Become a Healthier Person with 5 Easy Fitness Tips

When it comes to healthy living, most people assume that it will be a time-consuming process filled with giving up favorite foods and spending endless hours sweating at the gym. Fortunately, it is possible to get healthier without drastic lifestyle changes and becoming a gym rat.

When it comes to health and fitness, even small changes can create huge results in the long run. In order to give you a better indication of what your body needs, you should calculate your body mass with BMI Calculator and fill out a fitness report card.

5 Fast Fitness Tips

Get Mentally Organized

Each week put aside five minutes to get organized. Use this time to set exercise goals and form a big picture of the amount of exercises that are the ideal goal for the week ahead. Write these goals down on paper and try to review them each morning. When it comes to exercise, getting to the gym can often be the hardest part of sticking to a routine. With a mental plan, it becomes easier to turn good intentions into good actions. The more a person thinks about an action and mentally prepares for it, the more likely they are to actually follow through with it.

Plan Meals Ahead of Time

When it comes to eating healthy, meal planning can make success easier and less stressful. Planning meals does not need to be a time consuming and exact process. Instead, aim for creating a “meal overview” which gives a general idea of what to eat each day. This general overview can be enough to guide people to good choices throughout the week.

Meal Planning Tips

• Don’t try to micromanage a meal plan, stick to the big picture.
• Plan in some easy alternatives that can be used when unexpected circumstances pop up, such as a frozen meal that can be cooked if someone has to work late and can’t cook a full meal.
• Don’t try to be too strict when it comes to food choices, keep health in mind but don’t make meals so extreme that they become unappealing.
• Start out with easy meals and work up to more complex ones.
• Keep prep times in mind along with energy levels; a complex meal might not be the best thing to attempt cooking at the end of a long day.
• When there is at least a general meal plan for the week, the need for grabbing fast food will be eliminated. By being prepared and knowing which foods need to be thawed for the day, cooking meals becomes less of a hassle. Knowing that there is thawed chicken to grill can make it easier to bypass the drive-thru and head home to cook.

Additionally, with a general meal plan grocery trips can become more targeted and less time consuming. Not only will targeted shopping save money but it will also save calories, since most impulse buys are convenience foods that are high in price, fat and calories. The needed items can be selected and purchased without the need to aimlessly wander around the store selecting items that just “look” good.

Substitute Healthier Foods

Along with meal planning comes the ability to make better choices and substitute healthier foods into any diet. With an idea of what will be eaten each day, it becomes easier to gauge how healthy the choices for that day are overall. By looking at the big picture, it can be easier to choose an apple over a pop-tart.

Simple food choices can make big differences in both health and fitness. Choosing water instead of soda can make a startling difference alone. Soda might taste good but it contains lots of hidden calories, which add inches to the waistband. By skipping a daily soda, up to 200 calories can be easily eliminated from the diet. This adds up to 1400 calories a week and 72,800 calories a year!

Easy substitutions

• Water instead of soda
• Fruit instead of candy
• Pretzels instead of chips
• Baked items instead of fried

Take care not to be too strict when it comes to favorite foods and don’t strictly deny cravings. If craving chocolate, try to eat just enough to curb the craving instead of outright denying a craving. Usually, a small amount can satisfy but denial can easily lead to bingeing.

Make Small Fitness Changes

In addition to making good food choices, make good fitness choices as well. Although choices like taking the stairs instead of an elevator might seem small, they add up to big results.

Quick and easy fitness changes

• Take the stairs instead of an elevator.
• Walk instead of drive when possible.
• Stand instead of sitting when talking on the phone.
• Park in the farthest parking spots and then walk the extra distance.
• Use wrist or ankle weights while on the treadmill to maximize your workout.

Small changes like these are just enough to get the heart rate up and burn a few extra calories. While they don’t take much time, these tips can help inspire people to take on more fitness challenges and open the door to more exercise overall.

Drink More Water

Probably the easiest, quickest fitness tip of all is to simply drink more water. Try to drink a glass of water before each meal and whenever hungry feelings strike. Often the body is confusing thirst singles with actual hunger. Drink a glass of water and then wait about 10 minutes before indulging in a snack. The hungry feeling will often subside after drinking the water.

Fitness and health doesn’t have to be an all or nothing endeavor; small changes can lead to big differences down the road. Alone these tips may seem small or insignificant but over the long run these small changes add up to very noticeable differences in lifestyle choices and weight loss. By starting small and using easy tips like these, it becomes simpler to adapt permanent long term fitness and health changes.

About the author: Jenny is a freelance writer for a fitness website full of workout plans. She is always trying to show people quick and easy fitness tips to promote healthy living. When she is not helping others, you can find Jenny riding her dirt bike in her backyard trails.

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