Changing to a healthy lifestyle isn’t easy, but starting
without an action plan in place makes it almost impossible! Making life
altering decisions can be easier than it sounds with the right set of
instructions to build your new foundation. Check out these tips and tricks to
stay on task with making the switch over to a healthy lifestyle.
Get Up Early and Plan Your Day Right
Hitting the snooze button five times seemed like a good idea
at the time and then all hell broke loose. The most compelling reason to wake
up early is to reduce stress levels.
When you get up early, it eliminates the need to rush
around, and you have time to relax and plan your day before it begins. You have
time to have a quiet breakfast, get lunch together and drive or transit to work
at leisure. You start your day on a positive note, and that will stay with you
throughout the day.
Start Your Day with a Shake of
Champions
It seems like breakfast is the most controversial meal of
the day. You will always find people who want to argue if breakfast is
necessary or not.
The truth is starting your day with a light meal can boost
your energy levels and improve mood. Having a nutrient-dense shake with the
appropriate amount of protein, fat and fibre first thing in the morning also
helps to stop the mid-morning munchies.
Drink Water
The human body is made up of at least 60% water! Drinking
water helps you the body to metabolize fat adequately to lose weight quite
simply put you need plenty of water.
Drink a glass of water before a meal helps to control how
much you eat which will aid in keeping your weight in a healthy range.
It will also help to protect the stomach wall from the
harmful effects of digestive acids. Want to jazz it up? Instead of adding
possibly harmful sweetened flavourings to make it more palatable, infuse your
water with slices of lemon, lime, orange, cucumber or strawberries and
raspberries.
Have a Meal Plan in
Place
Establish how many meals you need to prepare ahead of time
and whether they will need to be quick fix meals or those you can spend more
time on.
Creating a meal schedule that lines up with your work and
gym schedule will help you to stay on track and decrease frustration. You will
need pre-made dinners or crockpot dinners when you are going to the gym after
work.
The goal of creating a menu is to ensure you are
consistently making good choices. Creating nutritionally balanced meals can be
tricky; ensure you have someone with knowledge about macronutrients that will
help with your menu.
The appropriate balance of macronutrients will depend on
your goals, current activities, body type and health conditions. Read the full
article on meal prep here …. Read More
Pack It Up and Take It With You
We have all been there at one point or another during the
week. We forgot to pack our lunch, and we are in a particularly HANGRY mood (in
other words you are now hungry and angry for leaving your lunch at home).
Fast food starts to call your name and then you are even
madder at yourself for eating something that you can’t possibly burn off in an
hour of HIIT training.
Set yourself up for success, pack it up the night before and
have it ready to go so if you have to jet out the door then it will be a quick
grab and go. Make your meals ahead of time and have them all set out in
containers then you don’t have to think about it. Plan the meals, make the
meals and store the meals in proper airtight containers.
Eat Slowly
Today’s fast-paced world means we are all working extra
hard, multitasking and doing everything in double time. Double time speed
should not spill over into your dietary habits. Take your time and eat your
meals at a leisurely pace.
Eating slow means that you will achieve better digestion,
you will more easily feel when you are getting full instead of eating to the
point of feeling sick, and you will substantially enjoy your meals more.
When you are more satisfied and eating less, weight loss becomes easier and better
digestion makes your world a brighter place to be!
Make a Date with Yourself for Daily Exercise
Make a date to move on a daily basis no matter what that
entails. It doesn’t mean you have to get all geared up and go to the gym.
Take a walk at lunch for 20 to 30 minutes. Stop every hour
and do some exercise at your desk. Do some wall sits or desk push-ups when you
are on your conference call (they won’t know!).
Plan for more prolonged bouts of exercise when it works best
for you. Go to the gym before work, after work or on weekends.
Make a date with
a friend when you go, so you feel like you have to be accountable to someone if
you don’t feel like going. Try to do structured exercise at least 2 – 3 days a
week for 60 minutes!
Strength Train to Increase Metabolism and Health
Who doesn’t like to feel strong and capable, so they are
more independent? Strength training increases your muscle mass, ladies you will
look toned not like a bodybuilder.
When you have more muscle mass, your body burns more
calories even when you are at rest. Which means if you are trying to slim down
or stay lean, your body is working towards that goal all the time just to keep
the muscle by burning more calories.
How does that work? 1 pound of muscle burns an extra 50
calories a day while you are resting — so if you gain 10 pounds of muscle, your
resting metabolic rate increases by an additional 500 calories each day.
Hire a Personal Trainer
A knowledgeable personal trainer will improve your exercise
execution and skill so that you reduce your risk for injury and get the most
out of each activity.
As we age, it gets harder to stay motivated towards
exercise, so having a trainer guide and motivate you can keep you going.
Certified personal trainers can provide structure and do the
thinking for you so you can focus on the “doing” rather than the planning.
Initially, you may need to see your trainer more often to get on the right
track of your healthy lifestyle; however, once you have learned what to do and
how to do it, you can spread your sessions out to every 3-4 weeks. Consider
these sessions your “review, revise and revitalize” check-ups.
Track Your Progress
When you are deciding on your goal, it is important that you
consider how you are going to measure your progress.
Some of the methods to measure your progress of your healthy
lifestyle may not be available to you; therefore it is important that you
choose wisely. Quantitative measurement is far easier and more precise than
qualitative.
For the vast majority of goals that you set, you will be
able to find a way to quantify progress. Keeping a record of your progress, as
you go along, accompanied by some personal notes, will give you something to
refer to, should a problem arise.
Go Outside and Play
Outdoor training is a fantastic way to get in touch with the
natural elements around us. Training outdoors gets us out into the fresh air.
Natural light from outdoors also provides much needed
Vitamin D which we are deprived of through the long winter months here in North
America. Vitamin D is good for your bones, your heart, and your mood. Training
outdoors is also terrific to help with balance and reaction time due to the
undulating terrain.
Balance your life – it is Key to Staying Fit
It goes without saying that staying fit keep core strength
which in turn helps with balance and therefore reduces the risk of injuries.
When you are young taking a spill is not such a big deal but
as you age your bones can become more brittle, and that leads to bone breaks.
No matter how old you are, it is never too early to start
trying to increase your bone density. The best thing you can do for yourself
above increase bone density is keeping your balance by always challenging
yourself.
Decrease Screen Time
We are all guilty of it at some points during the day or
while we are at work. Today’s society has conditioned us to continually be
checking emails or social media because of the dreaded FOMO (fear of missing out). Take some time to
yourself and power down.
Log off and tune out, go and see what you are missing!
Contrary to popular belief life doesn’t exist inside a computer especially a
healthy lifestyle! Take a walk, cook a healthy meal or spend some time with
your family and catch up on life!
Stop smoking
Stop smoking! We all know the health risks associated with
smoking cigarettes, yet an estimated 36.5 million adults in the United States
were still smoking cigarettes in a 2015 study. More than 16 million Americans
live with a smoking-related disease.
Your body is crying to start a healthy lifestyle! Your body
is resilient and will bounce back! After just one day of quitting smoking, the
risk of heart attack begins to decrease.
After two days a person may notice a heightened sense of
smell and more vivid tastes as these nerves heal. In as little as one month, a
person’s lung function begins to improve. One year after quitting smoking, a
person’s risk for coronary heart disease decreases by half.
Set Up Successful Sleep Habits
Did you know that not spending quality time with your bed,
you have a higher risk of obesity and certain cancers? Many factors can affect
our mood and overall health, some of which include the weather, stress, and of
course lack of sleep. Sleep is essential to our health, and the benefits are
numerous, including repairing damage to tissue from workouts by the natural
release of HGH, rejuvenation, release of hormones that help with weight loss
(Leptin Ghrelin), and energizes you for the next day. Sleep requirements vary
slightly from person to person; most healthy adults need approximately 7 to 9
hours of sleep per night to function at their best.
Be Mindful
Meditation can mean many things to many people. There are
too many different types of meditation to discuss in one small paragraph, but
you can read more about it here … Read more
Mindfulness helps us with the ability to increase our
self-acceptance. Self-acceptance
includes self-understanding which is a practical and personal understanding of
one’s strengths and weaknesses. Self-acceptance sounds the same as self-esteem;
however, they are in fact different.
Self-esteem refers to how valuable you perceive yourself to
be whereas self-acceptance signifies a much more profound and all-inclusive
confirmation of self. The most significant reason I see clients not meeting
goals is by their lack of ability to just believe they can accomplish their
objective.
To create a truly healthy lifestyle, you also need to
include the internal health as well as the external. A healthy mind is what
helps to keep you motivated, slashes stress, relieves pain, and improves your
mood.
Living a happy life and creating a healthy lifestyle take a
little work and sometimes includes the help of the appropriate health
professionals. However there is nothing more worth working towards than
establishing a truly happy and harmonious life!
Happy Training!
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