Beginners Guide To Starting A Fitness Journey
Starting a fitness program can be intimidating, especially for beginners. If most of your food came from drive-throughs or in cardboard heat-and-serve containers and your only exercise was pressing the buttons on the remote and texting, getting fit is confusing and scary. It doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to begin everything at once. Nobody goes from couch potato to body beautiful overnight. Here are some tips that will help you be more successful.
You don’t have to do everything at once.
Everyone has a different way of doing things. Some people jump in the water with both feet, while others dip their toes and eventually make it into the water. Both reach the final goal. If you’re a toe dipper, start by improving your diet. No matter how much you exercise, you can’t out-exercise an unhealthy diet. If you aren’t sure where to begin, start by eliminating food with added sugar and highly processed food. Eat more whole food, less processed foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, or frozen and canned fruits and vegetables without additives and lean protein sources.
Meal planning helps you stick with your healthy eating plan.
When you meal plan, you make a meal plan one night, shop another day and spend a day or two cooking all the meals for a week. You’ll have healthy meals ready for the whole week that just need to be heated. They’re often quicker to prepare than waiting in line at the fast food restaurant drive-through. At Wellness on a Dime, we offer customized meal plans to fit your taste, needs and goals. It can save you money since you won’t have leftovers and the meals are less expensive to make than it costs to buy burgers and fries.
Start a workout program.
You can start an exercise program at the same time you start eating healthy or give yourself a chance to make eating healthy a habit, then start. Some people don’t add a program of exercise while they’re changing dietary habits, but simply increase their activity level, adding extra steps to their daily routine and making an effort to walk more. Exercise programs should include ones for strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you opt for a Wellness on a Dime custom meal plan, it comes with exercise videos to help you get started.
- Focus on form when you’re first learning an exercise. While pushing yourself is important, take it easy at first. Once you learn the right form and your body is adjusting to exercise, you can push yourself more.
- Getting fit is more of a mindset. When you eat healthier, focus on how it tastes, not what you’re missing. You’ll be surprised by how good healthy food tastes once your body adjusts. Make sure you measure both meals and snacks to individual portions.
- Never compare yourself to someone else. You are only competing against yourself. You will be the only beneficiary of your good health, although it can prevent you from becoming a burden on your family later.
- Track your results, whether it’s taking measurements, weighing in, or taking a photo of yourself once a month to compare changes. Winners keep score. If you’re getting fit to lower blood pressure, monitor your blood pressure.
For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching
Do you party all night until the sun rises, then wonder why you can’t lose weight? Maybe you’re burning the candle at both ends because of a busy home and/or work life. Either way, weight loss is tougher the less sleep you get and scientists have found part of the reason for that. There’s a direct link between the amount of time you sleep and being overweight.
Whether you’re planning meals or just focusing on eating healthier, snacks play an important role. It’s too easy in Louisiana to find a sweet treat to fill that gnawing hunger, so having healthy snacks ready is important. Protein snacks can keep you feeling full longer, unlike sugary treats. Making sure you have the ones that are packed with nutrients and lower in calories is the next challenge. What are some of the best protein snacks? You don’t have to spend a lot of money to find them. You can make them in your kitchen.
Medicine balls have been used for workouts for a long time. Weighted balls were used in Ancient Rome to improve health and athleticism, but it was an American that named the medicine ball. RJ Roberts invented the modern medicine ball and gave it a name. It was used to exercise the entire body. Since then, medicine balls have changed. They are made from various materials. Have a variety of weights. Some bounce, while others may have handles. Each one provides a unique way to exercise the body.
If you workout out, but aren’t getting the results you want, you probably think that you need to spend more time or make your workout tougher. However, if you seem to be losing ground, no matter how much time you spend or how difficult the exercise program is, it might be that you’re exercising too much or pushing yourself too hard. If you’re spending hours exercising, but instead of seeing progress, your results seem to diminish, you may be working out too much.
You’ve probably heard of warming up before exercising. It’s simply stretching before working out and important in a number of ways. It helps boost circulation, which warms the muscles and improves flexibility. It also prepares your mind and body for the coming workout. Warm-up sessions involve stretching the muscles that you’ll be using during the session. It doesn’t have to be just stretching. If you’re about to run, taking a brisk walk or doing jumping jacks can be a good warm-up session.
How can exercise help you live longer? It can help reduce the risk of obesity. Nine of the ten states with the top obesity rate are in the south. For instance, Louisiana is number seven in the nation. Obesity puts you at risk of serious conditions. Obesity increases the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and even covid-19. The human body was created for physical exertion. However, a modern style of living has limited our needs. People can order in and no longer even have to get up and move to eat. Work has become moving fingers on the keyboard, but you need to move your body to stay fit.
The survival shows often focus on the person or persons focusing on finding a clean source of water or water and a way to purify it. Why is it so important? Without water, especially in severe climates, you can last about three days before you become severely dehydrated. Water is far more important than food, since body fat can help provide the energy necessary to live. You don’t have to go completely without water to become dehydrated. Simply sweating more, without increasing your intake of fluid can create a problem. Diarrhea and vomiting can also cause dehydration. Some symptoms of dehydration are dangerous, while others are far less severe.
No matter where you live, budgets are getting tighter. In Louisiana, even if you got a raise, the money doesn’t go as far. That’s why it’s important to save money where you can and the very reason Wellness on a Dime exists. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a trainer. There are menus that help you boost your health, but don’t break the budget. There are also excellent workouts you can do at home to get the look you want and the good health you deserve.
Every article you read about eating a healthy diet says to cut out all processed foods, but just what is processed food and are they all bad for you? First, let’s look at what the real definition of a processed food is and what most articles and diet experts are actually discussing. Any time you change a fruit or vegetable and it’s not exactly as it was on the plant, you’re processing it. Washing food, for example, is a type of processing. That’s definitely not what dietitians and health experts are discussing.