It’s the New Year and a lot of us have made that same old commitment to losing some weight and turning our lives around by getting in better shape. Which means more exercise, especially if the most you get is putting the remote down and actually getting up off the couch and changing the channel on the tv. Does a tv actually have channel buttons anymore??
Anyway, we all know that there needs to be a balance between health the amount of exercise you do and probably more importantly, what kind of foods you put into your mouth. Remember, food is the fuel that makes your body move and the right proportion of that amount should be balanced between fats-(good fats), carbs and proteins. Eating fresh, local, healthy foods is the age old secret to a long and disease-free life.
But what most people don’t realize is that striving to live a healthy lifestyle can carry some seriously negative consequences if you don’t approach it wisely.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for eating right and exercising, but the moment your life begins to revolve around your fitness, then you’ve already lost.
That being said, I know some people, myself included who started out attacking this “Get Fit or Else” way of thinking. I made it a point to schedule my exercise routines for each day, well, in the beginning, I started off doing it 3 x’s a week and then increased every 3 months to keep upping my goals. In time, doing my drills and eating meals that I prepared ahead of time was on my mind most of the time. My entire life would be structured around my workouts. My meals were planned at exact intervals. And if I missed any of my workouts or if my meals weren’t up to my standards, I would consider myself a failure and would get incredibly upset.
Back then I took an “all-or-nothing” approach to health and fitness. If I had one “bad” day of eating, then the entire week would be considered a waste. It was bad. My so-called dedication to fitness turned into an obsession, one that overtook my life.
All that exercising and healthy eating was meant to complement my life, not become it. Fortunately, I woke up to the fact that there needed to be a balance between exercise, eating and more importantly living a healthy lifestyle.
If you want your life and fitness habits to work in synergy, then you need to find the middle ground.
The Middle Ground is where you can enjoy a piece of birthday cake without worrying about how it will make you look. It’s where you can miss a workout and not sweat it. It’s where you can go a day without weighing yourself. But of course, finding the middle ground is no easy task.
Finding the middle ground isn’t so much about finding the perfect workout or diet as it is about forging the right mindset.
We all make mistakes. We all fail.
The most important thing to remember is how you failed. You must learn from your mistakes, as cliché as that sounds. Find out what triggered you to overeat. Was it stress? If so, what’s causing that stress and what can you do to fix it? Locate the root cause of your slip-ups and do your best to correct them.
Keeping things in perspective as far as exercise and nutrition goes does not need to be an all or nothing deal. You need to realize that a life worth living is one where you can experience new foods without guilt. It’s one where you can pick up a fork and put it in your mouth without a care in the world on how it’s going to make you look.
To get fit, and be fit for not only the New Year but for the rest of your life, you need to be able to go through the majority of your day without thinking about what time you’re going to the gym or whether you ate enough protein. Fitness needs to be a part of your life, but it should NEVER run your life. Eventually, you’re going to burn out and kiss healthy to the curb!
There’s more to life than having an impeccable exercise and nutrition plan. When your life and fitness habits are working together in balance, you’ll find everything you do more enjoyable.
Ever here the term or phrase “In Moderation”? That really is the key to the whole fitness scheme. Naturally, exercise and working on being fit is NOT the same for everyone. Like I mentioned before, you need to find the proper balance, for YOU. That takes some doing, you need to see and track your performance. There are plenty of activity trackers/monitors with and without heart rate monitors, but we like them the best for overall data tracking. One that we like for reliability and accuracy is the Fitbit Surge GPS Fitness Running / Activity Watch. If your serious about your training, and if you fit this type of person we wrote about, you do. This activity watch will help you get to the goals you’ve set for yourself, but remember, keep those goals within an attainable reach. You can always make yourself new goals, but take the time to savor your achieving them, one at a time.
Remember, make fitness part of your new fitter, healthier lifestyle but keep things in balance and within moderation. Your going to find that food will taste better, sleep will become more restful, and most importantly, an enormous load of stress and relief will be lifted off your shoulders. And probably those of your friends and family as well.
So, let me ask you. How do you approach health and fitness? Do you control it or does it control you?