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Most people will tell you to go on a stringent diet for a long time so that you can cut on your weight and hence achieve, what is usually the perception of being fit.
Let me tell you something, they are wrong. You do not need to go on a severe low-calorie diet and turn into a dead mouse in the process of improving your fitness. You just need to identify your ideal scenario for being fit, how you see yourself being fit.
There are a couple of factors you should consider when you start to plan your fitness goals –
1. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. It ranges from the energy expended walking to work, typing, performing yard work, undertaking agricultural tasks and fidgeting.
2. How many calories should you consume in a day, and that depends on your lifestyle as well. Here is an online tool that you should use to check out your daily calorie requirements.
Apart from the above things, in terms of eating the correct diet, you should take your daily diet on a nature trip. That is, as far as possible, try to eat natural, unprocessed and whole food like, fruits and vegetables, whole grain cereal and food that is organic in nature. There are four essential nutrients apart from the energy intake (fats and carbohydrates) that are inadequately present in our diets.
Calcium – Here’s a scary fact for you (try not to panic) – “When we don’t get enough calcium for our body’s needs, it is taken from our bones” Each day, we lose calcium through our skin, nails, hair, sweat, urine, and feces, but our bodies cannot produce new calcium.
That’s why it’s important to try and get calcium from the food we eat. Dairy products, such as low-fat and non-fat milk, yogurt and cheese are high in calcium. Certain green vegetables and other foods contain calcium in smaller amounts. Some juices, breakfast foods, soy-milk, cereals, snacks, and bottled water have calcium that has been added. If you drink soy-milk or another liquid that is fortified with calcium, be sure to shake the container well as calcium can settle to the bottom.
Multivitamins – There are a handful of vitamins and minerals that are strongly suggested to be taken daily like Vitamin B, C, D etc. Your best bet at a good source would be raw or lightly cooked fruits and vegetables. But in most circumstances, that is if you do not go ahead and buy organic food, you might not get all that is required by your body. That is where the role of supplements comes in. Some people might think it as a bad idea and shun this all together.
But taking a multivitamin pill a day saves you all the trouble of thinking what you need to get and how much. And it obviously fills the nutritional gaps in your diet.
Fiber – It is an essential micro-nutrient. Soluble fiber helps to slow your body’s breakdown of carbohydrates and the absorption of sugar, helping with blood sugar control. And since it slows down the carbohydrates, it also gives a feeling of fullness which in turn helps with weight loss.
Foods rich in this type of fiber include oatmeal, nuts, beans, apples, and blueberries. You need 5-10 grams of this daily, tops. But you sure as hell, need it!
Protein - Last but definitely not the least, PROTEIN!!! In fact, it is the last thing you should skip in your diet. That is just it. You need to take proteins, whether you are on a weight loss or weight gain goal, it does not matter. Hair and nails are mostly made of protein. Your body uses protein to build and repair tissues. You also use protein to make enzymes, hormones, and other body chemicals. Protein is an important building block of bones, muscles, cartilage, skin, and blood.
Remember – Along with fat and carbohydrates, protein is a “macronutrient”, meaning that the body needs relatively large amounts of it.
Apart from all that is said above in this section, you still need carbohydrates, some amount of fat (from good sources like walnuts, almonds etc.). If you need help with how much Protein, Carbs and Fat you need on a daily basis check out my custom programs where I can break this all down for you https://www.charliejohnsonfitness.com/coaching
With the amount and severity of daily pressure at work and the long hours at it, going to the gym and committing yourself to workout seems a tad out of the question, doesn’t it? Well, Yes and No. It really depends on the type of person you are and how much stress you can take in a day. For the extremely motivated group of people, going to the gym is not unimaginable, in fact, it is a daily affair.
For me personally balancing work pressures, home pressures can be a lot at times. Working out is the opportunity during the day to enter your own little world and blow off some steam.
Some people just love the rush they get by firing their muscles up and getting the blood gushing through their veins that surpasses any other material pleasure. However, for most, the answer to the above question remains ‘I cannot go to the gym because of xyz reason’, and that is a reasonable and practical choice for people working in a corporate lifestyle. But anyway, that is just subjective and relative. Here are five things to ensure the minimum recommended levels of activity while at the office and otherwise:
1. Stay in the correct posture – The first and foremost thing that most people forget to take into notice is how they sit, stand, walk and rest. Because good posture means your bones are properly aligned and your muscles, joints, and ligaments can work as nature intended them to. It means your vital organs are in the right position and can function at their peak efficiency. Good posture helps contribute to the normal functioning of the nervous system as well.
2. Do some exercise (office specific) – You will be surprised how much difference just being more active can make, get up make a drink, walk to the water cooler, go for a walk at lunch, whenever you're moving you're pumping blood and burning calories.
3. Use stairs instead of lift – Make this a practice for EVERY-TIME. Time-saving and ease of use are secondary factors when weighed aside your health, fitness and well being.
4. Working out – Apart from being active, Adults falling in the age group of 19-64 should do two kinds of exercises on a weekly average to stay healthy:
- At least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity such as cycling or fast walking every week.
- Strength exercises on 2 or more days a week that work all the major muscles (legs, hips, back, chest, shoulders, and arms). Ideally for optimal FAT Loss and to be in your best shape I would suggest 4/5 weight training sessions per week alongside some cardio on rest days. A great program to get you the insane results you are looking for is my Simply Shredded Program, this is set up with a 4/5 day training split and consists of 9 different workouts.
There are countless benefits of drinking plenty of water during the day. There are however countless others of not doing just that. You should drink at least 4-5 liters of water every day. It helps to keep your calories in control if you substitute high-calorie beverages with water. Additionally, it energizes your muscles by refueling them with electrolytes that help improve their performance and efficiency. In other words, it keeps you active and gets rid of all the fatigue and lethargy. Also, water helps your kidneys function smoothly.
Sleep flows in five wave-like stages, often back and forth, throughout the night. Out of which, the 5th stage is the most important in terms of repair and reset activities. Independent of, and quite different from the first four stages, is REM sleep. It is characterized by the rapid eye movements that it is named after. During the REM stage your breathing becomes more shallow and irregular and your heart rate and blood pressure increase. This is primarily where you do most of your dreaming. You really need your REM sleep if you want to feel your best the next day. Since REM happens at the end of a sleep cycle, getting only a few hours of rest in a night can mean we miss out on this vital phase. If you sleep less than 6 hours per day of sleep regularly, it may be the reason for an increased hunger and appetite. Lack of sleep especially increases our craving for foods that are rich in carbohydrate and produce insulin which leads to storage of fat inside the body. You should get 7-9 hours of daily sleep for the above reasons. Also, it severely deteriorates your memory and attention when you don’t.
Wait, what? Expressing yourself and fitness? You might be thinking that these are not related to one another. But I would fall short of words just in an attempt to emphasize the importance of this very section. One could do everything right from the above-said things but still, fail to achieve happiness at the end of the day. I do not blame people living in their monotony. Searching within oneself is a personal choice, impossible to judge by someone else. For the same reason, finding what you love to do can be a very daunting task if you have never given it a thought, but patience is the way.
Keeping things inside, unexpressed thoughts and emotions, only create stress. And if you are under stress, you tend to eat more, exercise less. That is your fitness practices tend to dissipate in this scenario. If you already have an interest in something, it goes without saying that you need to do it more often; make time for it. That way, you can let your emotions flow freely and exercise the freedom of expression which remains the top most reason to continue living one’s life.
For one person, this could mean listening to music all day while eating his favorite food; for someone else, this could be dance used as a medium to express the sound of his soul. So go ahead, Carpe Diem my fellow reader, seize the day! Live your life with no regrets and be the best you!
If you want any further help on being the best you drop me an email on cjcoaching@icloud.com or check out my website https://www.charliejohnsonfitness.com/coaching