Keeping fit

Model: You can go to a keep-fit class once a week. It will perfect your figure.

You can climb the Eiffel Tower once a year. It will broaden your outlook.

Task 7. Of the many things you can do to enhance your well-being, none is more important than maintaining proper nutrition. Many people are aware that good nutrition is essential and sincerely want to eat healthfully. Say what you consider healthy food. The following examples may be helpful:

Eating carrots is good for the eyes.

Fish is good for the brain.

Eating cheese at night makes you dream.

Garlic stops you getting colds.

Drinking coffee stops you sleeping.

Yoghurt makes you healthy.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

A hot milky drink helps you go to sleep.

A cup of tea revives you.

Guinness is good for you.

Crusty bread makes your hair curl.

Brown eggs taste better than white ones.

Now its your turn.

• to be for smth (e.g. for the eyes)

to make smb do smth (e.g. dream – видеть сны)

to stop smb doing smth (e.g. getting colds)

to make smb healthy

to keep the doctor away

to help smb do smth

to revive smb

• fresh bread, curds (cottage cheese) with sour cream, yoghurt, honey, salt, sugar, parsley, dill, herbs, raw eggs, sauer-craut, sour milk, new milk (парное молоко), sea food, corn flakes, canned food, yolk of an egg (желток), spices, sweets (сладости).

B. Read and translate the text. Be ready for a discussion. Health & wellness

Ask people what they mean by “being healthy” or “feeling well” and you probably will get different answers depending on whom you ask. Most people usually think of health in terms of disease; that is, people who are well have no disease. But what about someone who has a relatively harmless genetic disorder such as an extra toe? Is this individual less healthy that a person with the usual number of toes? Different perhaps, but not necessarily less healthy. Are you less well when you are struggling with a personal problem than when you are out having fun? Finding an acceptable, generally useful definition of health or wellness is not a simple task.

It is true that not feeling sick is one important aspect of health. Just as important, however, is the idea that health is a sense of optimum well-being – a state of physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual wellness. Contained in this view is the idea that health can be obtained by living in harmony with yourself, with other people, and with the environment. Health is gained and maintained by exerting self-responsibility for reducing exposure to health risk and for maximizing things such as good nutrition and exercise.

Wellness is dynamic and continuous, no dimension of wellness functions in isolation. When you have a high level of wellness or optimal health, all dimensions are integrated and functioning together. The person’s environment (including work, school, family, community), and his or her physical, emotional, intellectual, occupational, spiritual, and social dimensions of wellness are in tune with one another to produce harmony.

Experts commonly refer to six dimensions of health and wellness: emotional, intellectual, spiritual, occupational, social, and physical. We will discuss each briefly.

• Emotional wellness requires understanding emotions and coping with problems that arise everyday life.

• Intellectual wellness involves having a mind open to new ideas and concepts. If you are intellectually healthy you seek new experiences and challenges.

• Spiritual wellness is the state of harmony with yourself and others. It is the ability to balance inner needs with the demands of the rest of the world.

• Occupational wellness is being able to enjoy what you are doing to earn a living and/or contribute to society, whether it be going to college, working as a secretary, doctor, construction manager, or accountant. In a job, it means having skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and communicating well.

• Social wellness refers to the ability to perform social roles effectively, comfortably, and without harming others.

• Physical wellness is a healthy body maintained by eating right, exercising regularly, avoiding harmful habits, making informed and responsible decisions about health, seeking medical care when needed, and participating in activities that help prevent illness.

Managing Stress

Life is filled with a never-ending array of challenges, some of which present themselves as obstacles to accomplishing necessary daily tasks or life goals. Other challenges provide opportunities for positive and unplanned changes in our lives.

When confronted with a particular challenge – whether it be earning good grades in school, obtaining a well-paying job, becoming a parent, becoming involved in an intense relationship, or living with an uncompromising roommate – we may feel anxiety, sadness, depression, anger, and fear. Such feelings may cause symptoms like sleeplessness, gastrointestinal upset, headache, and muscular tension, which signal a disruption of psychobiological balance. Usually this disruption is brief, because we find ways to meet the challenge and to restore our well-being. And often confronting and resolving a challenge becomes a positive growth experience. Other tomes, however, disruption in mind-body harmony is prolonged or severe, and we are to be “under stress” or “stressed out”. Prolonged, unresolved stress can contribute to the development of several kinds of disorders.

The best way to manage stress is to replace stressful ways of living with beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours that promote peace, joy, and mind-body harmony. That does not mean you must become reclusive or try to eliminate all sources of conflict and tension from your life. People need tension to be creative and grow psychologically and spiritually. It may mean, however, changing some selfharming ways of thinking and behaving. Seeking help from a teacher, counselor, psychotherapist, clergyman, or coach can help you recognize sources of stress and ways to deal with them.

Still another way to manage stress is to alter the mental and physical experience of stress. Many people do this by consuming alcohol, smoking cigarettes, taking tranquilizers and sleeping pills, and over- or undereating. Because these behaviuors do not focus on the problem causing stress, at best they offer only short-term relief of symptoms or an eating disorder.

1. To be responsible for your well-being, you must understand what health and wellness are. Give definitions to these terms.

2. Although most people have at some time considered themselves “under stress” or “stressed out”, it is important to recognize a significant difference in use of the word stress. Give the definition to stress and explain the difference of the expressions to be under stress and to be stressed out.

3. In the phrase “under stress”, stress refers to the cause of the disruption of psychological and/or physiological balance; for example, “She was under stress from having to take five exams in two days.” It does not describe the person’s response to the stress. On the other hand, “stressed out” refers to the consequences of a stressful situation; for example, “During final exams she was stressed out that she suffered from stomach cramps and insomnia.” Think out situations where these phrases can be used.

C. Watch the film Family Album USA, Episode 4 “A Peace of Cake” and discuss the role of aerobic classes in people’s life.