Staying fit is becoming harder and harder as years are passing by. In today’s generation, where most people are addicted to their gadgets and social media, it has become quite a challenge to stay fit and feel healthy. This is not just speculation; obesity is growing worldwide and has become a real problem. And after the Covid-19 pandemic, things have gotten even worse. The lockdown has forced even overweight people to stay at home regularly to go to the gym.
Laziness and procrastination, in general, have caused obesity to become such an issue. Some people even think that they can never become fit because of how unhealthy they have become. However, this is not true at all. Anyone can become fit and feel healthy. All you need is determination. If you also want to learn a few tips on staying fit and feeling healthy, keep on reading this article.
Table of Contents
Tip 1: Be patient
It is very easy to start working out and changing your diet. The first few days can go by pretty easily. However, the main issue is not beginning to work out or change your diet; it is to maintain your diet and keep working out in the long run. Most people who start working out to stay fit or lose weight stop only after a week or two. This is mainly because they do not see any results. The frustration of not seeing any results makes them wonder if working out is worth it. They lose all their motivation when they start and eventually go back to their unhealthy lifestyle.
This needs to be stopped. Losing weight is not an easy task. If everyone started seeing results this soon, no one would then be obese. All you have to do is be patient. Yes, a tiny portion of people does see results quite early on in their diet change and workout routine. However, this does not mean that every human body works the same. Some people have significant metabolism, which is why they lose weight so quickly. Trust me, sooner or later, you will see results if you remain patient. A few months of patience will grant you results that will satisfy you. In the end, it will all be worth the wait and hard work.
Tip 2: Calculate your calories
I know this may sound like quite a hassle for most of you, but calculating your daily calorie count helps a lot in maintaining your fitness. There are ways in which you can calculate how many maximum calories you can consume per day to reach your goal. You need to be in a calorie deficit for weight loss, and for trying to gain weight, you need to consume more calories than your BMI (Body Mass Index). You can easily find tons of BMI calculators online. To know how many calories each of your meal has, you can use apps such as Myfitnesspal. Myfitnesspal is probably the most popular app for calculating calories. You can even scan a barcode in Myfitnesspal to get every piece of information about the product you are eating. It will feel a hassle at first, but you will eventually get used to this.
Tip 3: Change your diet
This seems like an obvious thing, but for a large majority of people, it doesn’t. Many people who try to become fit will start working out daily and will start going on walks and runs. They will work really hard on trying to achieve their goal, but they don’t ever see much difference. One of the reasons for this is that they don’t change their diet. Unless people start eating healthier foods in healthier amounts, they will not see much difference. People need to understand that working out does not necessarily need you to eat even more food than before. Instead, it would be best if you only ate in sufficient amounts. A lot of the time, people eat even when they are not hungry at all. Eating out of boredom is a real issue, and a lot of people go through this without even realizing it. If you are reading this article and have just realized that you may be one of those who eat out of boredom, now is the time to change your diet routine.
Tip 4: Get enough sleep
Getting enough sleep is key to staying fit and feeling healthy. You cannot feel healthy in any way if you sleep any less than 6-8 hours. Get 6 hours of daily sleep at the very least. If you sleep any less than that, you will feel exhausted for the rest of the day. Yes, coffee can help you remain active, but that isn’t the best way to remain healthy. Instead, try to sleep early and wake up early in the morning. There is no better feeling than waking up early in the morning with adequate sleep. When you wake up early, you will also have a lot of time that you can use to do different things. Some people go out jogging in the morning while others workout or do a simple exercise. You can utilize this time to workout as well.
If you have trouble waking up early and sleep for too long, try this trick. Instead of keeping your alarm beside you, you can keep your alarm a bit out of your reach. Keep it where you will have to come out of your bed to close it. This way, you can solve your problem of constantly sleeping after turning off the alarm again and again. Try this trick and see the results for yourself.
Tip 5: Drink a lot of water
Drinking a lot of water is key to losing weight and staying fit. As we all know, our bodies are mostly made up of water. Thus, in order for it to function properly, it needs sufficient water. Our whole system, which includes all the organs, cells, and tissues, cannot work healthy unless you drink a lot of water. Make sure you stay hydrated throughout the day by drinking fresh water almost every hour.
There are a lot of ways in which drinking water makes you stay fit and feel healthy. It helps you get rid of all the toxins and other wastes in your body. Moreover, it helps make your spine and joints stronger. Dehydration causes your body to go through headaches, feel fatigued, and even affects your mental health.
So how much water should you drink per day? Most people struggle to calculate the exact amount of water they should drink in a day. Some studies suggest that everyone should be drinking around 6-8 glasses of water per day. If you don’t know how much water you should be drinking per day, follow this study, and you should be doing just enough. Don’t slack off when it comes to drinking water. Drink between exercises or whenever you go out of your room.
Tip 6: Do not go the crash dieting route
Sometimes people don’t have the patience to wait for months to see their workout and diet results. Therefore, these people take extreme measures to lose some weight. They start skipping meals and go on a very high-calorie deficit diet. Although they do lose weight in quite a short amount of time, this comes with heavy side-effects. You will never see a doctor recommend to anyone for crash dieting. This is because they know exactly how rough and dangerous it is to crash a diet. We all know that taking extreme measures in anything is never going to be good. What crash dieting will do is slow your metabolism heavily. Therefore, you will gain weight very quickly after you are done with the diet.
Moreover, your body will be devoid of the natural nutrients it needs to stay healthy. Your immune system will be damaged, and you will be at the risk of getting dehydrated and sometimes even cardiac stress. In conclusion, a crash diet is definitely not a healthy way to get fit.
There is just no point in trying to stay fit if you use crash dieting as a method to lose weight. Most people who crash diets go back to their normal diets after achieving their goal and gain even more weight than before. Adopt a diet that you will be able to continue even after achieving your weight goal. Make your diet a routine and your workouts a habit. You will never be able to stay healthy for a long time if you don’t do so. Lose weight sensibly and healthily.
Tip 7: Start having fun in your exercises
One of the reasons why most people either quit exercising or don’t bother doing so is because they feel like they are forcing them to do all the exercises. Workouts can never be fun if you treat them like this boring thing that you need to do. Yes, exercises and workouts are very tiring and require insane amounts of hard work, but you will only feel this way for the first few days. You may not even be able to perform some of the exercises on the first day; however, don’t give up just yet. Try it again the next day and keep trying until you finally do it. The satisfaction you will get from finally being able to pull off such a challenging exercise will be worth all the hard work. This will give you even more motivation, and you will start having fun in your exercises. Set goals in your exercises and try to achieve them no matter what. You will eventually love exercising after you see the results it produces.
Another way of exercising while having fun is to involve your friends. Humans are very sociable beings and we love chatting and discussing things with other people, especially the people you love. You can motivate your friend to start working out, and then both of you can join the gym. You can go out on walks and runs with your friend and talk to them the entire time. You will not even notice that you would’ve covered several miles of walking. Both you and your friend will push each other to stay motivated, and therefore, you will get used to exercising in a very fun way. If you absolutely despise exercising and working out, try playing some sports. Playing sports such as Football and Basketball includes running a lot. The competitiveness of playing these sports with your friend will push you to play better, and thus, you will get fit without even noticing.
Tip 8: Start slowly
As told before, many people quit trying to stay fit because they feel like this is just too much of a hassle for them. They start off very motivated and work very hard in the beginning. They would even change their diets completely in an instant. However, this is not the best way to try to get healthy. Instead, because they work so hard and change everything drastically, they end up quitting after not seeing results. This is why it is very important to change things in your life gradually. It would be best if you started changing your daily routine slowly, changing one thing at a time. When you change your diet slowly, you will feel much more comfortable, and you wouldn’t have to go through all the tough days that those people who change things drastically go through.
Conclusion:
Achieving your goals is definitely possible. Anyone can get fit and healthy no matter how you are. It is never too late to start working on yourself. Go ahead and follow all of these tips and start changing your lifestyle now. The earlier you start working on yourself, the easier it will be. Wasting time would only make things even harder for you. Good luck with staying fit and feeling healthy.
