A Real New Years Commitment
Start small with your diet and fitness plans
Too many people seem to set themselves up for failure heading in to the New Year.
I probably don’t have to mention the high percentages of people who do not follow through with their fitness/nutrition/weight loss plans.
Taking on a whole lot of something at once is usually a good recipe for failure, one that will end up with you turning to cupcake recipes..
Your best bet is to slowly add in new habits one at a time. If you have gone from doing zero exercise and eating fast food every day jumping into cross fit and going on a full paleo diet might take some getting used to.
If you are starting from scratch it might be a good idea to slowly add in some cardio in the form of a brisk walk for 15-20 minutes 2-3 times a week. If you are doing a good 4-5 week strength training routine you could now throw some High Intensity Interval Training to take the next step up.
To me the diet is the best place to start adding in small changes with the goal of taking on a healthier lifestyle.
If your diet is a mess starting the day with a couple glasses of filtered water with some fresh squeezed lemon and ginger is going to provide some helpful and cleansing benefits. Try this every day for a 4-5 days.
After this you can start adding in more water each day if you find yourself neglecting it. The 6-8 glasses per day is still a good rule of thumb to go by and will be beneficial in helping cleanse and flush toxins out of the body
The next habit is to slow down your eating and really chew your food and take time. Most people wolf their food down in a few minutes but you should be looking at taking 15-20 minutes to eat to let your digestive system really work without stress. Slowing down your eating will also lead to less over eating and your bodies sense of fullness can take are 15-20 minutes to be recognized.
When you hammer down a big meal in huge gulps in only a few moments it’s an onslaught to your body and does not allow natural satiety to happen.
After these few weeks is when you can start making specific diet changes. This is a good time to start limiting your use of vegetable oils and manufactured spreads and dressings. Look to now incorporate olive oil in for dressing, marinades and for cooking with.
Next look to replace grains with greens. The more leafy green vegetables you can include in your diet the better and they should make up the core of all your nutrition. Now you can slowly reduce processed foods along with breads and pasta and substitute in whole fresh vegetables.
You can then ideally start improving your forms of protein if you do enjoy it and move towards grass fed meats and organic based produce.
Cutting down on sugar is one of the best decisions you can make for your body as the negative effects of sugar stretch from obesity and high triglyceride levels to heart disease and diabetes.
At the very least look to eliminate liquid calories in the form of fruit juices and soft drinks. That will cut a huge amount of sugar out of your diet if you consume things like that on a regular basis.
I prefer to eat my calories rather than drink them
These are obviously just a few things that you can do but ones that can make some big changes to your overall health. The diet is the best place to start and the point behind all this is to slowly add in new habits gradually. You will be more likely to keep them for the long run and not overwhelmed with trying to take on a completely new lifestyle from before. Try to add in a new habit each week.
As far as specific nutrition goes just look to keep adding in the good stuff. Eventually it will push away a lot of the junk and you will find yourself more enjoying fresh natural food that will encourage you to keep expanding your fresh nutritional intake and not your waistline.
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