#1
Get rid of the sugar
You’ve heard this before, but it’s true. High sugar intake leads to:
- Weight gain
- Obesity
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
Start small
Try taking it, one meal or snack at a time. Changing your environment is key. Get it out of your home. Set boundaries and goals. Prepare yourself for situations when you may be tempted to have it and have an alternative ready to go. Putting your focus to eating real food will get you the quality natural food sugars from fruits and vegetables. Be ready for afternoon or evening cravings, avoid juices, and especially soda. It’ll contaminate the system and get you back into the dangerous cycle quickly.
Warning: It will be hard at first
Getting through the first 3 days will be the most challenging but don’t give up. If you do fall, get back up and start fresh again–this is well worth the effort and you will not feel deprived once it is out of your system.
Avoiding processed foods as much as possible is in everyone’s best interest to promote health and prevent disease and illness. Have a prep day to have fruits and vegetables prepped and ready to go. Building healthy bacteria in your gut with probiotic live foods, as well as fermented foods like sauerkraut & kimchi, kombucha, raw apple cider vinegar, homemade yogurt, homemade pickles, and real kefir.
Check out these awesome fermented foods.
#2
Get some sleep!
Sleep deprivation will damage your health in many ways. The American Sleep Association recommends 8 hours of sleep, and while this may sound like a dream to you, do your best to get as close as you can to 8 hours of sleep a night.
Also, try to keep a regular schedule on your off days. Weekends may have you trying to catch up. Sleeping in can do more harm than good as it will throw off your circadian rhythms, and your body will never know when to shut down.
Sleep deprivation can slow down your brain function and lead to an inability to concentrate, difficulty making decisions, process information, or remember things. It also has a strong affect on your mood causing you to be anxious, give you lack luster enthusiasm and irritable or cranky. Clearly this can affect you physically taking away from your energy for your workout or daily activity. Sleep deprivation can cause you to overeat and make poor food choices getting in the way of #1 sugar detox!
Get some sleep and make it a habit. Here’s some sleep science.
#3
Exercise irregularly on a regular basis
I know it sounds confusing, but let’s simplify it:
Yes, you need to make exercise a habit and you should be active 5-6 days a week for your best health benefits. Day seven you don’t have to be a slug, but don’t go too crazy with your workouts every day. Your body does need to recover as well. Constant high intense workouts everyday can lead to injury and burn out. If you are training hard 7 days a week without adding in a low intensity or simply a rest day.
What is irregularity?
The irregular piece of this puzzle is referring to adding variety to your training as well as interval like training. You can do intervals with cardio vascular exercises such as running, biking, rowing, etc. and you can do intervals with strength training, and resistance training. You can also do intervals combining the cardio vascular exercises with the resistance and strength activities.
Build a lifestyle
The important take away is that a routine of activity is a great lifestyle habit to build.
The second piece of this is changing the exercises with variety as well as low, warm up or recovery intensities mixed with high intensity, maximal exertion will stimulating the body to change for the better. Your body will burn more calories in shorter periods of time cutting your workout time to a range of 10-40 minutes.
Other great benefits are increasing your lean body mass and metabolism which allows you to burn more calories even at rest.
I have many people question my logic on the 10 minute workout, but it’s not all about what is happening during that workout time as much as the continued effects for hours beyond the workout time. The 10 minute side of things is not going to be something you will be able to accomplish if you are untrained or let’s say mildly healthy. This is something that you will need to be very well conditioned to see great benefits from at those shorter time frames as you need to really push in that period of time.
That being said, a beginner can still benefit from 10 minutes as I hope we all can agree it’s better than not training at all.
Mixed intensity is key
Having the ability to train with low and high intensities is key to a healthier lifestyle without it taking over your life in a time management respect. Don’t underestimate the benefits your interval training can have on getting you to the next level.
This is an amazingly productive training technique.
We must take this in steps to master form and technique with this before we get too wild with the intensity and that is where you being in tune with your body comes in to play. Learning new ways to move can help keep you interested in your workout and using you mind at the same time as training your body.
You will get much greater benefits in diversity and learning new ways to train. Check out another brief description of interval training to help clarify how easy it can be to start this process.
#4
Change your mind
You must train your brain: We all have the negative talk between the ears. Find out what your goals are and believe in yourself.
Get specific
Have your specific goals written down in multiple places, keep a copy on you at all times and read them when you wake up and when you go to sleep.
Set a deadline for your goals and hold yourself accountable with rewards and penalties that matter to you.
Get your support system and hold yourself accountable for your thoughts. If you mindlessly eat, train or do anything you are missing out on all of the benefits. Focus on what you want; meditate, envision it, be in the present and you will enjoy the process and achieve your goals more efficiently.
You are an incredible human being. Remember that!
Be happy with who you are and take care of yourself with love.
You have a choice of how you want to live, if you want your life to be better get specific with your goals and focus on changing while reminding yourself of why you want it. Remind yourself of all you are and all around you that you are grateful for and this will help you continue on your journey to reaching your goals.
Fear is common and can be a road block if you let it. It can also empower you to overcome adversity and become determined to reach all that you strive for. Find out what you really want and do all that you can to make it happen. Do not dwell on the things that you cannot control as this is a waste of time and energy and we aren’t into wasting time. More about the positive mindset.
Set your goals high and achieve them as there is no option for failure unless you quit (and you don’t do that).
Enjoy being your best!
