Pick up any magazine any day of the week and you can't help but be bombarded with all the health and fitness information everyone is dishing out. So how do you go about weeding through all those advertisements and articles designed to inform you about your state of health, level of fitness and, what you as a responsible citizen should do?

Well stop and think for just a moment. How do you determine your current health and wellness levels? Does your regular doctor ever inquire if you believe yourself to be fit and well? Probably not. Nor does s/he give you any method for determining the status on your own.

With all the fitness centers that abound in this country, and most are staffed with counselors who can test your fitness level, it's quite easy to get an evaluation of your general health, but what about your wellness level? Fitness and wellness are not the same, yet they rely heavily on each other to keep you healthy.

Being fit and being well are totally different conditions. Your wellness rating is dependent upon your immune system, and what vitamins, supplements, and nutrition you provide for your immune system. Fit people can sometimes be unwell. And well people can sometimes be unfit. However, when you combine the two, and use sound principles based on clean living, exercise, and healthy eating, you attain a state of equilibrium where you are both fit and well.

Most individuals do not take the time to completely understand the advantages of being both fit and being well. We read and absorb the information we're often given through the media and health organizations, without ever pondering if we're receiving all the information we need, or simply the information that is profitable to be seen or heard.

Physical fitness is a condition of the body alone and while fitness gyms need monthly fees in order to remain operational, they have no real concern about the condition of your immune system. Same goes for hospitals and doctors. They need us as a patient in order to remain operational; although they want you to know you need to be fit and well, they often leave out important information that affect your wellness and, therefore, your ability to be fit.

And what about your eating habits, nutrition, and vitamins? What role does your daily intake play in our health, your wellness, and your fitness? More than you are lead to believe or understand the body's ability to remain well under anything other than ideal conditions is a direct result of the nutrition received on a daily basis. And the mind's ability to remain well is, again, a direct result of our nutrition intake. For instance, the human brain doesn't develop well without the necessary input of protein in our daily diet. No protein, no intelligence. No intelligence, then none of the other states is attainable.

Our spiritual input is a determining factor when establishing our fitness level. We all need the benefit of spiritual reflection, as a way of cleansing ourselves of the stress of our daily life. And spirituality is a way of assuring ourselves of a renewing, and rebirth of ourselves as humans. And so wellness encompasses our body's health, as a whole and in this respect it includes the mind. It is a whole body condition.