Just how FIT are you?
During the week, I had the opportunity to be involved in a Leader Health Assessment Program (LHAP) that the 1st SFAB Brigade was conducting. Like any good wife, of course at first, I dismissed the invitation by my husband to attend. I didn’t give him a solid no, I just avoided giving him a yes. When I really began to think about it though, I couldn’t come up with a viable reason not to do the assessment, so I agreed to sign up.
I will say, I have been pleasantly surprised with how well this week has gone and how flawless everything has been executed. The health assessment was broken down into different categories, paired with hour consultations by professionals from each category. Below are the categories along with some things to reflect upon as we go into the weekend.
Spiritual Fitness: My first appointment of the week was with Chaplain Foxworth. After chatting a bit, he challenged me with some profound questions that required me to dig deeper into who Sarah is and what she’s about at the core. Though I probably gave the typically cookie cutter answer at the time, I’ve admittedly been reflecting on these questions all week long. I thought I’d share these questions with you so that you could reflect upon them too.
· Who is your truest self and who are you at the core of your being?
· What is the purpose and meaning of your life?
· At the end of your life and you look back, what would it look like to know that you have lived the life that you were created for?
Mental Fitness: For this portion of the health assessment, I took an EQ-i test which offers excellent insight into one’s emotional intelligence. This test is broken down by self-perception, self-expression, stress management, decision making/problem solving, and interpersonal relationships. For each category there is a subcategory which offers an in-depth explanation of each based on your scores. None of my results shocked me, as I’m fairly in tune with my attributes as well as character defects, but when this is all broken down and put into writing you can see things about yourself a little more clearly. No doubt I will be committing some time to reevaluate some of my ‘attributes’ and see how I can fine tune things over the next few months. You can find the EQ-i test online if you want to know where you stand on mental fitness.
Family/Social Fitness: This was an opportunity for both Mike and I to talk with the Military and Family Life Counselor (MFLC) to discuss some ‘behind the scenes things’ that are personal to us and our relationship. Everyone needs an outlet. Having the ability to talk to a third party either alone or with your spouse is a great way to invest in yourself and your relationship.
Physical Fitness: The physical assessment conducted by MAJ Avant and SSG Regnier was a great way to help gauge where I was at physically while keeping honest with myself about my actual capabilities. I was given a graph which required me to assess myself from a scale of 1 to 10 in the categories of endurance, stamina, strength, power, agility, speed, flexibility, balance, coordination, and accuracy. After giving myself mostly 7’s, MAJ Avant and SSG Regnier then put me to test with some functional and physical challenges. What was concluded is that I had given myself a realistic assessment of what my current physical capabilities were and that I also had some areas I could improve upon. Injuries are also difficult to hide during an assessment like this, so getting a referral to see a specialist was an unexpected bonus.
In addition, if you want a true assessment of where you stand in other areas of your physical self, I encourage you to go to the Army Wellness Center (AWC) or ask your doctor about doing the Bod Pod and metabolic testing. If you don’t know what a Bod Pod is, it’s a computerized egg-shaped device that measures your weight and volume to determine your body density in order to calculate your body fat.
The metabolic testing determines your metabolic resting rate, essentially determining how many calories you burn doing ‘nothing’. It then takes your Body Mass Index (BMI) and calculates how many calories you should take in daily. Also, how many calories you should be burning or not burning based on your fitness goals. Like anything, there is a lot more involved here, but these are the nuts and bolts of it. If you feel you’ve been stuck like me, this might help you realize some important things about your own body. In my case, based on working out twice a day, I was burning a lot of calories, but not eating enough. This resulted in my metabolism and energy levels being extremely low and not seeing the results of all my hard work. After today, I know to eat more and look forward to meeting with the nutritionist as part of this week’s assessment so he can help tweak my nutrition plan.
To revisit the title of this blog, ‘Just how FIT are you’, this is a great question to reflect upon as we transition into the weekend. Fitness doesn’t just entail how good we look and how many pullups we can do. It encompasses all the other components discussed above; mental, social and spiritual fitness. If you ever can take any of these assessments, I encourage you to do so as there is so much that you can learn about yourself to improve upon. After all, it’s about being ‘Always in Pursuit’, right?
*I’d like to give a personal shout out to the team at 1st SFAB for putting on the Leader Health Assessment Program this week. This is a great model to follow, and I hope more organizations, both military and civilian sectors, will see the value in a program like this. Thank you 1st SFAB!
~Sarah
