Introducing training and nutrition into your lifestyle can be tricky, which is why you need to fit your health and fitness around your life and not the other way around.
Making as natural a transition as possible into a healthy life is important; once you’re on the right road, there’s no looking back. Why? Because if you want to live a healthy and happy life, then exercise and healthy eating are an essential part of your routine.
Taking the Right Road
If healthy eating and training are just an afterthought, it will be almost impossible to fit them into your lifestyle. You won’t have the desire or inclination to work out how to include them and long-term planning will become redundant.
For many people, it’s not just a question of fitting around their own lifestyle but fitting around their family and dependants, too. My clients often ask how I make time for training and how my family put up with my packed training schedule and specific diet requirements.
Early mornings are key to my routine. I start training on weekdays around 5am. While training fits perfectly into my weekly schedule as an integral part of it, I don’t train at the weekends because this is my family time. I want to be able to relax and have a healthy life balance without worrying about finding time to squeeze in training and interrupt quality time with family or friends – or even just ‘me’ time.
A Healthy Diet
From a nutritional point of view, I choose to eat a healthy diet and so do my family. We all eat the same foods in the evenings. Sometimes, I make small, easy adaptations to my meal to focus on maintaining good protein levels – an easy swap is rice for cauliflower rice. In general, though, if I am not doing anything extreme then my nutrition plan fits in perfectly with my family. We all love to eat healthy food and it brings us closer together as we feel energised and good about ourselves after every meal.
Above all, if you want to get fit you can always make it work. Prep your meals during the evening so you are set for the following day. If you struggle to find time to get fit during the day, get up early and do your sessions before the day begins in earnest. Living a fit and healthy lifestyle that complements your training goals is easier than you might think. And – trust me – it’s well worth the effort.
