Keeping fit plays an important role in your overall health and wellbeing. We have teamed up with two fitness experts from PureGym, Tom Foulds and Pippa Ranee. Read on to find out their top fitness tips!
Are you struggling to stick to your fitness plan? Sticking with it but not seeing the results you’re after? With little time to spare, long working hours, and tight budgets, it’s easy to turn to shortcuts. Have you ever done an extreme detox? Skipped meals? Tried weight loss tea?
All of these are considered crash diets; methods of losing weight with short term results, but they are not sustainable. There is no shortcut to fat loss, but there is truth to the statement “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!”
Staying healthy is a combination of eating the right things and doing the right activities, as often as possible. Here are some of our tips to help maintain your fitness regimen and avoid succumbing to temptation!
Make informed choices – try to opt for healthy snacks wherever possible, for example choosing fruit or yoghurts over sweets, chocolates and crisps wherever you can.
Keep a food diary – there are a variety of free fitness apps available for smartphones to keep track of what you’re eating, including MyFitnessPal. This app even has a barcode scanner which makes inputting the food you have eaten that day even easier!
Clear your home of temptation – this means removing all cakes, chocolate and sweets that call your name in the middle of the night, including that six month old pack of biscuits hiding in the cupboard.
Food prep – measuring out your portions and preparing your food in advance can have a major effect on helping you to control your food intake. The British Heart Foundation has a good portion guide to help you along.
Present your food – although it won’t alter the taste or amount, try to make your food look nice, and even take a photo. In general, the more colours there are, the better, as your vitamin and mineral content is likely to be higher with plenty of colour on your plate.
Think broadly – there are 168 hours in the week; 7 hours out of that to do exercise is nothing! An hour a day in the gym is all it takes – this could be a workout with weights, a cardiovascular session or a couple of classes.
Home exercises – if you don’t have a gym membership, here is a little fat-burning workout which you can perform in your own home, and it lasts around 30 minutes.
In terms of the exercises being performed, resistance work is essential. Resistance work is any exercise which causes your muscles to contract, which will increase muscle strength and tone. Try to use your larger muscle groups, in particular your legs, back and chest, in order to maximise the calories being metabolised.
Warm Up
This should take around five minutes and involves doing a mixture of the following:
*Jumping jacks
*Heel flicks
*Jogging on the spot
*High knees
Bodyweight Resistance Circuit
10 repetitions of each exercise, with 30 seconds rest between, repeated five times each:
*Squats
*Press ups (on toes or knees)
*Back extensions
*Lunges
*Sit-ups
High Intensity Tabata
This is again designed to target as many muscle groups as possible. Start with one of the exercises listed below; then do 20 seconds of activity followed by 10 seconds of rest. Repeat, then head on to the next exercise, again doing 20 seconds of activity followed by 10 seconds of rest. Doing all four exercises twice, including rest periods, should take exactly four minutes:
*Mountain climbers
*Toe taps
*Burpees
*Squat jumps
Cool Down
*Walk round the room for a couple of minutes to return your cardiovascular system back to normal
*Stretch the areas of your body which you worked to allow for better recovery, allowing you to go again tomorrow!
This is just a little something to get you started from the team down at PureGym. If you have any questions please pay us a visit! To find out more about PureGym, and to find out where your nearest gym is, click here.