5 Tips to looking and feeling 5yrs. Younger!
1. Never Ever skip breakfast. If you want to maximize your fitness results or fat-loss efforts, you’ve got to eat breakfast. Even if you don’t exercise at all – breakfast remains the most important meal of the day. Your breakfast should contain co
mplete proteins and complex carbohydrates (if you’re trying to lose weight, you should eat the bulk of your complex carbohydrates at breakfast and lunch, and only have vegetable carbohydrates at dinner). A great breakfast is oatmeal (not the pre-packaged, pre-sweetened kind) with a little honey and banana and a protein drink. Or try scrambled egg whites with turkey bacon.
2. Set exercise appointments with yourself. Use your day-timer to set appointments for exercise – and then stick to them. You wouldn’t miss a business meeting or client appointment, would you? So don’t miss your exercise appointment with yourself. Nothing is more important than your health. Nothing! Everything else will crumble around you if your health goes south. So make your exercise appointments a priority. If you find it difficult to keep these appointments, then consider hiring a personal trainer who will hold you to your commitment. When you have money invested, and someone waiting for you to show up – you are much more likely to actually show up!
3. Eat regularly throughout the day. Fasting or overly restrictive diets will enable you to lose weight – in the short run. Because the weight you lose is primarily water weight and lean muscle tone. But in the long-run it has exactly the opposite effect you want. When you restrict your diet, your body instinctively thinks it’s being starved and shifts into a protective mode by storing fat. Your body’s energy expenditures will be fueled by your lean muscles causing your body fat to remain essentially the same while you lose vital fluids and muscle. The less muscle you have, the slower your metabolism becomes, and the less fat you burn. You should be eating three nutritionally balanced meals each day, and you should have at least one or two healthy snacks. Avoid fried and processed foods at all cost – talk about dead calories! Here’s a good rule of thumb: make sure that you are consistently “grazing” on health foods about every three hours. This includes at least half a gallon of fresh water every day. This keeps your metabolic furnace firing, so you burn more at a faster rate.
4. Remember the benefits of resistance training. Remember that feeling of euphoria you experienced after a particularly good workout? You experienced that feeling because the most powerful “feel good” drug in the world – endorphins – are coursing through your veins. If there is a panacea, it’s exercise. It will fuel your motivation on those inevitable days when you just don’t feel like exercising. Additionally, exercising with resistance has tremendous benefits for your metabolism.
5. Always stretch. Stretching improves flexibility, blood flow, muscle recovery, low back pain and a host of other things. Additionally, stretching can prevent injury, make you sleep better and improve your performance in all sports. Always stretch, but be certain not to stretch cold muscles. You should always warm up before stretching. However, it is very important that you know how to stretch to achieve optimal fitness results. Never bounce, or aggressively push and pull a muscle beyond its natural range.
Let me know if these tips helped you.
Live Strong, Live Fit
CC Matthews
Posted by admin | in Fat Loss Strategies, Fitness Advice, Mind/Motivation, Nutrition Tips & Strategies, Workouts | 2 Comments
Thank you for writing this post. I’ve been stuck for a very long time not really knowing where to begin on my road to becoming fit. The tips that you gave are so simple and will fit easily into my very hectic work schedule. The first thing that I am going to do is start eating breakfast. I have never really felt like I had time to but you’ve made it seem so simple and so necessary how could I not. Thanks again CC for a great post. God bless you for caring so much about the health of your readers and clients.
P. Renee – You’re welcome. You are among a very high percentage of people who do not eat breakfast. I understand people try to press the snooze button as many times as they can but end up more fatigued throughout the day from missing breakfast.
You’ll find yourself being more energized and your blood sugar levels will be more stable rather than up and down like a roller coaster ride at six flags.
Glad I could help.
CC Matthews