RYPT Mindset Corner: How to Enjoy Healthy Eating
- How to succeed in your fitness goals
- Tips to GUARANTEE weight loss
Mindset is as important as the physical training when it comes to fitness. Not only that but it’s even easier to adapt and make a healthy lifestyle more achievable.
This week: New Nutrition
As quickly as January comes around, it’s easy to slip off the bandwagon. Healthy eating becomes a priority especially in this month but it can be too big a jump for some people.
Going from a relatively poor nutritional plan to an overly healthy and somewhat unrealistic regime is not the best basis for success.
Oftentimes people will try to go from one extreme to the other by completely ditching habits and forcing themselves to eat what they perceive as healthy foods.
As a fitness coach, there are only so many things that I can recommend in terms of getting you fit. There have been many times over the years that I have agreed with clients on a new nutritional plan (which is definitely realistic) however, if they choose not to follow these plans then it is fruitless.
Here are 5 simple tips on how to achieve your nutritional goals (without too many sacrifices):
1) Weight and Calories
For most people, they don’t truly understand the truth about weight and calories.
At the end of the day, your overall body weight is not as important as your body composition. In other words, if your body is comprised more of muscle than fat, then over the longer term he will be in a much healthier position. However, The other way around will cause health risks and not lead to any perceivable change in body physique.
Too many people become obsessed with the number that they see on the scales and this has negative connotations for eating habits. Ultimately, this leads to skipping meals and making ill informed choices about foods.
I could spend hours talking about the truth behind nutrition but I would already be covering the same ground that I have been in my blogs of the previous three years. See the website or links for more succinct and accessible chunks of information.
The final bit of information I will give you on this topic is that “not all calories are created equal.” What I mean by this is that the calories from a high sugar food will not be equal to the calories in the equivalent of fruit.
That’s why meal planning is so important.
2) Tracking
If you take one thing away from this block, make it this: the MyFitnessPal app.
This is by far the easiest way to track the food that you’re eating, compare them against your goals and regulate your success. It has previously been labourious to monitor everything that you eat in a day, however with the scan of a barcode you can input this straight into the app.
This simplified method of monitoring your food intake will revolutionise how you track and plan your foods. It is even pinpoint accurate to what your goal is and your timeframe.
The biggest thing that people notice when they start to track the food is unhealthy habits. Usually this takes the shape of snacking and high calorie foods throughout the day. Simple substitutions in the nutrition plan would save so much hassle, stress and confusion when it comes to nutrition.
3) Treats
Eating foods that you enjoy is obviously a staple part of a healthy nutritional plan. However, gauging the balance between healthy foods and treats can prove difficult.
Treats are normally more readily available, cheaper and we usually find an excuse to incorporate them into our nutritional plan.
Using the above tracker, if you are consuming too many sugars, salts and unsaturated fats then it is time to regulate the intake of these. Even without making too many changes to your nutritional plan just a couple of substitutions for fruit, veg or something healthier will make a world of difference to your long term fitness goals.
The added advantage to this is that it doesn’t involve a complete revolution of your diet plan, normally these quick wins are successful.
4) Greens
One of the biggest things that you can do to improve your health (and also quickest) is to increase your fruit and vegetable consumption. Obviously, the recommended daily allowance is five portions but these are normally very small therefore easier to hit.
My advice would be to start with things that you enjoy and then to branch out into other foods. You don’t need to become a world-class chef overnight or even try anything audacious was just sticking to a solid plan will help.
As regards the above point, changing some snacks for healthy fruit and veg will make a significant difference and even more so when tracked using a nutritional planner.
This is normally the most difficult point for people who are looking to change their lives as it can take longer to prepare. However, with the right preparation it is not too challenging to make these changes.
Change will always involve some sacrifice and even a couple of minor changes like this will get you on the right track.
5) Booze
Normally, this is not an issue for people with the popularity of “dry January.”
If you actually tracked the amount of calories from alcohol in an evening, I am pretty sure that you would be alarmed.
If your goal is to lose weight quickly, then changes in this department can have a monumental impact. As an added bonus, drinking over two litres of water a day will cleanse your system and may even provide more energy too!
I would never suggest to give up what you enjoy but as above, changing does require an element of sacrifice along the way.
Even tracking the amount of units that you consume through alcohol can be a cumbersome task. Therefore the fitness app comes into a league of it’s own when it is about tracking.
These changes are extremely simple on paper, however the difficulty becomes putting them into practice. If you really want to change then try some of the above tips and I promise you that it will happen.
The RYPT app is cheaper than you may think, despite providing all the help and support that you would expect from one to one fitness coaching.
Don’t delay, begin before it’s too late and what better reason than a FREE, no commitment, four week Fitness Furnace plan. Just message me for more.
Ross Yeoman
RYPT Owner
