Making A Fit & Healthy Lifestyle Much More Manageable

When we think of fitness, it’s not hard to think of Instagram athletes who might have the perfect bodies. It can sometimes be tiring to see people who have put so much work in, because no matter how impressive they are and how much respect we have for them, knowing that getting to this point will take years of our own effort can be demotivating in itself.

Yet there’s no reason as to why living in a fit and healthy manner can’t be totally enjoyable and something that you take part in as standard, rather than feeling as if you have to climb a mountain every day. Often, it’s the small habits that you adhere to consistently that end up having the most impact, and this is absolutely essential to consider if you hope to see real results.

So, how can fitness and health be defined in your own life, a life wherein you have to manage family, a job, responsibilities and a social life? How can we make fitness manageable? Let’s consider that, below:

Make Your Diet Easier

When we think of someone who eats well with plenty of diverse ingredients all measured and counted, it’s hard not to think of a scientist in their laboratory counting every atom of food they might consume, and this seems like a second full time job.

But there’s no reason why healthy eating has to be hard or arduos. It doesn’t even need to be time-consuming. For instance, a perusal of your local grocer, a conversation with your butcher or a walk through the vegan aisle of your supermarket, and you can come home with planned ingredients for the week.

Then, through efforts like meal prep Sunday, you can use Tupperware boxes to safely store your meals thorough the week and reheat them when at work or attending to other responsibilities. Then, you immediately have a pre-portioned meal with all of the worthwhile foods you would have been eating. Not only this, but with apps like MyFitnessPal, you can scan the barcodes of certain products, weigh how much you eat, and get a calorie and nutritional count immediately. In that way, you don’t have to lose yourself in endless calculations to work well.

Consider Your Energy Levels

It might be that Instagram athletes try to convince you that they wake up at 4am each day, commit to a two hour run, then spend three hours lifting weights, then eat some food and repeat the process until 12am, but that rarely happens, and if it did, that person would be injured more quickly than they could expect.

Self-care is fitness, and that means learning to manage your energy levels accordingly. For instance, most people are more alert in the morning time provided they get a full and deep sleep. This can be a good time to go to the gym, or spend twenty minutes performing yoga, or just going for a walk with their dog and stretching afterward.

Provided you commit to the three-hour recommendation of active exercise a week, you’ll be making good progress. With healthy products designed to give a boost to your athletic performance, you’ll no doubt find yourself gaining a pep in your step from time to time when you really need it. Overall, however, scheduling your activity for when you’re most alert, and not sweating the daily, normal post-lunch dip in alertness or feeling tired at night can be very worthwhile.

Consider Small Substitutions That Work

You’d be very surprised just how helpful small substitutions can be when following a fit and healthy lifestyle. You don’t have to follow a 100% fit or 0% fit lifestyle, as fitness is a spectrum and what’s a healthy practice for you may be a stepping stone for someone else, and vice versa.

Little efforts undertaken consistently, then, will almost always offer the best results. For instance, perhaps switching out some red meat intake from time to time by substituting vegan options could be great for your body, while cutting out the drinking and instead enjoying a range of healthy teas while watching movies at the weekend could be a nice idea. The more you integrate small healthy substitutes, the more likely they are to stick, and the closer to a new normal you can begin to get. That’s a wonderful place to start, as even if you’re going at your own pace, you’ll still be lapping everyone stuck on the sofa.

With this advice, we hope you can continue to make that fit and healthy lifestyle much more manageable for yourself.