What Health Means To Me
Author and Editor: Ursula Vollmer
———————————————————————————————————————————————————-
The world of health is a confusing and frankly daunting place to enter.
The constant ads, the plans, the calls from different pages—all of it enticing you with the next best waist slimmer, the next best tea, the next best way to feel happier. No matter what it is, it’s always with the goal that your life will drastically change with just one simple shift. There does not seem to be a rest or a time to breathe and we wonder: am I doing everything I possibly can do to be healthy? What if I’m not doing enough? And if I’m not doing enough, how can I do more?
But frankly, I have reached a place in my life where I have learned to not allow the outside forces to crush what I know works for myself. Even though this may be harder said than done, the time I took to learn how to view health as a way to benefit my own well being and not a formula, I saw my lifestyle, my habits and my perspective on working out slowly start to shift. This time for the better.
Coming from an athletic background, I was always drawn to high intensity workouts. The feeling of sweating everything out, of leaving the sports field or practice on an endorphin high was something that became almost like a drug for me. I loved getting to feel proud of the effort I had done, that I had pushed my body to the extent that I could finally leave school satisfied. There was a competitive side but it made the task of working out something I slowly began to dread…something I slowly saw as a chore. Working out was not longer something that was meant to be enjoyable or intentional.
In fact, the rhythm of having practice and the feeling of knowing I was going to get to work out everyday with my teams felt like an inherent part of my life and I didn’t really want anything to change. It wasn’t till I saw myself get to college freshman year that the habit I had formed of working out was such a mechanical formula in my life. I slowly saw the way that I worked out to be something of utmost importance every single day. It became the way in which the tone of my day was determined. And that’s messy.
I saw myself ignoring the dining hall, putting the gym before social events and allowing myself to get mad if I had to take a day off for class. The thing is, this also became the way that working out allowed me to have control over my life. Because if I was anxious about an exam, if I didn’t know where my social life was going or if I was plainly just bored: the gym was always waiting. The gym was always there to make me feel like I was better than other people and always there for me as I procrastinated the rest of my real that was frankly waiting for me to live.
As I write these words at the start of 2025, I am sure there is this push to also feel like you need to get your life back on track. To create healthier habits, to feel like you are on the trend of health and wellness. The thing is, after I took about a year and a half to not only reevaluate the way I spoke to myself about fitness, but the way I interacted with it, I found out what it really meant to live a healthy lifestyle.
While that now looks like spin, balanced meals with sweet treats, sleeping in later some days or using walking as a break from my classes (as well as my exercise for the day)–your own “routine” is going to look different.
The best part is you have to figure out what that looks and feels like for you. Health means yes, and I know it's cliche, listening to my body and getting excited about the choices I am making. It also means allowing myself to feel excited about a workout class (in this case for me I live for riding a bike that goes nowhere in a dark room, others enjoy the rhythm of the reformer in pilates) or the smoothie you get to make when you come home. It is the little things that bring about peace, that bring about joy and also allow our body to feel at peace too.
Taking a break to be intentional around what works for you does more than just bring about clarity surrounding fitness, but also works to strengthen your own relationship with yourself. And at the end of the day, it is not until we can be at peace with our own body that we can challenge it, grow stronger and finally feel good about it. Which is better than any post workout high.
I challenge you to work on finding that peace—no matter how long it takes.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
"Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship"
Buddha
