You live a busy life and don’t have time to think about your health. You work long hours so you eat unhealthy fast food, as it’s the most convenient to eat when coming home from work. If you continue living this unhealthy lifestyle, you will spiral down the path of weight gain and diseases. Health should be your main concern. You need to become topsy turvy about health.
What does topsy turvy about health even stand for? It represents people who are health and fitness fanatics. Therefore, from a health and fitness fanatic’s point of view, you will be presented with some tips and suggestions that will help you maintain a healthy life.
There is No Excuse for Not Exercising
Working out seems like a death threat and you just don’t want to hear it. You don’t have time to add going to the gym to your already busy schedule. When you hear someone utter the word exercise, the first thing that comes out of your mouth is that you don’t have enough time to exercise. Not having enough time to stay healthy is not a valid reason, so here are the most common excuses people make and the solutions to overcome them:
1. Most Overused Excuse: Not Having Enough Time to Exercise
Do you know that throughout the day, you are actually exercising your body? Walking short or long distances to a location can help you reduce the weight. All you have to do is increase the amount of walking you do each day. Here are some walking tips to get you started:
- Instead of taking the elevator, try taking the stairs.
- Park your car at a distance, so you can walk to and from it to the store or the office.
- During your lunch break at work, try using that time to walk around.
- If you plan on going to the gym after work or school, then pack your gym bag and take it with you. Don’t plan to go home and then go to the gym, because once you go home, that couch will be too enticing to ignore.
- If you are able to go to work or school by bike, then you should consider using that form of transportation from now on.
Now think about this – there are some people with the busiest professions, but they still have time to exercise. You can as well, if you encourage yourself.
2. Most Funny Excuse: Exercise is Not Fun
Exercise is never meant to be fun, but you can make it fun. You can exercise with the music on, you can get exercise in the form of dancing, or you can watch TV while you exercise on the treadmill. There are endless ways of how you can make exercising fun and less boring. It all depends on your preferences:
- If you like going to the mall a lot, then you can walk around the mall while you window shop.
- Are you into sports? If you are, playing your favorite sport with friends will help you stay at the top of your game.
- Tag along a friend on your way to the gym. This way you both can stay in shape while talking and laughing.
- Maybe a personal trainer can motivate you to achieve your weight loss goals.
- You can go on a hike, join a water aerobics class, jog on the beach, walk in the park, and there are so many other fun options you can try.
You should make exercising enjoyable and not a torture. When there are options available to make losing weight enjoyable, then why must you sit around and do nothing. Go and pair exercise with your favorite activities.
3. Most Depressing Excuse: Not Seeing Weight Loss Results
You like to throw in the towel as soon as you don’t see any results. Exercise is not a miracle solution; it requires you to have some patience. The pounds won’t melt away in the first few days of working out, but it will yield some slimming results if you just wait and be consistent with your exercise regimen:
- Do not stray from your exercise program.
- Monitor your progress by weighing and measuring yourself every month. It will help you determine how much weight you have lost and how close you to reaching your weight loss goals.
- If you don’t detect any progress, then you should modify your exercise program.
- Always motivate yourself to go that extra mile when working out.
- Share your weight loss success with people who will support and encourage you.
You should avoid getting quickly frustrated and instead tell yourself that you can reach your weight loss goal. Don’t let frustration get in the way of your goals.
4. Most Tiring Excuse: Not Having Enough Energy to Move a Muscle
Your days constantly revolve around your family and work, and by the time you get home, you are completely worn out. Once exercise becomes a part of your daily routine, you feel lost on days you don’t exercise. You need to get used to exercising each day:
- You should establish a schedule where you reserve a time slot for exercise. After that, you should always try to exercise each day around the same time. Your body will soon be accustomed to exercising at a specific time.
- The activities you were too tired to do before, you will be able to do them now as exercise increases your energy.
- You should establish a set time to sleep and wake up so you can feel fresh every day.
- You can also measure your energy levels before and after your workout.
- If you feel extremely tired, make your workout routine shorter.
- If your workout involves aerobic exercises, be sure to include an exercise that tells you to stop and rest between sets.
Just because you are tired, doesn’t mean you have to quit. A simple warm up can help you concentrate better on your exercise. If you need to increase your energy prior to working out, then eat a healthy snack bar or fruit.
If your workout consists of lifting heavy weights and intense cardio, then you should fuel yourself up with high-protein food after your workout. In case the fatigue doesn’t fade away, you should consider going to the doctor for a check-up.
5. Most Common Excuse: Too Much Work Getting in the Way of Exercising
There are days where your boss may overload you with work and assign you projects at the last minute. What you need to do is establish a way to work around the hectic demands of your job:
- Plan your exercise routines around your task list for work.
- The days you have a lot of work to do, you can plan a backup schedule. The backup schedule will consist of shorter workouts (only use it sometimes).
- Tell people to encourage you to go and exercise during your dull days.
- Do not be upset on the days you miss your workout. Simply rest and get back to it the next day.
- If you to miss many days of working out, then you can slowly restart your work out plan.
No matter what obstacles are put in your path, you need to keep moving along.
6. Most Lonely Excuse: Don’t Have Anyone to Exercise With
You probably hate going to the gym because you want a buddy to go along with you. If you don’t have a friend to take a long, then you can always consider making new friends you meet at the gym:
- You should find a person who shares the same determination as you to exercise and who has the same weight loss goals as you.
- You can join an exercise class where the instructor teaches a group of people. Moreover, this gives you an opportunity to make new friends.
- You can even hire a personal trainer to motivate you, help establish your weight goals for you, and give you a dieting plan.
If you like exercising in silence, you can choose a room in your house and put all your exercising equipment in. In addition to exercising right, you need to eat right as well.
Tips for Healthy Eating
- You should never skip breakfast. You should add plenty of fresh fruits into your cereal or oats. If you are running late, then grab a snack bar on your way out.
- Instead of ordering from fast food joints when at work, pack a healthy lunch from home.
- Try to eat as much green vegetables as you can since they are very high in nutrients.
- You can eat low-fat yogurt or drink skim milk because both are a good sources of calcium.
- Get in the habit of reading food labels so you can keep a count of your calorie intake.
- Drink at least eight glasses of water each day, as it will help you flush away toxins.
- You can find many low calorie recipes online to try.
Exercising and eating right will help you control the weight, increase your energy, help your body fight off diseases and illnesses, and improve your mood after a stressful day at work or school. You can achieve the perfect and healthy look, if you stop making excuses, hit the gym, and do things right.
Culled from AFRIKPULSE