When you’re juggling a busy schedule, it’s easy to spend your downtime going out to eat rather than cooking, or relaxing while watching TV instead of working out. But implementing basic healthy habits into your lifestyle can boost your energy levels and well-being without wasting too much of your free time. Here’s how you can increase your activity levels, and step count, and get the hang of meal prepping.

 

Stick to a Sleep Routine

 It’s all too easy to spend an extra hour scrolling on your phone when you should be trying to sleep. Instead of falling into this rut, try sticking to an evening routine that sets you up for eight hours of quality sleep. Bedstar recommends turning your lights off at the same time each night – including your devices – and setting your alarm for the same time every morning, even on the weekends. If you’ve been struggling with sleep problems for a while and quick fixes to your routine don’t seem to be helping, you may want to think about seeing a sleep specialist.

 

Balance Exercise With “Active Rest”

 You don’t need to work out every day to be healthy – and you might have the time for a daily fitness session, anyway. But you can always incorporate “active rest” into your life. Active rest refers to gentle forms of exercise and physical activity that don’t require you to exert yourself. Doing yoga, stretching and going for long walks both qualify!

 

Boost Your Step Count

If you spend most of your day working at a desk, you might be wondering how to increase your step count. After all, walking more throughout the day can help you stay in shape without feeling like you’re really working out! To achieve this, Active Goals recommends parking further away from your destinations, getting a treadmill for your home, hopping off the bus one stop early, or going for walks during phone meetings.

 

Try Meal Prepping

It’s tough to find time to cook during the workweek. Why not meal prep your favourite recipes on the weekends and store them in your fridge instead of trying to cook fresh meals every night? Choose recipes that will still taste great when frozen or refrigerated, and ensure you have plenty of storage containers!

 

Choose the Right Supplements

Sometimes, taking specific supplements can help you meet your nutritional needs or address mild health issues. However, it’s easy to think you need to take a large array of supplements to improve your quality of life. If you’re wondering which supplements are really worth it, you might want to check in with your doctor and order bloodwork.

You have the power to change your lifestyle and habits for the better. Furthermore, you don’t necessarily have to make major sacrifices along the way. By adopting some of these strategies, you can sleep soundly at night, get plenty of physical activity, and enjoy delicious, home-cooked meals any day of the week!

Photo via Pexels

Written by: Justin Bennett

 

 

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At Lean Body Training, we don’t subscribe to any one diet, as the client’s individual needs will dictate the direction we guide them towards.

However, what we’ve found over years of coaching is that our advice is nearly always rooted in these five key eating habits.

How closely the client must follow the plan depends on the client’s starting point and goal.

For example, a client who wants to get from 30% to 20% body fat will have a much ‘looser’ plan than a client looking to get from 12% to 8%, where a much tighter and more detailed plan must be accounted for.

Following these five habits, regardless of the goal won’t see you go far wrong and will keep you staying toned and healthy forever.

 

1. Eat every 3-4 hours

Whilst exact eating times are not so important, the key here is making sure you’re eating regular meals every day. Every 3-4 hours will generally work out to be 3-5 meals and snacks a day.

This habit is important in maintaining blood sugar levels, whilst also helping reduce food cravings and hunger. Staying satiated is absolutely essential for fat loss.

Eating way too little with large gaps in between meal times is a recipe for disaster, and opens up an ‘accidental’ binge waiting to happen. This first habit will prevent this.

 

2. Make sure every meal consists of lean protein

One of the most uncompromising rules we have with our personal training clients in Finchley is that every meal must contain a source of protein.

For the majority of clients who come to see us, their protein consumption is almost always inadequate.

Read More: Why Consuming Protein Helps You Lose Fat

If body composition changes in your physique are what you’re after, you must follow this habit. A simple rule to follow: For men, aim for 25-35g per meal, which is around 150g of cooked chicken breast. For women, aim for 20-30g per meal.

 

3. Eating vegetables with every meal

Everyone knows that eating vegetables is important, but why?

Here are a few main reasons:

1. Packed with vitamins and minerals

No supplement can replace real food. Eating a range of different vegetables is still best for making sure your vitamin and mineral requirements are met. It will also help with detoxification and suppression of inflammation around the body. So eating more vegetables will help you look younger.

2. Improves digestion

Vegetables (especially green vegetables such as broccoli) are typically high in water and fibre, which will help you keep it ‘regular’. This is more important if somebody is following a low-carbohydrate or low-calorie diet.

3. It keeps you feeling satiated

Satiety is something we keep mentioning. A sustainable diet is something you can see yourself doing a year from now. Staying satiated is the easiest way to stick to this, as it keeps you feeling fuller, prevents cravings and prevents any ‘outbreak binges’.

Vegetables provide this through their natural fibre content and overall high water content.

A guide to follow with vegetables is to make sure it covers at least a third of a plate with meals. If you’re on a low carbohydrate diet, increase this to half a plate of veg.

 

4. Consume Healthy Fats Daily

When comparing all the macronutrients, fats in our diets have got the worst reputation. It’s been linked to growing numbers of obesity, high cholesterol and heart disease.

While dispelling these myths goes beyond the length of this article, numerous studies have shown us that fat isn’t the bad guy to avoid.

If you want to live a balanced, leaner lifestyle, fats are essential nutrients for the body.

And here’s why:

1. Healthy fat plays an essential role in absorbing fat-soluble vitamins through the intestines. If you want the goodness from those veggies, you need fat in your diet.

2. Fat is needed to maintain cell membrane health. These surround every cell in the body, and their health of them is critically important in managing inflammation and metabolism.

3. Fat is essential in balancing hormones.

4. Fat is a great source of energy, especially on low-carb diets.

So What Are ‘Healthy Fats’?

It’s important to include a range of fats in your diet. Mono fats can be olive oil, avocado, and nuts as well as polyunsaturated fats; fish oil, and seeds, as these fats each, have their own role to play in the body. To make things simpler, add a source of these healthy fats a couple of times a day into your diet.

What we advise you to avoid are trans-fats in your diet, which are manufactured fats which we recommend avoiding as are strongly associated with a number of health complications.

 

5. Make sure the majority of carbohydrates are consumed around exercise.

Just like fats don’t make you fat, carbs aren’t evil either. While not an essential nutrient in the body, there are some clear metabolic benefits to eating carbs:

1. Fuels your workouts

Keeping some carbohydrates around your training times can boost performance, recovery and strength.

2. Increased muscle

After exercise, protein breakdown is at its highest level. Providing carbohydrates at this stage provides glycogen replenishment when you’re most sensitive. While some dismiss the window of opportunity that training provides, our experience with thousands of clients has been evident to us that consuming some carbohydrates post-workout can really help with building muscle tissue and losing fat.

3. There are two times in the day when we prefer to add carbohydrates to our meals or snacks: after training and some before bed. Put simply, carbs at night can help relax the body and improve the quality of sleep.

Good carbohydrate choices can include 1-2 cups of basmati rice, sweet potatoes, new potatoes or oats.

Meal plans, macronutrient targets and strict diet can have their time and place. When you really need to dial things are useful tools in creating radical body transformations.

However, to be able to keep your physique long-term, and make eating sustainable, we need to ingrain good and sustainable habits.

The five habits we’ve written in this article are what we find to mainly focus on habits to master in staying lean and healthy forever.

If you want to get expert training with nutrition planning to get you in the best shape of your life, enquire below and see how Lean Body Training can help achieve more learn more

 

 

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Some people get to a stage or a ‘wake-up call’ where their health is the reason they’ve decided they need to make a change.
 
Others may have lost control over time and put on more body fat than they are comfortable with.
 
They’ve gone past the point where a month of full-on training will pull them back.
 
They know that they will have to fully change their lifestyle if they want what’s best for themselves and those closest to them.
 
Many of those reading this article may be way off and ready to make any sort of change.
 
You say you want to start exercising and eating right, but you never really commit to making changes.
 
There’s also the type of person who makes one change in their lifestyle, like taking out a gym membership, joining a Bootcamp, signing up for a faddy diet, some even finding a personal trainer who will provide them with workouts, but not really change them or get results!
 
These routes are easier, they just involve turning up, doing the work and going home.
 
They’re also the routes that after some slight changes initially, leave people wondering why they have hardly anything to show for 2 months down the line and eventually slide back into their old ways.
 
People who change long term like many of our clients follow their tailored food plan without having to over-restrict their food choices which allows them to stay in shape, live a healthy life, enjoy certain treats and train hard with plan and structure.
 
Those who go on a ‘diet’ realize it comes to an end at some point, if you don’t put any habits in place, you’ll just drop straight back into your old eating patterns.
 
Why am I telling you this?
 
With well over 10 years of experience, I can safely say that I’ve consulted with nearly every type of person you can imagine. I know the difference between someone that says they want to change and those who actually make it part of their lifestyle and actually get the job done!
 
I wanted to write some points below as to why many struggles to make the change and what you can start doing about it:

1. The emotional or physical pain

that people are experiencing from being overweight and out of shape, just isn’t enough for them at that point in time to do anything about it.
 
What I mean is that most people have not reached a point where being out of shape or unhealthy is affecting their life.

2. The reward isn’t really enough for you. 

By this I mean the connection between being in shape, feeling great and the health benefits it brings.
 
If you start a training programme just because someone else pushed you to, or it’s something you think you should just do, you’ll soon see yourself falling off the wagon.
 
The reward for some people may be completing an event, simply achieving a specific weight goal, or sculpting a physique they haven’t had in years.

3. There is no space made in your life to change.

​​Most people say they want to get started and sound like a good idea but there’s no time for them to add in the work that’s needed to change.
 
Part of change involves moving things around if necessary and making space. Remember, the clocks ticking you have one body – look after it.

4. The people you spend most of your time with are in the same shape as you, this puts you in a comfort zone.

Try challenging yourself by spending time with more people who are in shape and placing their health up high on their list of priorities. “Success breeds success” is a great saying, passed around in sports and other areas.
 
If you surround yourself with others who are doing well or striving for something, it rubs off on you and massively increases your chances of achieving your goals.
 
By doing this do you think you’ll be more likely to achieve your fitness goals?
 
Now just before I wrap up, have a read through some of these questions and see what you come up with.
 
1. Do you look in the mirror with your top off and are disappointed with the way your body looks?
 
2. If you are unhappy with how it looks, do you acknowledge that the way you look is a result of poor eating choices and an unhealthy lifestyle?
 
3. Would you be prepared to start changing the food that’s in your kitchen in order to get a result?
 
4. Are you prepared to prepare your meals ahead of time or then plan ahead of time to encourage better food choices?
 
5. Are you prepared to train at least 2-3 times per week consistently at a level of intensity?
 
6. Are you prepared to make an effort to get 7 hours of restful sleep each night?
 
Whilst these are six very simple questions, you can asses where you are in relation to being ready to change.
 
You may be thinking that some of the questions are quite harsh, but those that don’t follow even the basics are the ones always on a hamster wheel in search of results.
 
See how that goes for over a week, I bet you feel better by the end of it.
 
 
Coach Paul

 

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Do you ever experience hunger cravings? We can assure you that food cravings are not out of the ordinary! In fact, we’d say the majority of our clients and even us coaches have our vices! Whether it’s sweets, chocolate or greasy fast food, we believe the key to tackling cravings is to acknowledge, accept and manage them.

We hope to give you some answers and actionable measures in this article to what we believe is key to tackling food cravings throughout the day.

1. Keep on top of the crave

This can be surprising, but rather than just saying fight the craving, usually we suggest first accepting it. If you rely on willpower alone to get you through, then you may fall short and ultimately feel bad for not keeping to it.

Instead, we recommend resisting the craving for just 30 minutes. Don’t immediately give in to your craving, but agree that you will have it for a small amount of time.

Regardless, you’ve removed the sense of failure that would come from giving in. Plus 50% of the time, the feeling will pass and you can carry on!

2. Understand your hunger

Once accepting that hunger and cravings are something of the norm, it’s then worth recognising whether it is really genuine hunger in the first place. Here’s what it could also be:

• Dehydration will cause signals to the brain that – including false hunger – something to ask yourself, are you drinking enough?
• Poor functioning and lack of quality sleep will influence blood sugar regulation – are you getting enough quality sleep?
• Good quality nutrition with lean protein intake is ideal when it comes to feeling satiated – are you eating enough lean proteins?

Why Consuming Protein Helps You Lose Fat

3. Feelings of restriction in your diet

A common mistake we see people make when trying to lose weight is removing their favourite foods from their diet. There’s a perception that these more desirable foods “will make you fat”.

This couldn’t be further from the truth! Anything that helps you remain consistent with your new eating habits is a keeper, not a drawback.

For most people, we see greater success when there is daily/ weekly food included in their programmed eating plan. For some, this could just be 2 squares of chocolate daily, for others it’s a weekly pizza.

If you implement some of the steps in this article, you should see huge improvements in the management of your cravings thus helping you to reach your physique goals, but making it all a little easier to manage.

Do you feel you need extra guidance with your nutrition to help you reach your goals? Why not consider group coaching with our personal training team? Click HERE to apply for small group coaching and to book your FREE consultation

 

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