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The holiday season can be hard for those looking to lose weight. You have high-calorie foods everywhere… You may be spending more time with family and friends… And there are plenty of parties you’ve probably been invited to. But how can you manage to keep your goals on track, if you’re invited to parties where there are tasty treats tempting you everywhere? It’s easy….you can still stay on track and enjoy the festivities when you follow these tips: 1. Choosing Your Foods Wisely There will be plenty of foods to choose from, so you need to be sure you’re making the right choices to keep your weight loss on track. Studies show you consume the most food with your first plate, so make the best choices then to keep you moving in the right direction. Be sure to choose lower-calorie foods, like veggies and fruit, and including lots of appetite-suppressing protein. 2. Drink Responsibly Alcohol can supply your body with lots of empty calories that often go straight to your hips. And, most glasses don’t have an easy measuring system, so filling up your glass may give you double, if not triple, the calories you’re expecting. You could opt for a lower-calorie drink option, or simply count for 3-seconds to make sure you’re getting the right serving size. 3. Get Your Sleep the Night Before If you want to be sure you’re not going to overdo it at your holiday party, be sure you’re getting plenty of sleep the night before. This tip goes for all scenarios, and not just for holiday parties. Studies show people getting less than 5 hours of sleep, crave unhealthy foods, and have increased appetites. This could easily derail your progress—especially if there are lots of high-calorie desserts or entrees around. 4. Practice Mindful Eating Mindful eating is a process where you take smaller bites and you chew slower and longer. This process does two things for you: 1) it really lets you appreciate the food you’re eating, and 2) tricks your brain into thinking you ate more, so you feel full faster. This could be one of the easiest way to cut down on calories. 5. Use a Smaller Plate This tip can be used anywhere, and is not just reserved for parties. When you use a smaller plate, it gives your body the impression that you ate more than you really did. Plus, when you’re adding salad, fruits, and veggies to your plate, there’s not much room for anything else (except protein). You can save yourself a lot of calories, just by switching to a smaller plate. As the holiday season ramps up, you may be invited to parties each weekend. And this may be great for your social life, but might not be that great for your waistline. But, if you keep these tips in mind next time you hit the party circuit, then you could maintain fun this holiday season while keeping your weight loss—or any other goal—in check.
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 i There are a few things that go along way when it comes to having success in your fitness program.
Here we are…
Smack in the middle of the holiday season. Even though it doesn’t feel the same… The stress is still there. Or maybe it’s even higher than it was before. And between the holidays and being locked down… You may feel like eating—and eating a lot. This is stress eating, plain and simple, and can really do damage with your weight. This is one reason why many people hit the gym in January…to work off all the food they ate over the holidays. So how can you prevent stress eating from denting your weight loss? Follow these 3 tips: 1. Remove Temptation The easiest way to prevent sugary candy, or other high-calorie goodies, from setting you back is to remove the temptation in the first place. If it’s in your house….you will probably eat it. But if you can remove the temptation in the first place, it might make it a whole lot easier to keep you on track. 2. Maintain a Healthy Meal Schedule If you can maintain a healthy meal schedule, you will be less likely to experience hunger and cravings throughout the day. Skipping meals often results in low blood sugar, which can lead to cravings, or just mindless eating. And when this occurs, you’re more likely to gain weight. Maintain your eating schedule so you can keep your blood sugar levels under control, and keep cravings away. 3. Choose Your Foods Wisely If you do find yourself binge eating due to stress, then choosing the right foods could go a long way to keeping the weight off. Instead of choosing high-calorie foods, opt for fruits and vegetables, to satisfy your sweet tooth, without packing in the calories. Keep healthy foods on hand, and junk food out. Although the holidays are notorious for creating stress, which often leads to stress eating, it can happen all year long. And stress eating can move you backwards when it comes to your goals. Don’t let stress eating ruin your results. Keep these tips in mind during the holiday season—or any time you feel like the stress is too much and you’re looking for a tasty treat. One of the most common questions as a trainer I get is- I haven't worked out in a long time... how many days should I workout?
This answer could be different for many but for most people I recommend 2-3 days a week with a day off in between to establish a routine and build a habit that they can sustain. A lot of times we start a routine and we are uberly duberly excited and go every single day but then one day we have a work meeting that runs late or a kid gets since or we oversleep then we fall off but if you start small and build, you can make changes and shoot for that minimum 2-3 days. If you can shoot for getting a movement goal like a step count each day, that will do wonders. But keep it simple and start slow with 2-3 workouts and get in a habit, then build from there. One quick simple way to enhance your success in the health and fitness arena is to schedule out all the stuff that is important to your goals.
If you have a weight loss goal, here are a few things that you may want to schedule out: 1. Time to prep meals or order meals that will fit your nutrition goals. 2. Strength training workouts: You wanna shoot for 2-3 a week. 3. Walking: Set aside 10-30 minutes to walk a day. Your cardiovascular systems, plus just extra calorie burn matters 4. Sleep time: Good restful sleep helps keep your mind clear and fresh and helps you not fall to the habit of tired snacking. 5. Time for fun/ unstressing: Anyone who said losing weight is easy probably hasn't had a challenge losing weight. Most people have had some sort of struggles when it comes with weight loss. It can be a mental battle. Find some time to relax and have fun. It will actually help! Stay positive and schedule out what matters to you :) There are lots of ways to see results. Most often people gauge progress by the scale, but you can do measurements, take photos, do a harder workout plan. There are so many ways but how do we know if we are improving? If you are looking for weight loss, tracking your food intake is one thing that helps a ton. Not only does this gauge how many calories you are eating each day but it also can give you a visual idea of what improvements you can make over the course of a week. Small changes build up to bigger changes. The building up of good habits is what gets you to the long term lifestyle changes. If you are looking to get stronger, tracking your weights that you use along with how many reps you do when it comes to strength training. Noting if a workout is easy, medium and hard can show ya when it is time to increase load, add another set and things of that nature. One other thing to track is how you feel overall, hows your sleep and energy on days you do a workout vs when you don’t…hows your stress level, when do you feel your best? If you track and monitor this, you will most likely find trends that will show you what will bring you the most success. Start tracking and see if you start to notice some more changes. Recovery from workouts is super important. Most people don't take it seriously- you think you can go hard all the time but never let your body rest and relax.
When you start a fitness program, you often are excited and are ready to go all out, so you jump at it every day and go all in rather taking baby steps and doing 2-3 workouts, walking on opposite days- stretching daily. The all out approach works for a bit but then well.. you burn out a bit or you get hurt. Aka why I wanted to discuss a bit on injury prevention and the benefits of warmup, cooldown and foam rolling. Warm ups get your heart rate up, loosen up your muscles and get your body to actually do the workout. It gives you time to get in the zone for your workout. It allows you to get your mind right. When you start your workout, most of the time, you either just wake up, its right after work or your kids are in the background. There is always something going on. A warm up allows you to get into the right space. The cool down allows your body to get to normal levels, you work your tail off in your workout, your body needs to relax. You can't stay high all the time. You have to level out, your muscles need to relax. Foam rolling is one thing that can be done in both depending on your needs. It helps break up muscle tissue and tightness. It can also be a way to recover to decompress and relax after the workout. Here is one great resource that I wanted to share as it has some info for almost everything to recover: https://robertsontrainingsystems.com/downloads/SMR-manual.pdf Hope you find something handy to help in your recovery! Nothing changes, unless you consistently work at it.
Day by day. Week by Week. Month by month. Here are 12 Habits to work at to Improve your Nutrtition/ Wellness. I will break these down in a few more posts over the next few weeks. 1. Planning: Plan your meals for the week 2. Shopping: Go shopping for your food 3. Cooking: Cook your meals 4. Journaling: Keep a daily journal of food and drink intake 5. Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal 6. Slow Eating: Eat slowly 7. 80% Full: Stop eating when you’re 80% full 8. Portion Control: Practice proper portions 9. Protein: Make sure you’re getting enough protein 10. Calories: Review food journal to look at total calories 11. Quality Carbs: Check the quality of your carbs 12. Healthy Fats: Make sure you’re getting most of your fats from appropriate sources Pick one habit to work on and really hone in on getting successful at it. Building things up by habit. Every week focus on #1-4. Every day for Numbers 5-12 you need to pay attention to by awareness or the number. It's not an easy quick fix answer to all your nutrition problems. It's a systematic approach to getting healthier. By now everyone has experienced some sort of change with this coronavirus. Hopefully, you and your family are all safe and healthy. That's one thing to be grateful for sure.
As time evolves, because certainly things will be different after this is all over.. we will have made some changes. From a nutrition and workout side, do the best you can to maintain a routine of some sort. If you were use to doing a workout at the gym, try and set a time to do it at home, involve the kids if that helps. Staying active will be good as itll help relieve stress and helps boost the immune system plus you'll feel great also! Try and limit your snacking while at home, as food is awhole lot more convenient than ever. Alright, stay healthy. |
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