It’s a philosopher’s prerogative to contemplate the inner meaning of words and phrases and as we’ve all found ourselves with more to think about and more thinking time during the strange and stressful pandemic period, I thought some musings on Vital Statistics might help us unpack the loaded language of this laden phrase.

The Weight On Your Mind

It’s a typically British construct to associate vital statistics with a woman’s bust, waist and hip measurements and regular followers of this blog and MMAP’s gender equality initiative Make Me A Planel can probably already imagine what this firm’s firm view on Page 3 stunnahs and the suchlike is.

Lockdown has provided us with a very different daily routine. No hair appointments. Not wearing make-up or donning formal work attire. Perhaps having to don additional, or mandatory PPE. Not being able to always access our usual sustenance supplies, whether that be purchasing restrictions, supply chain issues, shielding from larger stores, or the closure of pubs, restaurants, cafes and coffee shops.

These aspects normally form part of our identity and overnight in late March, we had to totally transform past conditioning and switch straight to the new modus operandi.

If you’re carrying a little extra scale weight – don’t beat yourself up. You can’t do everything when exercise facilities are closed, you’re caring for children or at-risk loved ones, you’re all alone and until recently, 1 hour a day was all you had for outdoor recreation. But, we here at Team MMAP are here to help – with regular healthy eating ideas for free on our social media and a range of coaching and fitness and nutrition plans tailormade to you at a scale of prices to suit most pockets.

Pro tip to start tomorrow is measuring your vital statistics and make that a weekly healthy habit. That way you can take the genderisation out of vital statistics and add it to your healthy weight monitoring agenda instead.

Observing Vital Signs

Vital signs aren’t just for hospital stays! There is a veritable banquet of ways you can start your own healthy habits at home project and keep an eye on what you know helps your own physical and mental health. We suggest:

Choose a day and time each week to jot down and reflect on how you did over the past 7 days on the things you know are important for your physical and mental health. This could be:

Hours of screenfree time

Hours spent on favourite relaxing hobbies

Time in the fresh air

Time spent moving and mobilising

Portions of fruit and veg eaten daily

Perhaps you could do this on Me-Time Monday, or whenever you know you’re most likely to stick to the healthy habit monitoring. Once you’ve decided your parameters and started reviewing each week, you simply have to decide what small step would help to improve things, in your opinion, for the coming week. It might be simply more of the same. Or it could be a simple new rule. Say, you’re finding it difficult to switch off and reduce screentime. A measurable and achievable goal would be to stop checking your phone after 8pm, at least 3 times a week. You could then phase that to 4 times a week, of from 7.30pm 3 times a week, or whatever fits to maintain momentum.

Our MMAP Screenfree Sunday SuperPlanners show up on our social media every Saturday with motivation and inspiration to help manage your screentime – you can check out their past posts most easily at our Instagram gallery or over on Twitter or Facebook if you prefer those platforms.

Macro-scale Measuring

Before vital statistics started to become common parlance for your waist to hip ratio, its use was primarily associated with population data collation. As the new Track and Trace system is being launched and after 10 weeks of digital data sharing becoming an expectation, this Philosopher-In-Residence inserts a polite reminder here about re-affirming principles and instincts.

If you’re not comfortable with sharing information or aren’t sure precisely who is asking – it’s ok to query, seek more information, or ask for alternative communication means.

Our core theme blogs and daily social media updates will be focusing on socially distant teamwork and self-care during curious times – and keep your eyes peeled for some more very special invitational guest bloggers gracing these pages very soon.

If you live in the Camborne, Pool, Illogan or Redruth area and aren’t currently earning or learning, you may well be eligible for our FREE Healthy Habits Academy programme, fully-funded by Make Me A Plan and the ESF’s CLLD funding stream. Drop us a line if this sounds like you or someone you know and we can give you more information and get you signed up!

Next fortnight, I’ll be musing On Discourse. Please get in touch with any particular aspects of this topic you’d like me to write about.

In the meantime,

Happy Planning