Tips for falling in love with exercise

Tips for falling in love with exercise

I always encourage people to work out for better health. I believe that everyone should be physically active regardless of body size.  One thing though, I didn’t like exercise up until a few months ago and am sure that I am not the only person who has exercised for a day then took seven months rest. It goes without saying that health benefits of exercise go beyond looking good. Exercise is the one regimen that helps with all lifestyle diseases and general well being but how do I get to the part where I actually like it enough to make it part of my lifestyle is the question for many people.

Know where to start

If you are now making the decision to start exercising, start at a level that is not so hard but also make it challenging enough to get results. If you have health complications, see your doctor before you start and look for a trainer who knows what he/she is doing. If you would rather workout at home, do enough research before you decide what workouts to do. 

Bring intention to your workouts

Know why you are exercising; and when you feel like you just can’t do it anymore, remember why you started.  Setting attainable goals is the best way to know what you want.

 Fight through the first few weeks. Forming a good habit is not easy; just keep at it till you get to the point where you look forward to exercising.   

Look the part

I don’t know about you but cute workout clothes really make me look forward to my next workout. Make sure that your workout clothes are comfortable and appropriate for easy movement.

Get a partner

Good thing about having a workout buddy is that the day you really don’t want to work out is the day he/she will be super motivated and vice versa and so he/she will get you up and moving. If you cannot get a partner to physically work out with you, make good use of technology. Call and text each other to make sure you keep each other in check. With a work out buddy who is far, you also have to be true to yourself because lying to him/her will not bring you results. Just make sure that your workout buddy is as committed as you are or more.

Have a routine

Working out at a particular time helps build a routine. Make it flexible enough so it doesn’t feel like you are a slave but routine enough to form a habit that is easy to maintain.

Celebrate your victories

This motivates you to keep working out. Just don’t celebrate by taking a month off.

Make it fun

Listen to music or audio books if they make it more fun for you. If you are a social person, get into group activities and mix activities up to keep it interesting.

Do what works for you

As much as you have to make sure that you mix up your workouts, pick what you enjoy doing. Forcing yourself to do workouts you hate will just frustrate you and make you hate exercise. This, however doesn’t mean that you stick to what you can already do in you sleep. Try out new things and remember to include:

v  Aerobic/cardio

Aerobic activities include walking, jogging, cycling, jumping rope, swimming, kickboxing, using the treadmill, aerobic dancing etc. The whole point is to raise your heart rate and ultimately burn fat as you strengthen your heart muscles.

v  Strength/resistance training

These are the kinds of exercises that build your muscles. They also increase your ability to perform daily activities. Most women stay away from strength training because they are afraid of getting big and looking like men but the chances of you looking like a man are nil. For you to look like a man you would have to have put in a lot of work and have high levels of testosterone,  hormone found in abundance in men and in very little amounts in women so quit worrying and get some strength.

v  Flexibility training

This includes stretching exercises. Pre and post workout stretches are ignored but they are important for keeping the body flexible, relaxing muscles and protect you from physical injury. If you want to stretch some more, try out yoga.

Eat healthy

You cannot out exercise a bad diet so if you want to see results, make sure that your diet is not pulling down all the work you are putting in at the gym.

Drop the guilt

If you miss a work out or a day don’t beat yourself up. It takes time to get the rhythm. Just try the next day.

Remember that to make it a lifestyle you have to fall in love with it and so aim for healthy outcomes rather than focusing on size. It is also advisable to do workouts and diets you can maintain for life to form lifestyle habits.

Beauty tips everyone should have

One of the things that make us beautiful is our skins. If you are like me, you have probably tried a lot to get that smooth and youthful skin with a glow. Am assuming that most of them failed and that is why you tried another one and then another one till you decided to stick with the one that left least damages.

Skin care products are so expensive and they don’t give you half of what the labels promise. Am not saying that they are all bad, though I am yet to find one that works for me, but I believe that whether you are using them or not there are some things you still have to do for beautiful skin.

First and foremost, our skin is made beautiful from the inside out. Makeup will hide the blemishes but for truly gorgeous skin you have to eat and drink well. Our skin rejuvenates every 35 days and that means that what you eat this month will show on your skin next month. 

Almost all women have tips to keep their skin looking young and beautiful so I will just be adding to the list. If you don’t already have one, welcome to womanhood. Men have skin too and if you are a man and find any of this useful I am happy to help.

Drink enough water. 8 to 12 glasses of water is good for your skin. Water is the substance that helps you flush all the toxins out and takes all the good nutrients and oxygen to your skin. It also prevents premature aging and makes your skin appear fuller. If you drink coffee or alcohol, you need to drink more water because the two make you lose water and dehydrate you.

Eat foods rich in antioxidants. Oxidants make the skin look old and that is why we eat antioxidants to counteract the oxidants. Foods rich in antioxidants include berries, oranges, broccoli, spinach, melons, tomatoes and basically most fruits and vegetables.

Avocados are a good source of biotin; they help to prevent dry skin and brittle hair and nails. When applied on the skin, they can hydrate parched skin.

Green tea's high on the list of skin-friendly beverages. Aim for four cups throughout your day.

Tomatoes are a very good source of lycopene. An antioxidant found in foods with the tomato red color.  Besides being a great source of the antioxidant lycopene, tomatoes are also high in carotenoids (also antioxidants) and Vitamin C which help slow down cellular damage from free radicals meaning that it makes your skin look youthful.

Protein helps repair cells that have suffered free radical damage. Eggs are a good source of protein. They also contain biotin, an essential vitamin that protects against dry skin.

Do not scorch your skin. A very hot shower feels good in the morning or when it’s cold but that may not be good for your skin. The hot water strips the essential oils off your skin and cause a mild burn. When you are in your twenties it might be hard to notice it but as you grow older the damage is more pronounced.

Get enough sleep. Like the rest of your body, your skin rejuvenates when you are asleep. Do yourself a favor and get enough sleep. It worked for sleeping beauty and it works for real humans too.

Clean your makeup brushes. Makeup brushes and sponges harbor so much bacteria that could make your face keep breaking. Keep them clean and if possible, don’t share them.

Apply sunscreen if you need to. If you have African skin you are lucky as you have enough melanin to help protect you from the Ultra Violet rays but if you feel that the sun is being hard on you, apply some sunscreen. If you can get your hands on natural sunscreen like Shea butter that’s even better.

Avoid touching your skin unnecessarily. Our hands get dirty from all the surfaces we touch and if we touch our faces we just end up transferring all the bacteria to our faces making the skin break out some more. And on that note, sanitize your phone with wet wipes regularly to make sure that it does not spread any bacteria to your face.

Be gentle on your face. When washing your face, remember that it is gentle and you do not have to scrub it like you do the heel of your foot to get it clean. Use mild products and scrubbers or whatever works for you. Coarse brushes and heavy duty cleansers just strip off your essential oils and hurt your face.

Do not sleep with makeup on. This point is so important it should have been the headliner. Makeup and dirt on skin clog pores making your skin break out more.  A doctor at the Yale School of Medicine says that most makeup contains a sugar-type molecule that can grow yeast overnight so no matter how tired you feel, just remove your makeup before you sleep.

Are All Calories Equal?

Are all calories equal?

We all need six categories of nutrients to function as humans namely carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and water. There are so many sources of these nutrients but are they all equal?

Just like most of the things in the world, there are high quality and low quality foods. With sheets, this is calculated in form of thread count, pixels with cameras and if I am not so wrong I believe that its horse power in cars.

With food, we use nutrient density. This refers to the amount of nutrients in a particular food as compared to the amount of calories you get from the same food. Nutrient dense foods give you the most nutrients for the fewest amount of calories. Let me put it this way, in three meals a day, we can only eat so much food. Our bodies need to get carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals daily from those three meals. We need to therefore eat foods that will provide all the above and still be within the caloric range we are supposed to consume in a day. If for example you drink 500ml soda, you will get like 210 calories and no minerals or vitamins, no proteins, no fat, no fiber, just sugar. A medium potato on the other hand would have all the nutrients on the image below.

This means that a potato is nutrient dense and the soda is calorie dense in that it gives you most calories and fewer nutrients.

There are however foods that are high in calories but very good for you. A good example is avocados.

You can get 26% of your daily Vitamin K needs from an average size avocado, 20% of your daily Folate needs, 17% daily Vitamin C, 14% of your daily Potassium, 14% of your B5 Vitamin, 13% Vitamin B6, and 10% of the daily vitamin E needs. It also contains small amounts of Magnesium, Manganese, Copper, Iron, Zinc, Phosphorous, Vitamin A, B1 (Thiamine), B2 (Riboflavin) and B3 (Niacin).

Avocados do not contain any cholesterol or sodium, and are low in saturated fat. This is a very good deal for 160 calories.

I cannot breakdown the calories and nutrients of all foods in this article but I can help you choose nutrient dense food with the following guidelines;

v  For carbohydrates, try and choose those high in fiber. This includes whole grain breads commonly referred to as brown breads, sweet potatoes, oats, brown pasta, brown rice, all kinds of legumes (beans, peas, lentils etc) and yes beans are also a good source of carbohydrates and pumpkins. The above examples of carbohydrates are referred to as complex carbohydrates. This means that they take longer to be digested and absorbed. They are also packed with fiber, vitamins and minerals.

v  Stay away from processed foods which includes anything made with white wheat flour, anything made in a factory like biscuits, cookies, cakes, added sugars and am sure that by now you get the picture. These are simple carbohydrates which means that they are quickly digested and absorbed into the blood stream. Most of them don’t include the vitamins and minerals that the complex carbohydrates carry and they definitely don’t come with fiber. If you can’t help but buy factory made carbohydrates, stay away from those with the words bleached, processed or refined on the package.

v  With proteins, choose those that are lean which means that they have less fat. Trim the fat off your meat, remove the skin on your chicken, do not over do with eggs, and remove the cream from your milk. Plant proteins like beans are generally healthy and when choosing fish make sure that they are low in impurities like mercury. Pick yogurt that is high in calcium and when craving ice-cream, just freeze yogurt and enjoy.

v  Choose fats that are plant based like olive oil and the many liquid oils we have in the market. Seeds and nuts are also good sources of fats and proteins but do not over do them if your goal is to lose weight.

v  Fruits are good sources of vitamins and minerals. Do remember that fruits count as calories and if you have a food record, include them as well.

v  Vegetables are generally very low in calories and nutrient dense. They are the one food group that you should go all crazy with.

A very good friend of mine asked me how people gain weight by eating carbohydrates. My answer is; you can definitely gain weight by eating the wrong kinds of carbohydrates. You could also gain weight by eating good carbohydrates in large amounts. Carbohydrates should account for about 45% - 65% of our daily caloric needs to fuel our bodies, and brains but almost all of the extra carbohydrates we eat are stored as fat and which will cause weight gain. 

Here is the thing with complex carbohydrates, they have fiber. They take time to be digested and absorbed into the blood stream which keeps you fuller for longer, making you eat less.

 Simple carbohydrates make your blood sugar levels go up very quickly. Insulin is then released to take care of all the blood sugar and then when all of it has been cleared from the blood, in a very short amount of time, you get so hungry and you have to eat again. Research shows that simple sugars aka processed sugars suppress your immunity by lowering the ability of your white blood cells to engulf bacteria. We also know that they cause tooth decay, hyperactivity and low cognitive (brain) performance. So, friend, choose complex carbohydrates and remember to eat what your body needs then save the rest for the next day.

All the best as you try and choose better foods from all of the food categories.