11 Fitness Strategies for a Tighter, Leaner Body
Fitness is strategy. It's not just calories and it's not just workouts, it's the combination of body-shaping, energizing food along with workouts geared towards your goals and that move and motivate you to keep doing them. Diets don't work because they're temporary. If you follow one of these restricting, odd diets you may lose some weight, but weight doesn't stay off unless you keep doing it. So if that diet isn't realistic long term, neither is your weight loss.
You need to create a strategy that works for you and that you can live with forever.
1. Eat breakfast. No fuel to start the day and just try staying motivated to eat clean, workout and stay away from temptation. Never mind getting through your already busy day.
2. Know when you're going to eat next. Plan your meals so that you eat the right balance and enough at each one. This will help curb hunger, cravings, and grazing.
3. Eat when you're hungry, but choose "clean". Don't let yourself get starved.You may have had a hard workout or just feel hungry sooner than normal, so don't wait. Your body is telling you something. But choose wisely. Your body doesn't hold onto the good stuff, only the bad stuff.
4. Look at nutrients not calories. If 80% -ish of what you ate was good for you, you'd never have to think about a calorie.
5. See the whole day. Don't be reactive, be proactive to your fitness. Have your kitchen stocked and workout days/times set. It's hard to lose layers or get lean kinda sorta doing what needs to be done. Have your fitness day layed out and don't leave your hunger or workouts to chance.
6. Don't forget fat. Eat it. You only want to cut out the junk food fat but the healthy fat is essential and needs to be a part of your nutrition. Eat foods like nuts, olive oil, avocados, salmon (and other fatty fish) to name a few.
7. Eat green. Make sure you eat green veggies every day, at several meals is best. They are vitamins, minerals and fiber that help maximize your body's efficiency.
8. Focus on what you need to DO. Stop worrying about all the measurements and numbers. They only tell part of your story. Look at yourself - Do you see progress? Do your clothes feel looser? Are you truly eating clean? Then just keep doing *that* and you'll get there.
9. Set your workouts like appointments. A meeting a ran long, or you got stuck in traffic, but hit the workout anyway. 20ish focused minutes is all you need. Fitness isn't all or nothing, because you get nothing when you do nothing. It's all the RIGHT things you do. Even a short workout is better than no workout.
10. Eyes forward. Don't compare your body or your progress. If you feel you're not progressing assess what you're doing, don't necessarily try to copy what they're doing. Don't let someone elses progress bring you down, let it motivate you up.
11. BE PATIENT. You can't speed up a slow process. Fitness isn't fastf for anyone but it's life changing if you do it right. It's not just the getting there that will change you, it's the process, because it's in the process you learn how to shift your thoughts to shift your habits to change your life.
-Heather Frey