The American Heritage Dictionary defines wellness as "The condition of good physical and mental health, especially when maintained by proper diet, exercise and habits". Therefore, wellness would allow us to make our days enjoyable and live life to the full.

Creating wellness would be easy to achieve in an ideal world. However, the strains of modern day life can impact adversely on our wellness, most notably diet.

Poor food choices would obviously have an adverse affect on wellness: such poor food choices would include Fast food diets that are high in fat and low in nutrients, overly processed convenience foods and a lack of dietary fibre from fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Also, not enough healthy sources of protein in our diet will affect wellness, as protein is needed to support muscle and bone tissues.

The good news is that small changes in diet and lifestyle may help to reverse any adverse effects and produce optimum wellness.

Three keys to optimum wellness include: 1) Balancing your diet. Your body needs the correct amounts of the right foods and nutrients, which includes protein, good carbohydrates, good fats and colourful fruits and vegetables. Your body also needs vitamins, minerals and fibre so that food can be utilised at maximum efficiency. Vitamins and minerals are not always present in food in adequate amounts, but they can be obtained from dietary supplements, providing your body with nutrition at the cellular level.

2) Regular Exercise. Exercising regularly will help you to look and feel your best because exercise creates muscle tone and provides your body tissues with oxygen - so necessary for optimum wellness!

3) Drinking lots of Water. Your body is about two-thirds water, so for optimum wellness, you need to drink 2 litres (6 - 8 glasses) of water every day.

By following these three steps and making the effort to make the changes, you can achieve optimum wellness starting today!