Here are my five personal fitness rules. Stick with them at least 90% of the time to keep your body healthy and hot.
#1. Don’t eat just to eat. There is no place in your healthy lifestyle for mindless snacking. I’m talking about a tub of popcorn at the movies or a bag of chips in front of the TV. All the calories ingested from mindless snacking have to end up somewhere … and that somewhere is around your waist or on your thighs.
Snacks are fine when you are aware of how much you’re eating to balance it with the rest of your meals for the day.
#2. Stand (and walk) when possible. Have you heard the saying “sitting is the new smoking”? The idea is that a lifetime of sitting all day every day is as harmful to your body as smoking. Think for a moment about how much of your day is spent sitting.
You wake up and sit down for breakfast. You sit on the drive to work. You take the elevator up. You sit for most of eight hours at work. You take the elevator down. You sit on the drive home. You sit to eat dinner. You sit to watch TV.
That’s quite a bit of time spent sitting. Now imagine if you consciously stood for some of this time each day and took the stairs instead of the elevator. Over weeks and months, it really adds up in calories burned, muscles engaged and overall fitness and health.
#3. Avoid sugar. I might sound like a broken record about this one, but that’s OK, I’ll keep harping on this point until more people listen. Our bodies weren’t designed to ingest large amounts of sugar on a daily basis. When you regularly take in excess sugar, the results are always the same. You gain weight.
The tricky part is that sugar is all around us, so avoiding it takes real vigilance.
Start with your morning beverage of choice. Does it have sugar in it? Most of the beverages that are blended and brewed at coffee shops are simply vehicles for ingesting sugar. Find a beverage that you enjoy without any added sugar and stick with the rule of not drinking sugary beverages throughout your day.
#4. Keep dinner light. Who says that dinner should be the biggest and heartiest meal of the day? Instead, focus on enjoying light dinners that are centered around protein and veggies and avoid starches and carbs in the evening.
#5. Always exercise. How often do you brush your teeth? Do you sometimes take a few weeks or months off brushing your teeth? Um, no. That’s gross. You brush your teeth every day as an ongoing habit because you know that the benefits outweigh the slight inconvenience.
Exercise only truly works when you do it as an ongoing habit because you know that the benefits outweigh the slight inconvenience. It’s part of keeping you healthy. It’s part of who you are.
Fred Sassani is the founder of Bodies By Design in Pflugerville. a nationally certified personal trainer and a nutrition specialist with over 20 years of experience. For more information about Bodies By Design. visit bbdforlife.com.