Ten Tips to Become Stronger, Healthier and Live Better

Exercise is the best preventive medicine we have, take care of yourself and make a commitment to your fitness and health. Don’t worry about how you look, exercise for the right reasons, feel stronger and healthier than ever before, aesthetics will soon follow. These tips should help you to make a start in the right direction, you may also hire a professional to help you in the this journey and become accountable to someone else.

1. Make exercising a priority and keep moving — Think of exercising and movement as vital as you need to breath everyday to survive. Block time on your calendar and stick to it. It is an appointment with your fitness and health and you do not want to miss it.
2. Plan ahead your nutrition. Set aside some time to think ahead what you are going to eat. Once you have decided what you are going to eat, organise your grocery shopping accordingly, you could also do some of the prep ahead of time, this will help you to stay on track and avoid poor food choices.
3. Increase your protein intake and reduce the consumption of starchy, refined carbs and grains specially on days when you have not exercise.Eat plenty of veggies and fiber and keep yourself fully hydrated, drink plenty of water. Pulses are a great source of nutrients you can have instead of starchy carbs that will keep hunger at bay. You will feel energised and less tired. Have a balanced healthy approach and relationship with your food, food that suits your taste and lifestyle. If to achieve this you think you need to make several changes, just tackle one by one until they become a habit, don’t try to do too many changes at once.
4. Fight inflammation with healthy omega fatty acids, best consumed from natural forms, fish oils, nuts and seeds are great sources. Inflammation can cause illnesses and diseases, these can be caused due poor nutrition, stress, high level of cortisol, and hormone imbalances.
5. Build a strong core, having a strong core is crucial for good posture, stability, overall strength and a healthy pain free back that will assist the rest of your training. Different plank variations are a good starting point.
6. Don’t be afraid of strength-resistance training and favour this type of exercise instead of traditional cardio workouts. Females, please don’t be afraid, this will not make you bulky. It is important to maintain and increase muscle mass to reduce body fat, boost your metabolism, strong bonds, combat osteoporosis, increase flexibility and stability, it will also reduce and fight anxiety and depression, just to name a few of the strength training benefits you will get from this type of training.
7. Body Weight exercises are a great exercise routine, specially if you have no access to a gym, you can do them anywhere. They are a great approach to fitness that will challenge your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, with all the benefits of resistance training.
8. Train with mindfulness, when you are working out stay focus, breath properly, visualise the muscles you are working on, your brain will help you by activating more muscle fibres thus increasing your overall result.
9. Stay positive and motivated — Keep a training log of your workouts to measure progress and track results. Be competitive with yourself, set up some targets and work towards them maybe you increase the amount of push ups or squats you can do in one minute, you can run 5K faster, you reduce a clothing size. Exercise with a friend if this will push you little extra. Stay positive and visualised your future healthier, fitter and stronger self.
10. Recovery, your rest it is as important as your training and nutrition, make sure you nourish your body with the right nutrients and sleep well as needed. You may take a day rest between workouts or decrease the intensity after a high intensity training day. Try active recovery with gently activity and foam rolling to help reduce soreness and speed up your recovery by increasing blood flow to your muscles.