5 Ways to Get Fit on a Budget

Getting fit can sometimes be a financial burden to many people – or at least, that’s what they think. We often hear how good, clean foods are most expensive and we know a gym membership, personal training and equipment is sometimes out of our price range.

At times, price is used as an excuse, but if you’re serious about achieving your fitness goals, then you won’t allow anything to stand in your way. You can achieve any fitness goal you set for yourself on any type of budget – big or small.

Build a Home Gym on the Cheap

Getting a gym membership can be costly. If there’s not a cheap gym near you, you can be paying quite a bit of money per month to have access to the gym. Even then, it may not be a 24 hour gym, so you have to work with their hours to get your workout in on time.

Building a home gym saves you a lot of money in the long run, but it doesn’t have to be expensive at the start anyway. People are sometimes put off by home gyms because the equipment can get expensive if you buy it new.

Things like treadmills can cost hundreds of dollars, and weightlifting machines can cost even more. Gyms can afford them because they have hundreds of people paying for memberships, but you’re just one person.

Instead of buying all of your equipment new, look towards the secondhand market. It’s not uncommon for people to sell exercise equipment or even give it away because they’ll try to build up a home gym and then give up on it, leaving them with these items that are taking up space.

You can find all kinds of essentials using websites like eBay or Craigslist, and usually for a much better price than you’d find brand new. It’s also important that you don’t buy equipment that you don’t need.

Certain things like machines that drive up the cost of a home gym aren’t really necessary if you can learn how to do those exercises with free weights - meaning things like dumbbells and barbells.....

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5 Ways to Burn Fat in 2020

When it comes to looking good and feeling great, fat is the ball and chain that can derail those efforts. You can work out and tone the muscles in your stomach, for example, but unless you burn the fat on top of it, no one will see those six pack abs.

There are many ways to burn fat, but you need to find something that works well for you – something that’s easy for you and that you enjoy so you can have some consistency with it.

Use Cardio to Fight Fat Quickly

The main goal of most people’s fitness is to simply lose weight. Many people today are overweight, and it’s almost always due to the amount of fat they keep on them. There are plenty of options out there that you can use in order to fight fat and get yourself back to looking thin, but the most common one is certainly cardio.

In just about any gym you go into, you’ll find that they have rows and rows of cardio equipment. Whether it be treadmills, ellipticals, stair climbers, or anything else, they’ll have cardio machines there because they’re in high demand.

Running and other forms of cardio are fantastic both for burning off fat and making your heart healthier and more efficient. The reason it’s called cardio is that it’s a shortened version of the term “cardiovascular,” meaning something related to the heart.

Your cardiovascular health is your heart health, for example. When you run and do cardio, your heart rate goes up, and practicing that with consistency over a period of time means that your heart will continue to get stronger and stronger, with increased blood flow and an overall healthier body.

Cardio helps you fight fat by using up stored sources of energy to keep you going as you get tired. Your body uses two different things for energy. First, it uses carbohydrates, or carbs for short..

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5 Ways to Build Muscle Mass in 2020

There’s a big difference between toning up and becoming muscular. Building muscle mass takes just as much effort, commitment and patience as losing weight does. Many people think it’s only a matter of doing repetitions, but it’s more than that.

There are some specific strategies you can incorporate into your fitness routines to help you build muscle mass and bulk up to whatever level you want. It might be just filling your frame out a bit, or really bulking up to a larger-than-life level.

Add Calories You Can Turn into Muscle

Most people’s fitness goals are centered around losing weight, because it’s very common to have excess fat nowadays. However, there are plenty of people who are actually a bit underweight, and could benefit greatly from putting on some pounds in the form of muscle.

In order to do that effectively, you might have to add some calories to your diet to promote better muscle growth. Just as your body can turn excess calories into fat, you can also turn them into muscle.

When you work out and feel sore afterwards, your body repairs itself using the nutrition from the food you eat in order to create stronger and larger muscles. Having the right nutrition and having enough nutrition is very important for this, because the wrong kinds of calories can leave you without the proper food you need to put on muscles.

Arguably the most important part of your diet for putting on muscles is protein. Proteins are the building blocks of your body, and you need plenty of them for your muscles. Obviously protein can be found in any form of meat, so that’s going to be the best initial option for you.

Clean sources of protein like chicken are a staple of many weightlifters’ diets, because they provide plenty of protein without things like grease, fat, and extra carbs. If you need a bit of an extra boost, there’s always protein shakes.....

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5 Hot Fitness Programs for 2020

If you’re trying to figure out which fitness program you should pursue in 2020 to achieve optimal health or another type of fitness goal, you’ll be happy to hear there are many options for you to consider.

Five of them are garnering a lot of attention among fitness professionals, their clients and regular gym attendants, making newcomers to the fitness game eager to see what’s at the top of their list. You can choose based on your personal preferences and your specific goals.

Bodyweight Exercises for Fitness

Whether you’re brand new to fitness or you’re a seasoned athlete or fitness buff, bodyweight exercises can be a great way for you to work out if you don’t have access to free weights or machines – or, if you don’t quite feel ready for them yet.

There are all kinds of bodyweight exercises, ranging from beginner to advanced, and you can really get a full body workout just from doing bodyweight work alone. To start on the easier side, for a good upper body workout you can do pushups.

They’re one of the most commonly known bodyweight exercises, but they do work. Depending on how you angle your arms, you can have a more chest intensive workout or a more triceps-intensive one.

You can also adjust your body’s angle relative to the floor to make it more or less difficult, depending on what you need. These can be done anywhere, so they make for a perfect upper body exercise using bodyweight.

When it comes to legs, squats are king. Many times you’ll see people doing them with crazy amounts of weight, but bodyweight squats have their purpose, too. By focusing on your form and not the amount of weight you’re using, bodyweight squats tend to help you gain the muscle memory you need while also still developing your legs quite a bit....

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Plan Your Summer Fitness Diet

With the impending arrival of summer comes the need to get into shape. You want to make sure you have your summer beach body ready when it’s time to have fun in the sun. To do that, you need to take action without another moment’s delay.

Consider Plans You Can Stick To

To have your beach body ready to go, you need to think about choosing a fitness diet plan that you can stick to. They’re not all the same and if you pick one that you find too hard, too boring or just isn’t doing the job for you, then you’re going to end up getting discouraged and abandoning it before you achieve your goals.

You’ll want to consider a few things when you’re trying to decide on a plan. Think about the amount of money that you have to invest in your fitness and diet. Some plans can be expensive, and you don’t want to start something you won’t be able to afford after a few weeks.

When considering what you can spend on your plan, you have to look at everything that goes along with it. Some of them might want you to buy supplement products or others might have you purchasing instructional videos.

Sometimes people think that if they spend a lot of money, it means the fitness plan will give them the exact beach body that they want. But keep in mind that expensive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option for you.

You also want to keep in mind any extra issues or constraints that you may have. If the plan has you eating a lot of foods that don’t go along with your particular needs, then it won’t work out.

For example, if the diet plan calls for a lot of fast paced workouts, but you’re still nursing an injury or you have a mobility limiting health problem, then that won’t work for you. You also want to factor in the convenience level for you.

If you’re someone who’s hard pressed for time and you’re always on the go, then choosing a plan that calls for making everything from scratch at home may not be the best selection for you.

If you don’t have time to make healthy food choices that can help get you the beach body you want, then you need the simplicity of having those meals readymade. When choosing a plan, you also have to consider if you’re good to handle it on your own or if you need more guidance.

Having someone in your corner to cheer you on and give you instruction through your fitness goals can be the difference between failure and success if you have a hard time going it alone.

To get the future beach body you want, you have to look back. Think over what you’ve done before. If you did something that was successful before, then consider trying that plan again.

But if you tried to lose weight and get fit in the past and it didn’t work out, then you need to know why. You don’t want history to repeat itself - not when summer is fast approaching.

If you had a fitness plan before and couldn’t stick with it, then examine why that happened. This will help you to avoid problems with a new plan. If your prior plan was too boring so you didn’t stick with it, then your beach body plan needs to offer you more variety.

Choosing a plan that you can stick to will help you achieve your beach body in time for summer. You want something you can commit to for several months at a time, so progress is on the horizon – not something you’ll walk away from shortly after you get started.

Be Careful Not to Sabotage Your Nutrition

When you want to lose weight so you can get into shape for summer, it can be tempting to take a few shortcuts. One of these shortcuts might be foregoing nutrition so that you drop the weight quickly.

Eating healthy to get the right nutrition is the best way that you can lose weight and get fit. You don’t want to hurt your health just for a few weeks’ worth of looking good. The best way to make sure you don’t sabotage your nutrition is to make sure that your eating plan is filled with foods that are nutritionally dense.

This means eating lean meats and including more fish or poultry while avoiding processed or fast food meats, which are full of chemicals. Keep your nutrition on course by choosing foods like leafy green vegetables and plenty of fresh fruits.

Give up eating foods that are packaged for convenience. These foods are high in salt, fat and just aren’t good for you. If something is a grab and go item, then it’s usually bad for your health.

That means you should stay away from those. Let go of empty calories. You’ll usually find those in beverages like sodas. Consider the carbs when you think about nutrition. You can drop your carbs and eat a low carb diet to get fit faster without undermining your health.

You might think that following a quick fit plan would be best, but anything that involves you not eating healthy is not good for your body. Especially if it’s a fad diet. Fad diets rob you of nutrition and can be extremely dangerous.

To get the beach body you want, you have to protect your nutrition. Any plan that severely limits your food intake, or has you skipping meals might not be one that’s best for you.

There are plenty of diets you can follow to obtain a beach body. The ones that focus on good nutrition, filling meals, healthy snacks and steady weight loss will help you lose weight the right way – and keep it off.

Most of the low carb diets, diets for diabetics or diets for people with heart health issues are great to follow. Some people choose to follow a low fat diet, but you want to be careful with these kinds of diets.

Low fat doesn’t necessarily equal nutritious. In fact, many of these eating plans have you eating a lot of carbohydrates found in foods that are known to cause health problems.

When you’re ready to choose an eating plan, look for one that gives you three meals or five to six smaller ones per day. Make sure that snacks are part of the menu. You’ll want to ignore any kind of weight loss plan that sounds too good to be true.

Pick a Plan That Targets Your Trouble Areas

While you can choose from a selection of different diets, it’s always best to choose one that’s customizable to whatever your personal needs are. Some people struggle with getting their tummy in shape.

Other people have a problem with bloating. You might have inflammation that causes you to struggle. Pick a plan that can deal with that. Your summer fitness diet should be one that targets the areas you have the most trouble with.

If you do that, then you’ll have greater success. If you’ve been having trouble getting your tummy in shape and it’s been making you wonder if you’ll ever get the beach body that you want, rest assured that there is a way to deal with that.

While it can sometimes appear that you might have a lot of abdominal fat, that might not be the case. Sometimes, just eating the wrong foods can cause your stomach to pooch out.

You might feel like you’ve gained weight in that area. If that sounds like what you’re dealing with, then you might be having a problem with abdominal bloating. This can happen whether you’re a man or a woman and the older that you get, the more likely it is that a sagging or protruding tummy is connected to bloating.

This can be caused by eating certain foods - especially foods that are high in fiber. Your stomach pooch might be caused by eating beans or broccoli, by having dairy products and even certain fruits such as apples.

Choose a summer fitness diet that avoids consumption of foods that are known to cause bloating. If you do this, you’ll notice a marked improvement. For people who struggle with tummy fat that’s not caused by bloating, you’ll want to focus your diet plan on eating foods that are known to promote a slimmer stomach, thanks to their minerals or insulin leveling ability.

Some of these are foods like bananas, green tea, yogurt and avocados. Having a problem with inflammation in the body can cause you to have all sorts of fitness issues including bloating, swelling throughout the body, fatigue and more.

To beat inflammation, choose a healthy diet that’s anti-inflammatory. While a diet that’s anti-inflammatory won’t heal a condition, what it does is it limits your body’s reaction to inflammatory triggers.

The fewer inflammatory foods you eat, the less your body has to deal with the side effects caused by certain foods. This means fewer painful reactions in addition to eating healthy.

Because the anti-inflammatory diet is considered healthy and lower in calories and carbs, you will lose weight and trim your shape. It kills two birds with one stone – pain relief and weight loss.

Save Money Shopping for Plan Foods

Having a food plan can help you discover how you can eat nutritionally balanced meals and still get a summer beach body. Though there are dozens of food plans available for you, when it comes to saving money when shopping for plan foods, the steps you’ll take are the same for each of the different plans.

You might think that you can’t afford to buy the foods on a fitness diet plan, but it’s actually easier and less expensive than you think. Contrary to what some believe, you don’t have to eat only organic foods and you don’t have to buy everything fresh.

You do want to eat lean meats and you do want to have plenty of fruits and vegetables as most plans suggest. But you can buy these in a different section of the store rather than from the fresh meat counter or the produce section.

When it’s time to shop for your plan foods, take a look in the freezer section. You’ll find a big selection of foods that are listed on your plan. There’s a mistaken belief that if a food is frozen, then it’s not as good for you as buying it from the other sections, but that’s simply not true.

If you’ll read the packages, you’ll see that most frozen foods are the best of the pick and aren’t prepared with chemicals. You just get the vegetable or the fruit. But best of all, you spend a whole lot less.

For the cost of two fresh apples, you can get an entire week’s worth of apple slices for your menus. You can choose a bag of frozen green beans that will keep for a month or longer versus fresh ones that keep a week, if that.

Besides the frozen area, don’t forget the canned goods. You might assume that foods in a can aren’t as good for you as fresh foods, but that’s not true either. The majority of canned fruits or vegetables don’t contain anything extra.

All you have to watch out for is to make sure the food isn’t packaged with anything that adds calories such as gravies or syrup. You can make canned healthy foods last longer than fresh foods and they’re just as good for you nutritionally.

You’ll spend less money, the food won’t spoil as quickly and you’ll be able to stick to your fitness plan. When you buy frozen or canned healthy foods, it can be easier to make what you need and freeze the rest so you get the added convenience of having already prepared foods that you simply thaw out and use.

Even if you’re one person, it’s cheaper to buy meat in family size portions. You can divide these up into individual recipe portions and freeze them. When shopping for meat on your fitness diet plan, make sure you keep an eye out for sales. Most stores will put meat on sale after a holiday event.

Should You Go Delivery or Start from Scratch?

The kind of effort you’ll have to put into what you eat will depend on the diet plan that you choose. You can find some of them that will bring the food right to your front door.

But in other plans, you’ll be the one doing all the work.

So how do you know which one is the right plan for you? Look at the pros and cons for both. With a delivery diet service, you don’t have to spend any time shopping for the food.

You don’t have to make it to the grocery store when you’re tired. Your food is just there when you need it. Delivered food is nutritionally sound. All the guesswork is done for you.

Plus, if you need something extra because you have a health issue or you have strict food preferences, those are taken care of for you. You won’t have to spend time in the kitchen after the meal washing dishes or loading the dishwasher.

The food comes in disposable packages. When you use a delivery service, you get a lot of healthy choices. The person preparing the meals makes sure that the foods that you eat are going to offer you tons of different options.

You’ll get fruits and vegetables galore. The calories will be figured for you. No more wondering if you’re dieting right. You’ll know that you are. On the other hand, there are some cons to using a delivery service.

They can be extremely expensive. You won’t always enjoy the foods that you get because while you have choices, these aren’t unlimited. Some of the options might be foods you’ve never heard of and just aren’t what you’d prefer.

Sometimes there can be a lot of repeat foods. If there’s a problem with your order, you might not have the food that you want when you need it. There is a risk of the food spoiling if it’s not delivered to you at the right temperatures.

You sometimes have to arrange to be home when the food is delivered. You can choose to make your diet foods yourself when you’re following some plans. The pros to doing this are that you always get to pick exactly what you want.

You can make sure that the foods are ones you know you like. You can make your diet meals bigger so that you end up having leftovers to take for lunch or to use to create another meal.

It’s much cheaper to buy and prepare your own foods than it is to pay a delivery service.

But the cons are that when you’re tired, it’s easier to skip making a healthy meal at home and stop for fast food or order take out.

When you’re lacking time, you can find yourself just throwing things into the shopping cart so you can get done with the grocery shopping. What you pay for when you use a delivery service is the convenience - and you just have to decide if the cost is worth it to you.

Planning your summer fitness diet is something that requires consideration for your personal preferences, your budget, your available time and most importantly – its ability to help you achieve your goals.

You might need to lose weight or you might already be at or near your goal weight, but want to get started on a plan that will help you tone your body and build muscle, so you’ll want to pick a plan that caters to your needs and isn’t something generalized for the masses.

Nutrition for Fitness

Losing weight usually begins in most people’s minds with them figuring out when and where to start exercising and being more active. In reality, the first place they should be looking is in the kitchen

It’s this room of the house that will determine your progress when it comes to achieving your most pressing fitness goals of losing weight. For some people, exercising alone will do next to nothing when it comes to seeing results on the scale, if their diet is very poor.

A few others could get away with a little bit of progress if they have better nutrition. Even those who saw a little bit of progress just from added exercise, will eventually realize that sooner or later they will have to change what they eat and drink if they want to continue making progress.

There are many approaches - both extreme and easier methods - to adapt healthier eating habits. Before even beginning any exercise, this could be a great place to start when you begin to map out your weight loss and fitness goals.

A few important factors must be considered when creating a game plan for a new healthy lifestyle - such as your budget, mindset, support system, and body goals. Once you have closely looked at each of these four areas, you will have a better understanding of where you should begin to take your first step into a healthy lifestyle.

Keep in mind that your nutrition doesn’t just come into play when you’re talking about whittling your waist. It’s also fuel for the right kinds of workouts, so even if you’re at or close to your weight goal, you still need to be armed with the right nutritional advice to help you power through your workouts.

Nutrition for Lack of Control

Obesity is an ever-growing epidemic around the world, along with the disease and health implications that follow, and many of these cases can be chalked up to very little self-discipline.

Willpower is one of the most important aspects of achieving the body you want. Unfortunately, it’s also what most people blame whenever they fail to accomplish their goals.

There are occasions where weight gain is situational - such as hormones, stress, medical conditions and medications. However, even these factors can be reduced with effort.

Trying to begin a diet or healthy habits can be a challenge to anyone with little control over moods or cravings towards foods, so it’s important to start small, and begin training your mindset.

A great place to start is to throw out or hide larger sized plates, cups, and bowls, and replace them with smaller to moderate sized plates so that you can still fill them up with whatever you’d like.

Plates used to be 8-9 inches, and now, consumers purchase enormous plates that rival the large dinner portions found in restaurants. These portions are actually not single sized, but enough food for 3-4 people.

This approach slowly teaches us portion control, and this process can still take a few weeks to get used to. While adjusting to slightly smaller portions, put some time off to the side daily - even ten minutes - to consider your goals, barriers and solutions for any situation you might face down the road.

Listen or read motivating and uplifting encouragement over and over, ten minutes a day every day. These two tasks will get your body adjusted to smaller portions, and continue to train your brain’s all without zapping too much of your day worrying about what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, and all of the other factors that stress many people out, causing them to quit their diet after only a couple of days.

The idea here is to start slow and build momentum, because when momentum is built, it’s very difficult to stop. Once you have adjusted to smaller portions and have a healthier mindset than you used to, it’s time to add an extra step or two.

Maybe you choose drinking more water and walking for 30 minutes a day as your two additional steps. The power of a bunch of smaller tasks being completed will quickly stack up over the course of a few months.

Then you will be easily implementing healthier habits whereas others will try to everything all at once in a couple of days, causing them stress and defeat. Take your health journey one day at a time.

Stay committed to yourself, and focus on what happened today and what’s to come tomorrow, rather than sizing up a whole year and before you know it you will be unstoppable.

Nutrition for the Dedicated

Having the mental capacity to stick to a strict nutrition plan can greatly increase the speed at which you see results in your fitness progress. If this is your cup of tea, that’s great!

Now it’s just about finding where to begin and what steps to take to get you there. First, you have to realize exactly how many calories that you need to consume to gain or lose weight - depending on your goal.

To do this, there are many caloric intake calculators online for use free. However, there are some tests such as the Resting Metabolic Assessment that can be performed by professionals to find out specifically how many calories are required for your individual lifestyle.

Once you know exactly how many calories you should consume on a daily basis, it’s time to begin planning out how you would like to consume those calories. The calories for weight gain or loss will also be different, because you need to be at a 500 caloric surplus to gain lean muscle, while you need to be at a 500 caloric deficit to lose body fat.

If your goal is to just gain lean muscle mass, you will need to have a higher protein diet, and consume both carbs and protein before bed to help with recovery of muscle tissue after hard workouts.

However, if your goal is to lose weight, it is best to consume carbohydrates in the morning, eating a dinner mostly comprised of lean proteins and vegetables. Tracking calories is also crucial to sticking to a strict regimen for optimal results.

Tracking tools can be downloaded through apps on your phone, by using Excel spreadsheets or simply with a pen and paper. Whatever is going to help you remember to keep track of how many calories you consume for the day in the easiest and best way should be the method you pick.

If, at any point during your nutrition progress, you begin to fall off your program, seek professional help with an online or in person nutrition specialist or registered dietitian. These resources will help you stay on track and keep you accountable to your goals.

Staying accountable to goals can also be much easier with the help of meal prepping your calories out beforehand. Meal prepping, if done right, can take a matter of 30 minutes and you can prepare all of your lunches or dinners for the entire week - making it easier on you to keep track of your daily intake.

Planning your nutrition journey out thoroughly before even starting is the key to overcoming obstacles and barriers to ensure you have a plan to keep yourself accountable, too.

Supplementation and Nutrition

In a culture focused on fixing problems quickly and easier, billions of dollars are generated from the supplementation industry. What many people have a hard time understanding is that “supplementation” is simply meant to replace the missing gaps in your established nutrition plan – not replace food completely.

More of your dollars should be spent on wholesome foods rather than tubs of powder and bottles of vitamins. Having a better diet can go a longer way towards your health than a poorly regulated quick fix industry.

Not all vitamins and powdered supplements are bad, but many people spend too much money for the little benefits, if any, that they receive from supplementing. A great place to start when deciding which supplements to invest in is to look at what your current needs are.

Tracking your basic calories and macronutrients such as proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are a great way to figure out if there are any extra protein needs you might have. A good rule of thumb is to eat the number in grams of protein for every pound of your ideal bodyweight.

If your goal is to weigh 150, then try aiming for a daily intake of 150 grams of protein daily. It’s optimal to eat your protein if possible, but if eating 150 grams of protein is difficult to achieve, then supplementing with a protein powder is a great way to sneak in extra protein calories.

There are also symptom quizzes online that you can take to give you a better recommendation of whatever supplements are on the market to improve the way that you feel – or, better yet - a physician can make professional recommendations based on findings in your bloodwork.

Typically, the bulk of any supplements you may need will include a multivitamin, fish oils, and possibly a protein. Keeping costs low on supplements will allow you to budget for more important factors such as wholesome foods and exercise expenses such as home equipment or a gym membership.

Make sure that whatever supplements you do decide to invest in, they’re third party tested for purity, and be sure to look into the company reviews to make sure that the supplements come from a reputable source.

Habits, Not Quick Fixes

A much healthier way to ensure that you lose the weight and the weight stays off is to focus your energy on building small, healthy diet habits. There are an abundance of companies promoting quick weight loss in a matter of weeks.

However, many of them fail their consumers for a couple of reasons. First, a majority of people shopping for diet pills, promising fast weight loss programs and other lucrative advertisements are not mentally strong enough to maintain that regimen on their own.

Some of these products and services can be very taxing on your mental health, stress levels, and they can easily be compromised - which will cause a sense of defeat. Keto diets are a great example of these extreme programs that a majority of people start off strong with, but end up failing within a matter of a few weeks to months.

The second problem with promising programs is that they may actually work in the short term - but in the end, the consumer didn’t learn how to maintain that progress on their own.

Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and other programs are great at getting people to their results by limiting caloric intake, and creating nutrition plans for them. Shortly after the goal has been reached, or the program has been completed, a lot of people end up going back to their old nutrition ways, then gaining back the lost weight.

The idea of quick weight-loss is tempting enough to keep people coming back to these programs over and over again – even after consistent regain of the weight, causing you to spend thousands of dollars just to be stuck in a yo-yo effect.

Yo-yo dieting is the process of starting and completing nutrition programs, to only regain the weight, causing your body to be unable to maintain homeostasis and wreaking havoc on your metabolism.

Yo Yo dieting doesn’t just affect your metabolism. New research shows that the process can contribute to an early death because of the damage it does to your entire body, in addition to your mind.

Save yourself from being stuck in this cycle, and take nutrition slowly one day at a time so that you can stay fit and healthy long term. Regardless of your dietary needs, coming up with a solid game-plan that will work best for you, and planning out any obstacles that lay ahead will give you a much better chance at staying successful with your fitness and weight goals.

Prepare for your nutrition journey to be more of a long term lifestyle change, rather than a three-month quick fix. The progress may take twice as long to complete, but in the end, you won’t spend years going back and forth between quick weight loss schemes.

You’ll simply lose the weight, achieve your fitness goals and be able to effortlessly maintain the body you’ve worked hard to achieve over time. If you thought about it consciously, chances are you’d choose long-term, permanent fitness rather than a quick fix that evaporates after only a few months.

New Year - Fit Year

The holidays are almost over, and for many, this is a great time to start fresh and being to adopt healthier habits to change their lives. Starting a new fitness journey in January is popular because it allows everyone to start breaking down calories that were gained from the carb-heavy holidays where most of us indulge in big meals after stressful moments of shopping and preparing for family visits.

New Year’s resolutions are also created for mindful goal setting, pairing up with workout friends to get healthy with, and preparing the mind for the journey ahead. Most of the people starting New Year’s resolutions are aware that they need and want to make a change.

However, getting started and knowing what to do requires a little bit more knowledge in order to be efficient and see results. Here are several ways you can make the most of your resolution to change your life and get fit this coming year!

How to Dress Properly for Your New Fitness Journey

To most people, finding something to wear before starting a workout is not much of a priority, however, the clothes that you wear can, in fact, impact your workout. Not only can they alter the way you feel physically as you work out, but it can get so bad that you begin dreading the workouts.

You’ll need to do a head to toe evaluation of your gear to see what needs updating. If you haven’t ever given it any thought, a great place to start with workout attire is the setting in which you plan on performing your exercise regimen.

For the most part, if you plan on working out indoors at either a house or gym setting, you can get away with almost anything from sweats to tank tops because the air conditioning will allow for optimal temperatures.

The only aspect you really need to consider when indoor training is to know if you’re planning for an intense, high cardiac output workout like HIIT training or something slower paced.

HIIT workouts, or High Intensity Interval Training, can be very taxing on the human body, raising your  blood pressure, heart-rate, and body temperature, which can be overbearing to some.

Dressing too warm for these workouts can cause someone new to pass out or feel very light headed, so be sure to bring a layer of clothing that you can remove if you begin to feel too hot at any point.

A similar method of wearing layers can be beneficial to anyone who likes to train outdoors at parks, participate in boot camps or go on long runs. Depending on the exercises, the same situation of increasing body temperature can happen outdoors, which makes wearing layers more beneficial when it comes to keeping body temperature lower. 

Shoes are also important - even as important as the bed you sleep on, which means making sure you have the right ones for your body are essential for your joint health. Wearing the wrong type of shoes for long periods of time can cause damage to your ankle complex, which can also affect the rest of the joints in your body through its kinetic chain, affecting posture.

There are specialty shoe stores that can run foot assessments in which they assess how you walk and refer you to the best possible shoe and insole that can help correct your footstep to better improve your walking, posture, and the way you feel.

In addition to shoes and layering, you also have to consider things such as sports bras, sweat bands, hats to protect yourself from the sun if you’re working out outdoors, and more.

There are many technological gadgets you can get for your attire, too. From heart rate monitors that you wear to simple step counters that assist you in setting and achieving cardio goals, there’s something for everyone.

Home vs Gym Memberships

In order to start the New Year’s resolution journey into fitness off right, you will need an appropriate setting to perform exercises that are geared towards your specific goals. The first step in making the decision to get a gym membership vs working out at the house is to consider your budget for your health.

If your wallet is running slim after the holidays, it’s perfectly fine to start doing workouts at your home if there is space available to do so, or at a local park. Although your home is limited compared to the exercise equipment offered in a gym environment, there are still a lot of exercises that you can do with no equipment at all.

Thanks to sources like the Internet and YouTube in particular, there are tons of workout plans with structured regimens for the house or outdoors. If having a little extra cash to invest in a gym membership is within your budget, you will find that having more equipment, like-minded people, and fitness professionals around are definitely perks of this option.

A few other decisions to think about when deciding if you’d like to work out at home vs the gym is your discipline to keep yourself accountable to show up at the gym, or even remember to work out at the house.

Some people may be more introverted and may not wish to see others as they’re working out, while others may find it more encouraging to be around people with similar goals and build a network of people who can hold them more accountable.

A great way to go about making a decision is to work out at your house first for a month in order to build consistency, habits and foundational strength, and then join a gym trial during February after the gym is less crowded in order to see if a gym setting is more appropriate for your goals.

Regardless of the setting you choose to work out in, the most important piece to the puzzle is to find your preference in which you can stay more committed and build a strong consistency with exercise and fitness.

Cardio vs Strength

A common question when it comes to starting a new workout plan is whether or not to incorporate more cardio or strength workouts throughout the week. One of the biggest misconceptions is that strength training will lead to bulky muscles and even weight gain, which usually acts a deterrent to those unsure about which route to take.

The problem with that concept is that it’s simply not true. Muscle takes much longer to gain, which means you won’t turn into the Hulk in a year, and strength workouts have even been proven to speed your metabolism up so that you can burn fat as a fuel source more efficiently.

It takes your body more calories per hour to maintain muscle mass than it does body fat, which means the more muscle your body has will result in more calories per hour to be burned.

Strength workouts can also improve bone density, release endorphins to make you feel better, and prevent diseases such as osteoporosis. Strength training is a great place for anyone to start, but what about the cardio side of workouts?

Cardiovascular training is also an important piece to look over when considering workout because many benefits can come from it that don’t come from strength workouts alone.

Training your body’s cardiovascular system can build your aerobic base to burn fat efficiently, improve lung health, and can make for great recovery days between strength workouts.

If you do any sort of cardiovascular workouts, be sure to invest in a heart-rate monitor and learn about the heart-rate zones that allow your body to burn fat efficiently. There are many online calculators that will give you a guestimate to what heart-rate your body will burn fat vs burning carbs and sugars. 

If your heart-rate goes too high, then you are no longer burning fat cells, so without a heart-rate monitor, it is very difficult to determine what it is exactly you are using as your energy source when doing any sort of cardio.

When considering cardio vs strength, don’t leave one completely out. Both types of workouts complement each other and both play an important role when it comes to fat burning.

Feel free to do light to moderate cardio just about any day of the week, but a good place to start with strength training is two full body workouts per week, with adequate rest between each strength training day.

Find a form of cardio that you love. You don’t have to commit to a daily 5-mile run. You can do water aerobics or something else you consider fun. The same goes for strength training.

You’re not relegated to using dumbbells. You can use bodyweight exercises or kettlebells or any number of methods to get strength built over time. Make sure you switch things up so that your body can’t acclimate to your routines.

Workout Efficiency and Weight Loss

Hardly anyone ever enjoys going on a restricted diet or adopting healthier eating habits while starting an exercise regimen at the same time. Making your time more efficient will not only help you see results faster, but could also prevent plateaus and save a lot of time and stress as well.

The first step in your New Year’s resolution plan should be to find a way to assess yourself regularly. This could be done through progress photos, biometric scales, or any method of training body fat progress such as tape measurers or calipers.

If you aren’t assessing your progress you’re guessing, and guessing could waste your time, diminish results, and make you lose track of accountability. After you find a way that you prefer to measure your progress, make a commitment to yourself to check weekly on your progress.

A common term used in gyms among staff is “Weigh-in Wednesday” for example, where every Wednesday at the same time you check your progress. Starting off, you will most likely see changes in your measurements and the way you feel, just based off picking up healthier nutrition habits, which makes nutrition goals a great place to start.

Slowly, you may notice the progress begin to slow down, which means it’s time to change something in your current plan, such as adding in cardio a few times a week so that your body now has to adapt to a new method, resulting in more progress being shown on the scale.

If cardio and nutrition aren’t cutting it for the type of results you’d like to see, try adding two strength workouts into your week to help build more muscle fiber and speed up your metabolism.

Be sure to track how much cardio and strength training you’re doing consistently, then be patient for a couple of weeks to see how your assessments result from your changed program.

Eventually, everyone who eats better, and does a little cardio with strength will begin to notice their progress begins to slow down. This is where you can begin to make minor changes for even more results, forcing the body to adapt in new ways to a healthier lifestyle.

Some changes could be investing in a heart-rate monitor and knowing at what heart-rate your body burns fat the best when doing cardio. Adding in better sleep for recovery and stress or applying a yoga workout once a week can also go a long way in seeing different results on the scale.

Regardless of which habit you’d like to tweak to overcome slow results, it’s important to track your progress continually so that you know when and how you need to change what you’re currently doing to continue seeing progress.

The human body tries its hardest to maintain homeostasis so that your body can regularly maintain its current situation, which is why it’s so important to track when your body is no longer seeing changes from your program, and find that next aspect to change.

The holiday season at the end of the year is the worst season to gain weight. You feel lethargic from a carb heavy time of year, and this a better reason to start fresh in January and get back to being the you that feels and looks your best.

There will be many people stating that this is the year they get fit once and for all. But the reality is, most of them will quit. What makes you any different? The fact that you’re preparing for your journey instantly makes you more credible because you’re taking this seriously.

Continue moving on that path and educating yourself about how to gain momentum, rather than lose it as you work toward your goals. Set yourself up ahead of time for success and plan out any roadblocks that might get in the way so that when the time does come, you won’t be defeated, but instead rise up to continue making the body slowly adapt to a healthier lifestyle.