You pick up the magazines each day, and you're bombarded with health and fitness information. Advertisements and articles that are designed to impart much needed information to the reader about the state of fitness and health in America today, and what we as responsible citizens should do. I want you to stop, and think for just one moment.

How do you determine your current fitness and wellness levels? Does your regular doctor impart this information as you visit, does he inquire each time you go if you believe yourself to be fit and well? Probably not. Nor does he give you any method for determining the status on your own. Fitness centers abound in this country, and most are staffed with counselors who can test your fitness level. What about your wellness level? Are they one and the same? They are not one and the same, yet they rely heavily on each other to keep you healthy.

Thanks to the advances in modern medicine, the average person's life span now exceeds seventy years. If you stop to think, that's quite a long time to walk around on this earth. Along with the wonderful life expectancy increases, however have come the detrimental effects of overeating and unhealthy eating. It seems that as we advance in one area, we regress in others. This doesn't have to be so, however. Reaching a place of responsibility, where we combine our physical health, with our wellness enhances those extra years of life.

Being fit and being well are totally different conditions. Your wellness rating is dependent upon your immune system, and what vitamins, supplements, and nutrition you provide for your immune system. Fit people can sometimes be unwell. And well people can sometimes be unfit. However, when you do combine the two, and use sound principles based on clean living, exercise, and healthy eating, you attain a state of equilibrium where you are both fit and well. It is comparable to the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. The balance that must exist in the whole relies heavily on the balancing of the halves.

The wonderful state that is attained however, when we are both fit and well, is one of the joys of being alive. The energy levels that we experience are beyond compare, and the happiness we feel during our moments of physical triumphs, help us to put life in perspective. That's an accomplishment we pass along to our children in the example that we set before them. We are true practitioners of the philosophies that we preach.

The example we provide for our family, our children especially, speaks volumes to them about their own responsibilities in maintaining their health. Being healthy is a true combination of wellness and fitness, body and mind. Our spirit, soul, or inner voice is a benefactor in this experience, also. Truly well and fit minds and bodies are better followers of their spirit, and spend more energy on the wellness of their spiritual aspect, also.

Spirituality is a way of assuring ourselves of a renewing, and rebirth of ourselves as caring humans. Wellness encompasses our state of being, mind, and health. It is a condition of the whole. The joining of wellness and fitness in our life is a condition of the mind, body, and soul.