{"id":5840,"date":"2015-06-14T14:52:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T19:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/?p=5840"},"modified":"2015-06-14T14:52:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T19:52:16","slug":"8-weeks-to-wellness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2015\/8-weeks-to-wellness\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Weeks to Wellness"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least that’s the idea behind my organization’s wellness policies. \u00a0To be eligible for discounted co-pays (or in my case a gift card) you have to complete a health assessment and some type of wellness activity. \u00a0The activity should be based on your health assessment has to be logged into the insurance company’s system and be approved. \u00a0A variety of wellness activities can be completed to obtain the rewards.<\/p>\n

We gathered a team for a district wide volleyball tournament and in the 2 hours of volleyball playing we earned the desired reward. \u00a0I’m not quite sure how 2 hours of volleyball is equivalent to 8 weeks of activity, but that’s out of my purview. \u00a0I had already started my 8 weeks of activity before I knew that, but I continued with the plan just to see what would happen. \u00a0My chosen three activities were to “be more active” walk 10,000 steps, be less stressed, and to sleep 8 hours a night.<\/p>\n

Only one night during the last 8 weeks did I actually sleep 8 hours!! Several nights I got over 7 hours of sleep in, but woke up refreshed. \u00a0I think the idea of trying to get as much sleep as possible is good, but 8 hours seems a little arbitrary.<\/p>\n

\"sleep<\/a><\/p>\n

Another goal was to be more active. But really what does that mean? The method of tracking this was to walk more steps. \u00a0But really for me, that isn’t an accurate measure of my fitness. \u00a0Being more active would be more consistent at Crossfit or running\/biking more often. \u00a0But why work too hard for this assessment of wellness?<\/p>\n

So I set the goal of walking 10,000 steps and used my phone’s step tracking software. The problem with using your phone is that if you ever just leave it sit on the desk or counter then you miss counting those steps. And I’m not sure how the Fitbit tracks this but while riding my bike I would get a lot of extra steps and on some of my runs I wouldn’t get very many. \u00a0So this isn’t exactly the most accurate look at the steps I take. \u00a0But it was a good look at wow, I was super busy that day and walked around the building a ton! If you use a Fitbit there is direct integration into their website which makes a plan such as walk 10,000 steps pretty simple. In the 8 weeks I monitored this I “walked” 281 miles!<\/p>\n

\"steps<\/a><\/p>\n

My initial health assessment said I had too much stress and that I needed to reduce it. Well duh. I felt like the tracking for this goal was the least objective. Each day I chose certain stressors and then how stressed I was by it. \u00a0So there wasn’t a true consistent metric across time to see if you were able to reduce stress in one area or another. \u00a0Monitoring my stress over the time frame when we moved made for some stressful days! It is also hard to quantify stress over the whole day in a 5 point scale. \u00a0The short-term high stress over 3 or 4 days while selling and buying a house can be averaged out if I said there was no work or family stress that day. \u00a0Here is a look at the stress data in two different ways. Obviously work and family are the most stress inducing things in life!<\/p>\n

\"stress<\/a> \"stress<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Does your work place have a wellness program? \u00a0As of this minute I’m ranked 19th “company-wide” for total number of points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least that’s the idea behind my organization’s wellness policies. \u00a0To be eligible for discounted co-pays (or in my case a gift card) you have to complete a health assessment and some type of wellness activity. \u00a0The activity should be based on your health assessment has to be logged into the insurance company’s system and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4iaAv-1wc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":716,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2008\/off-season\/","url_meta":{"origin":5840,"position":0},"title":"Off-Season?","author":"crossn81","date":"November 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Do runners really have an off-season?? Does any athlete really have an off-season??? \"Off\" might not be the best word to describe what happens between the end of one season and the beginning of the next. Maybe down time or to use a more technical term: periodization. Periodization is often\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cross-Training"","block_context":{"text":"Cross-Training","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/cross-training\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cross-country skiing (skating style) in Einsie...","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/5\/54\/Cross-country_skiing_Schwedentritt.jpg\/202px-Cross-country_skiing_Schwedentritt.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":102,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2007\/indiana-is-obese\/","url_meta":{"origin":5840,"position":1},"title":"Indiana is Obese","author":"crossn81","date":"October 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently did some research on \"healthy living\" and needed data related to childhood obesity, physical activity, nutrition, etc. The results are a little staggering. Some of the results are here: 15.6% of Indiana Children are overweight, ranking Indiana 15th highest, 14.8% is the national average (Trust for America's Health).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/health\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/distancedemons.homestead.com\/files\/kids_running_track.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":224,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2008\/detraining-and-recovery\/","url_meta":{"origin":5840,"position":2},"title":"Detraining and Recovery","author":"crossn81","date":"April 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"After 12 weeks of training for a race I'm now taking some time off to let my body recover and heal.\u00a0 When I was first thinking about trying to do a fall marathon I asked my old X-Country coach what he thought about doing a spring half and a fall\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/health\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1286,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2009\/treatments-for-plantar-fasciitis\/","url_meta":{"origin":5840,"position":3},"title":"Treatments for Plantar Fasciitis","author":"crossn81","date":"April 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Image via Wikipedia This post is popular, but I also wanted to point out an updated 18 steps to get rid of Plantar Fasciitis. I've been enduring the pain of Plantar Fasciitis in my heel for most of this training cycle.\u00a0 When\u00a0 I first started feeling the pain I took\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cross-Training"","block_context":{"text":"Cross-Training","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/cross-training\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Plantar fasciitis","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/b\/ba\/PF-PainAreas.jpg\/200px-PF-PainAreas.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":317,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2008\/spirituality-a-running-definition\/","url_meta":{"origin":5840,"position":4},"title":"Spirituality: A Running Definition","author":"crossn81","date":"November 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I had hoped we were ready to move past the point of defining terms and such, but I guess we had forgotten the most important term.\u00a0 This term is actually in title, no it isn't running or art.\u00a0 Confused? Well it is actually in the series title - Spirituality.\u00a0 Keeping\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Review"","block_context":{"text":"Book Review","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/book-review\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"A sadhu performing namaste in Madurai, India.","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/6b\/Indian_sadhu_performing_namaste.jpg\/202px-Indian_sadhu_performing_namaste.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":61,"url":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/2007\/races-on-sept-8-9\/","url_meta":{"origin":5840,"position":5},"title":"Races on Sept 8 + 9","author":"crossn81","date":"September 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a good amount of races this weekend. I'll be at the DINO race but would recommend the Miriam Project for a good 5K. Remember that the IndyClassic Marathon date has been changed to Nov 3. This is NOT the same as the Indianapolis Marathon on October 20. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Calendar"","block_context":{"text":"Calendar","link":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/category\/calendar\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5845,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions\/5845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teamcrossworld.com\/running\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}