fitness

The first and perhaps the most important step is making sure you are setting up fitness goals, short-term and long-term.

But remember!

Fitness goals must be realistic and achievable, SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely). Don’t set your short-term goal to lose 5 stones in 6 weeks, it will NOT Happen!

So, before you embark yourself on a spending spree, join a fitness club, buy exercise machines or whatever else you want to do STOP IT! We’ve all been there, especially after the new year, we want to get fit so what do we do? We join a gym! Am I right? For the first week or so we are excited and motivated and keep going to the gym and feel so proud about ourselves, we are doing it! What happens after another week or so? We get bored, we don’t see any improvements, we find other ‘more important things to do’ and give up and never go back! We just end up paying for a gym membership we are not using for 6 months or worse, a year!

So once again, STOP IT!

That only happens because we are not setting up any fitness goals, we just go with the flow!

Whether you want to lose weight fast or gain muscle, run the marathon, improve your physical strength, change your eating habits and so on, set yourself goals!

To keep motivated it is important to have both short and long-term fitness goals. Otherwise if your goals are just long term you will give up when you don’t see results fast. Trust me, I’ve done the same thing. I know something will take say 6 months to achieve and I say to myself ‘that’s ok, I can wait’ but after 2-3 weeks if I can’t see results I still give up.
So, if your goal is to lose weight, say 5 stones, that will realistically take over a year although it tends to vary from person to person depending on how fast your metabolism is.

The idea is to burn more calories than you eat. So, if you burn around 500 extra calories a day you will lose around 1 pound per week. Yes, you heard that right, you need to burn around 3500 calories a week to lose a pound! If you are eating more calories than you are burning then you need to exercise more or eat less. You are having second thoughts about that chocolate bar you just had right?

Once you set your fitness goals, keep motivated and remember! It takes time, you will not see results after a couple of days!

My advice is

After you start exercising, do not weigh yourself for at least 3 weeks! Yes, you heard that right! It’s different for everyone but generally you will not see results after a few weeks as you build muscles. Also, muscles are heavier than fat so weighing yourself can be misleading. But muscles help burn calories! Trust me, if you keep up with the exercising combined with a balanced diet you will see results! I don’t want you to feel demotivated and give up if after a couple of days into your programme if the weight has not changed or worse, it seems you are heavier! You are not!

Don’t give up!

Once you set your fitness goals, don’t give up! And there are a lot of fun ways to achieve your goals and I will give you a lot of ideas, so keep reading my articles.

Some vital things to remember:

1. Drink a lot of water! I know it’s boring and sometimes you don’t feel thirsty bla bla. Just do it! Sometimes when you feel hungry, you are not actually hungry, you are just dehydrated, so keep drinking!
2. Rest days are very important. Don’t carry on working hard without having enough rest as it can make you weaker not stronger as you are breaking down tissue and not building them up.
3. Focus on muscles when working out
4. Stretch every day
5. Be active. Don’t just sit around all day, get up and walk around every 30 min or so
6. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetable. OK, when I say plenty, I don’t mean eat 30 apples a day and 50 bananas 
7. Eat a balanced diet
8. REWARD YOURSELF! YES! After every week of keeping up with the programme, go out, get a massage, a haircut, whatever makes you happy! Maybe don’t buy clothes as you will need a much smaller size soon! 😉

Remember, it’s not just about losing weight, physical fitness improves the strength of our bones, increases life expectancy and reduces the risks of diseases. A balanced diet and nutrition is also important for our overall health. It also gives you all the nutrients you need to feel great and energised all day!

KEEP MOTIVATED, IT WILL ALL BE WORTH IT!