Staying Fit/Healthy
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| Please ignore my insanely cheesy grin |
Disclaimer: I am not a professional, I do not have fitness or nutritional training, I'm simply telling you what works for me.
Weight has always been a battle for me: I've been underweight, I've been overweight and I've been fit and muscly, but one thing is for sure I am in love with food. I have been on fad-diets and calorie restricted diets and it only ends in misery for me because I can't eat the food that I want to eat.
I go through phases of going to the gym and doing my physiotherapy and phases where I spend 99% of my day sat on my bum. The most important thing is finding something that works for you and something you enjoy doing. I don't weigh myself, I don't take any kind of measurement of my body, I purely assess my body on how my clothes are fitting and how I feel in myself.
Exercise
I absolutely love running but can't do it because I have weak knees so I had to find something else that works for me. I go to Fitness First where they do Les Mills classes which I really enjoy and they have such a wide range of classes. A lot of gyms are now incorporating Les Mills or other similar classes into their timetables. Some of my favourites are:
- BodyPump - 'light to moderate weights with lots of repetition, giving you a total body workout'. It involves lots of reps of things like squats, chest presses and deadlifts. Classes normally run for an hour and you hit every part of your body - legs, chest, back, triceps, biceps, lunges, shoulders and core. This is probably my favourite class out of all the ones I do.
- RPM - I'm sure everyone knows what spin/RPM is. It's an excellent cardio workout and amazing for burning calories. It really targets your legs and bum, the areas I want to tone up and make more muscly. My love for spin is slightly saddistic.
- BodyBalance - a mix of yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates and is really good for stretching out your body and building up strength based on bodyweight. I don't feel like this is a really intense work out but it's good for just chilling out if you've had a stressful!
I try and go to the gym as much as I can - some weeks that's 6 days a week and some it's only 2 but I do whatever I can fit in. If you can only exercise twice a week then do that, even that little bit will help. If I'm really not in the mood to go, I try to remind myself that 1. I'm paying for my gym membership so I should probably make the most of it and 2. my mood will be a million times better after going to the gym.
If you can't go to the gym - swim, walk, run, anything that gets you moving!
Eating
Now, first things first food is the best thing ever, my life absolutely revolves around it. I spend every minute of my day thinking about what my next meal will be (don't act like you're not the same). I try to eat 'healthy' 80% of the time and then I know the majority of my meals are healthy. I find that the less you have sugar and 'bad' food, the less you crave it. If I've had a really bad day of food, I try to have a really good day of food the next day to counteract it. I don't ever feel guilty for eating something 'bad' or 'naughty', I know that I've earned eating it and one little thing isn't going to reverse all my progress.
Eating healthy at university can be difficult because vegetables and fruit are very expensive and there's no way I get my 5-a-day in, but I do the best I can and buy a lot of frozen vegetables as they're cheaper. I perform best at the gym when I'm eating good, nutritious food and find my workouts really suffer if I've been eating badly.
Don't cut whole food groups out. I have seen 2 of my friends make themselves lactose intolerant by cutting out dairy completely. If you're going on a vegan bender then fine - but before you cut lactose out consider if you'll want to eat it again. Can you really go without cheese and ice cream?!
I have soy milk but still eat normal cheese and have normal milk when I go to Starbucks etc so my body keeps processing lactose. I have however, made myself intolerant to white bread by completely cutting it out. I now try to eat a balance of white and brown pasta because becoming intolerant to white pasta would just be heartbreaking. Carbs, protein and fat are essential for your body to keep functioning. Cutting one of these groups out is not a healthy way to loose weight and it's not really that healthy.
If you want to see more fitness/health posts let me know!
