My ‘Fit’ is Easy Breezy

Our ideas about fitness have become so defined because they are influenced by the media and our environment. We may think that if we have no time to go to the gym, or no funds to eat at fabulous restaurants that cater to our every need, that we cannot possibly stay fit. Well, I’m here to dispute that way of thinking. Granted, some people work better on a strategic program, but since this is about your health, there’s no ‘one way’ solution. Even if you have no gym membership, there are exercises that you can incorporate into your daily life to tone up, build your strength, and develop those well-defined muscles. There are also some simple nutrition ideas that you can implement to help you keep healthy.

Physical Activity

• Get your cardio in: Make sure you consistently do some medium-intensity workouts that help keep your heart healthy, and help you lose or maintain your weight. The greatest form of cardio (in my opinion) is running. Even if you don’t belong to a gym, you can run outside, by the beach or on the street. If you live in a big city and running is difficult, walking a few kilometers per day helps too. Other great forms of cardio are swimming, biking, dancing, and skipping. Aerobics is another great way to get your cardio in. Exercise CDs/DVDs are becoming very popular right now. One of the most popular exercise DVDs I’ve seen recently is Oluchi’s O3 Pro Fitness.
• Build muscle tone: But we don’t just want to lose weight, right? We want to build those muscles too. What we know to be true is that you need to lift weights to build muscles. But what we forget is that our bodies can serve as weights too. Rather than lift dumbbells, you could do push-ups (or you may know them as press-ups) for your arms. For your abs, there are so many types of sit-ups or crunches that can help build our stomach muscles. One of them is the standard “feet on the floor, palms behind head, back on the ground and lift your head”. But there are several others like “butt on the floor, legs in the air and lift your torso” or “legs in the air, back on the floor, and lift your butt off the ground”. For your legs, you don’t have to use machines. You can do squats, leg lifts, and lunges to build muscle tone.

Nutrition

• Balance it out: Portion is key. No matter what we eat, if we limit the portions, we limit our caloric intake. Calories are what cause weight gain, and the only way to reduce the number of calories in our bodies is to eat less or exercise more (or do both).  I tend to lean towards filling foods that contain fewer calories, like lean meats and whole grain. It is so easy to find out the number of calories in food, using a tool like the one at www.calorieking.com.
• Watch your fluid consumption: Food is not the only thing that contains calories. Drinks do too. Drinks from alcohol to soda could be adding unnecessary calories to our diet. A good way to cut a large number of calories daily is to limit our intake of alcohol and soda.
• Reduce snacking: Ever seen the commercial “We eat when we’re happy, bored, sad, and sometimes we don’t know why we eat at all?” This is so true, and because snacks are so accessible and quick to eat, they are the first things we usually go for. This is why it might be beneficial to break down your meal into smaller portions and spread them out throughout the day. This way, you reduce your snacking habits by not letting yourself get too hungry.
• Breakfast like a king, dinner like a pauper: If you get more active earlier in the day, it makes sense to eat more food earlier in the day. As your body slowly winds down, you reduce your portions because you’re not involved in too much physical activity to burn off the calories.

We don’t do things like everyone tells us. We develop our own sense of fashion, our own faith, our own way to live. So we should not simply think about exercise like we see on the telly. We need to be creative to bring the complexity we see, and simplify it to fit our own lives.

If you need more description on any of the exercises listed in this article, please leave a comment, and I’d be happy to explain in more detail.

 

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