Keeping Healthy

We all know we should do our best to get and stay healthy, by eating the “right” things and exercising regularly.

However, we’re also human, and sometimes eat the “wrong” things, and skip an exercise session.

This is fine – we shouldn’t obsess over a lapse in our diet or exercise plan, as long as it’s not sustained.

Of course, it depends on where you’re starting from – if you have a large amount of weight to lose, you probably do need to be strict with yourself to achieve your goal.

If you are not particularly overweight but you’re trying to tone up or build muscle, you need to be regular with your exercise plan.

If you’re trying to lose a bit of weight for a special occasion or holiday, depending on how much time you have before the event, again, you need to be focused.

Some people lose weight or achieve their fitness level for an event, then go back to their previous lifestyle. They regularly yo-yo between healthy living and not healthy living, which isn’t great.

It is difficult to be “good” all the time but if in general you can maintain a healthy lifestyle, you will feel better in the long run.

If you spend years being overweight and unfit, as you get older it becomes harder to lose the weight. Your joints that have been under stress for all those years find it difficult to cope with exercise and you are likely to have mobility issues in later life. So it makes sense to make a change as soon as you can.

It doesn’t have to be a rigorous work out or an extremely restrictive diet, in fact a slower weight loss over a longer period has been shown to help keep weight off in the longer term. Rather than “going on a diet”, change your lifestyle to incorporate healthy eating and regular exercise. In the longer term you will feel better and will notice other benefits such as better sleep, feel more active and have more energy.

Build treats into your diet so that you don’t feel deprived of the foods you love, maybe have a smaller portion of that treat and it will be enough to satisfy any craving you may have. As long as you create a calorie deficit, you should lose weight.

There are apps available to track your food intake and your exercise level, and also your sleep pattern. At first this may seem like hard work but until you know exactly what you’re eating and how many calories you’re consuming, you won’t know how much you can eat to expect to lose weight. You probably will be surprised at how many calories there are in certain foods.

Because we all lead busy lives, it can be easy to just grab something to eat without thinking if it’s nutritional or healthy. By planning ahead, making sure you always have the right things in your fridge or cupboard, you shouldn’t go far wrong. Batch cooking when you have the opportunity can also be useful for those days where you’re short on time.

One of us here at Reverse, Jordan, has been using a fitness coach to build muscle, and he recommended a fitness app to use for this purpose. The coach was able to track Jordan’s progress, monitor his calories and protein intake and make suggestions as to how he could achieve his goals.

To build muscle you need more protein, and as a vegan, this was probably more challenging for Jordan than a carnivore. By using the app, Jordan and his coach could see the improvement week by week.

You may not want to build muscle, but the principle is the same – monitor your food intake and weight and adjust your diet to achieve the weight loss required. A professional coach makes it easier for you and can advise where you’re going wrong if things aren’t working for you, but you may not be in a position to employ one. However, there are many sources of advice where you can find out for yourself, it will just take a bit more effort on your part.

A member of staff of our sister company has recently embarked on the Keto diet. He is quite overweight and decided to do something about it.

I said earlier that a minor slip up doesn’t ruin your whole diet, but this doesn’t apply to the Keto diet, which restricts the amount of carbohydrates you eat to a very low level. Your body usually gets its energy from carbohydrates, but if it can’t, it will turn to the stored fat in your body, after a period of 3-4 days. The diet restricts your carbohydrate intake to 50gms per day, so careful planning and monitoring is essential.

If you exceed the 50gm limit, then the body starts to get its energy from the carbohydrates again, and you then have to start to restrict your intake again and begin the 3-4 day process again.

Our staff member has lost 25 pounds (over 11 kgs) in a couple of months and the weight loss is noticeable. His breathing isn’t as laboured as it was, his knees ache less and he feels better all round.

He has a goal of his ideal weight and is continuing with the keto diet to achieve this. His plan will then be to exercise a bit more so that he can eat a few more carbs without all the monitoring and planning. He doesn’t plan to go back to the weight he was and to have to cope with the difficulties that went with it.

Of course, there are many diets to choose from, but the over-riding fact is you need to change your lifestyle, and not to continue to yo-yo diet and exercise infrequently.

Taking regular progress pictures can help to keep you motivated. Weight can fluctuate so much and relying on the scales alone as a measure of progress can be disheartening so a visual reminder of how far you’ve come can be just as useful.

And there are even more ways to exercise, it doesn’t have to be boring, just choose an activity that you enjoy. It could be running, walking, swimming, going to the gym, pilates or yoga, a team sport or a game of tennis - whatever you enjoy.

I include myself in all of this, by the way, I’m not overweight and follow a plant-based diet so I have no worries in that respect, but I know I don’t take enough exercise. I’m not an expert but know enough to write this article – and am making plans to improve my core strength and overall fitness.

Having declared this in public I will now have to follow through with the plan – maybe I’ll keep you updated of my progress!

Tessa at Reverse said “I have found that once I changed my mindset from not only working out to lose weight, look good and feel better, to also working out for my mental health, this helped me to stop being so disheartened when the number on the scales didn’t move each week. Almost felt like it wasn’t all for nothing, at least if I didn’t lose anything it still made me feel good mentally because of the endorphins etc.”

And Lisa here at Reverse lost quite a bit of weight without much effort when deciding to follow a plant-based diet. It naturally followed therefore that her risk of diabetes reduced.

So there are several reasons for improving your health and it’s never too soon or too late to start changing that lifestyle.

I recently heard a quote which applies here:

“You don’t need to be great to get started, you just need to get started to be great”

And to use another quote, “every journey starts with a step” – so take that first step.

Good luck on your journey.