumer uses 166 plastic water bottles each year,

and that 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away every hour.” As I may not have the time to

clean out canisters to reuse, I proposed the goal of setting aside my used plastic bottles and

taking them to a recycle center whenever I have time. This goal is more reasonable and possible

as I can collect all my used bottles and recycle them on my leisure time as opposed to finding

time daily to wash a canister. Recycling will help reduce landfill space to biodegrade other items.

Recycling these bottles will also help decrease greenhouse gas emissions and pollutions in the air

and water. Even though it isn’t much of an effect, I am reducing negative effects on our

environment, which improves the environments health for the people around me as well.

I hope to achieve a healthier lifestyle by improving in the 3 dimensions that I lack. My

goal is to achieve and balance 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night, release my stress once a week on

a weekend, and recycle all my plastic bottles. Not only are my health lifestyle choices affecting
HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 5

me as an individual, but the people I care about around me. By improving these three dimensions

of health, I may be on a better road of a longer, healthier, and happier life

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 6

References

How Stress Affects Your Health. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2018, from

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress.aspx

Lake, R. (2017, June 13). The Effect of Recycling Plastic Water Bottles on the

Environment. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.livestrong.com/article/181103-the-

effect-of-recycling-plastic-water-bottles-on-the-environment/