Since it’s the start of the year and you’ve decided to embark on a weight loss journey, you’ll probably want to clean up your diet and lead a more active lifestyle. If you’ve been following all the earlier steps, you will have a pretty good idea what to do.
In this step, we’ll be looking at aiming for balance and variety in both your diet and training. This is very important in making you healthy and also keeping things interesting.
Once you have weaned yourself off your addiction to processed and junk foods, you will need to learn nutrition to eat a diet that is well-balanced. A good diet will contain proteins, carbs, good fats, vitamins and minerals.
You may wish to try the whole foods diet where your diet is mostly vegetables, fruit and lean meats. You will not consume any type of processed foods. In most cases, you will do the cooking yourself. Steam your veggies, grill your meats, eat your fruits instead of juicing them, etc.
People by nature, eat the same foods over and over without realizing it. If you look at your journal, you will realize that is true. Now, make an active effort to eat foods like avocadoes, salmon, etc. to get a healthy dose of Omega-3 fatty acids. You may also wish to consume some nuts such as almonds or walnuts daily for the nutrients they contain. Just make sure that you are within your caloric deficit number.
The difference here is that you are actively eating to get your nutrients instead of blindly eating whatever you feel like and hoping that your body gets what it needs. When you aim for a balanced diet, you will be much more conscious of what you eat. That apple a day will become a daily practice. You will add a wider variety of vegetables to your diet.
There are a plethora of benefits that come from consuming different veggies and fruit. Why limit yourself to a few? Eat your carrots, broccolis, strawberries, pears, melons, etc.
Try different cuts of meat. Use natural healthy oils such as extra virgin olive oil or cold pressed coconut oil. These oils will reduce inflammation and are beneficial to your health unlike the hydrogenated seed oils sold in supermarkets that are highly detrimental to your well-being.
Now let’s look at how you train.
In order to lose weight, you need a combination of cardio and resistance training. In the earlier steps, it was mentioned that you should do exercises that you like. While that is true, it doesn’t hurt to try out new methods of exercise every now and then.
Go ahead and give yoga or Pilates a try. If all you do is walk, these 2 styles of training will work on your core muscles and flexibility. Your body will be challenged by something new. Try out the beginner classes and see how you like them.
Maybe your idea of resistance training is bodyweight training. You like doing push-ups, chin-ups, etc. You may wish to give kettlebell training a try. It will work muscles in places you didn’t know you had muscles.
As your strength and stamina progresses, don’t be afraid to try out high-intensity training every now and then. Even one session of high-intensity training a week will rev up your metabolic rate and put you in fat burning mode for hours.
How about developing nice muscular shoulders and toned arms? Give weight lifting a try. The bicep curls, tricep curls and shoulder presses will give you arms that are toned and definitely impressive.
Doing the same exercises over and over will make your body adapt to them. While you will still be able to lose weight, your body will not be as fit and coordinated as it could be with a variety of training methods.
As you can see, adding variety to your diet and training really keeps things challenging and interesting, yet fun. There are very few hard and fast rules. As long as you’re eating right and exercising regularly, there is nothing stopping you from trying out many different types of healthy foods and exercise programs. Aim for balance and change. Variety is the spice of life.
In this step, we’ll be looking at aiming for balance and variety in both your diet and training. This is very important in making you healthy and also keeping things interesting.
Once you have weaned yourself off your addiction to processed and junk foods, you will need to learn nutrition to eat a diet that is well-balanced. A good diet will contain proteins, carbs, good fats, vitamins and minerals.
You may wish to try the whole foods diet where your diet is mostly vegetables, fruit and lean meats. You will not consume any type of processed foods. In most cases, you will do the cooking yourself. Steam your veggies, grill your meats, eat your fruits instead of juicing them, etc.
People by nature, eat the same foods over and over without realizing it. If you look at your journal, you will realize that is true. Now, make an active effort to eat foods like avocadoes, salmon, etc. to get a healthy dose of Omega-3 fatty acids. You may also wish to consume some nuts such as almonds or walnuts daily for the nutrients they contain. Just make sure that you are within your caloric deficit number.
The difference here is that you are actively eating to get your nutrients instead of blindly eating whatever you feel like and hoping that your body gets what it needs. When you aim for a balanced diet, you will be much more conscious of what you eat. That apple a day will become a daily practice. You will add a wider variety of vegetables to your diet.
There are a plethora of benefits that come from consuming different veggies and fruit. Why limit yourself to a few? Eat your carrots, broccolis, strawberries, pears, melons, etc.
Try different cuts of meat. Use natural healthy oils such as extra virgin olive oil or cold pressed coconut oil. These oils will reduce inflammation and are beneficial to your health unlike the hydrogenated seed oils sold in supermarkets that are highly detrimental to your well-being.
Now let’s look at how you train.
In order to lose weight, you need a combination of cardio and resistance training. In the earlier steps, it was mentioned that you should do exercises that you like. While that is true, it doesn’t hurt to try out new methods of exercise every now and then.
Go ahead and give yoga or Pilates a try. If all you do is walk, these 2 styles of training will work on your core muscles and flexibility. Your body will be challenged by something new. Try out the beginner classes and see how you like them.
Maybe your idea of resistance training is bodyweight training. You like doing push-ups, chin-ups, etc. You may wish to give kettlebell training a try. It will work muscles in places you didn’t know you had muscles.
As your strength and stamina progresses, don’t be afraid to try out high-intensity training every now and then. Even one session of high-intensity training a week will rev up your metabolic rate and put you in fat burning mode for hours.
How about developing nice muscular shoulders and toned arms? Give weight lifting a try. The bicep curls, tricep curls and shoulder presses will give you arms that are toned and definitely impressive.
Doing the same exercises over and over will make your body adapt to them. While you will still be able to lose weight, your body will not be as fit and coordinated as it could be with a variety of training methods.
As you can see, adding variety to your diet and training really keeps things challenging and interesting, yet fun. There are very few hard and fast rules. As long as you’re eating right and exercising regularly, there is nothing stopping you from trying out many different types of healthy foods and exercise programs. Aim for balance and change. Variety is the spice of life.
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