How to build your own “Avengers” team who can help you manage your health and wellness optimally

Health is a very individualistic concept. Health as you know is determined by many factors, the key ones being genetics, nutrition, exercise, environmental factors among others.

As different factors determine your health, it is imperative that you build a personal health team that can help manage the key aspects of your health. This is like your personal “Avengers” who can combine in various forms and fashion in order to optimize your health and help you live to the fullest, both physically and mentally Here is a list of the key members of the winning team.

• Family Physician- Anyone who has seen movies from the 60’s and 70’s would recall the family physician, a trusted advisor to the family who would appear at ctitical moments to save lives and support the family. With the disapperance of the joint family systems this role has slightly taken the back seat, but it is the most important person in the team. There has to be an individual who knows everything about the family and who can be a key connecter to other professionals or specialists as the need maybe. often the family physicians would work with the family to prevent hospitalisation and avoid excessive testing.
• Nutritionist- You are what you eat. Most of your health outside of genetics is determined by your diet. Today we have a lot of resources on nutrition availabel on our fingertips. Unformtuntely most of that content is not really useful. Often we see bloggers writing articles on nutrition quoting un verified sources or results not gerenated from scientieif studies. It is therefore important to add a nutritionist to your team. This will heal you eat right and in the correct p[roportion.
• Fitness Coach- All of health is a equation of Input, processes and output. Exercise or fitness is a key ingridient of this system. Fitness can come in many forms, Gymnesiums, Fitness Centers, Zumba, Cardio Workouts, Sports, High Intersity Interval Training ( HIIT) etc. Pick a fitness regime that works for you but always add a fitness coach to your team. Unsupervised pursuit of fitness can stop you from achieving the results that you want and instead create more complications in the form of injury
• Yog/Medictation/ Mindfulness Guru- Yoga or Meditation Guru completes the team. While the fitness coach impacts your physical wellbeing, this professional impacts your mental health. A fit body and a sound mind are a wonderful combination. Thats why it is important not to ignore this aspect and continue to build on this area. Previosuly we had written about the health benefits of Yoga. The article can be found here.

While these are the 4 core team members, you can have others from time to time to help you build certain critical aspects of your health, these could be areas like Physiotherapy, Martial Arts among others. While building this team the synergy between you and the team and the team itself is very important. There is nothing more detrimental than the team that works at cross purposes to each other. Keeping that in mind here are the 3 areas to consider as you build this team

• Cultural Fit- In India we have almost 10,000 years of history. All of us have a family history and cultural aspects that drive our personalities and our habits . Thats why the cultural fit is very important. There is no point having a nutritionist in the team that supports a Vegan philosophy if you have a culture of eating red meat in the family due to relegious or other reasons.
• Personal Fit- Trust and transparecncy is the key to the success of the team. hence only add those who have the time for you and are personally invested in your success. That means in reciprocity you would have to make the time for them, and ensure that you are invested in their success to help you. You have to be comfortbale with your team. there is no point in having a faily physician if he would not life your phone during critical emergencies
• Purpose – Before you embark on this jounney of health and fitness, it is important to identify why are you doing this? often people fix goals and then chase them. This leads to stress and anxiety and often the goals fail. Instead of fixeing goals, I would advise you to think through the purpose of what you are trying to achieve here. The add a mission to that purpose, drive a vision and then goals to meet that vision. Pursuing goals without a purpose is live playing a game of tennis without the rules and not keeping the score.

In conclusion, As I wrote in my book Own Your Health, no one can manage your health, your health is in your hands. Own Your health. But in that process, you would need a team to support you. Identify the right team members to partner you on this journey. Also before you start on this journey seek your purpose and then work backward.