Every week there’s a new radical diet promising to revolutionise your life by helping you lose weight and keep it off. The problem with these fad diets is that they are exactly that: fads.
Embarking on a fad diet, you’ll find you drop noticeable weight in the first week, but be warned – this is just your body shedding excess water. After the initial drop, your weight will likely taper off and be replaced by the side effects of an unbalanced lifestyle; hunger, fatigue, and cravings.
The secret to healthy living isn’t a secret at all – focus on your body’s health and nutrition rather than numbers on the scale.
Understanding Your Body
The first step towards a fitness plan is understanding your body’s constitution. At Adaptive Strength (formerly Box33), we take a holistic approach to health, incorporating Ayurvedic medicine and practice, which goes back more than 1,000 years.
Ayurveda looks at your body to understand how you respond to different foods and exercise. Certain foods and movements will agree with some more than others, so it’s vital to understand what your body needs and best responds to.
Our Tips For Healthy Living And A Sustainable Fitness Plan
The only tried and truly sustainable way to improve your wellbeing is through a combination of nutrition, tailored exercise, sleep, and looking after your mental health.
The following tips are general health and wellness pointers to help you get on your way. If you’re serious about healthy living then ditch the fad diets and book a free health consultation with Adaptive Strength (formerly Box33).
- The goal posts for nutrition are constantly moving; you may need to adjust your beliefs as you move through a fitness program.
- You can’t go wrong with 3 balanced meals a day! Ideally your heaviest meal will be at lunch time, giving your body ample time to digest before sleeping.
- Try to minimise or avoid the four “white devils”; sugar, iodised salt, white flour and dairy. Try cutting back, or eliminating one at a time from your diet, and it’ll help wrap your head around why we crave them (hint: it’s an evolution thing).
- Dairy: most people claim their bodies are fine with it, but you’d be amazed what the body is simply ‘tolerating’ – eliminate dairy from your diet for 90 days and your gut will thank you!
- Trial eliminating different foods for 90 days at a time to establish what does and doesn’t work for you and your digestion.
- People say you are what you eat, but you are what you digest and absorb. It takes 6-8 hours to digest your food, but only 26 seconds for substances to be absorbed by your skin, so pay attention what your gut and skin are telling you!
- Chew your food! After 15 minutes of eating your body produces Leptin, the hormone responsible for your satiation levels. Nowadays, we tend to eat all too quickly and don’t leave our stomachs enough time to realise they’re full until it’s too late.
- Reduce portion size to give your body the right amount of energy without converting excess food into fat stores. Fasting can work, but you need to plan for it, factoring in an adjustment period for your body. It’s important you don’t just starve yourself and subsequently going overboard with unhealthy choices
- Make sure you are consuming enough for your busy life: under eating also carries serious health risks (including negatively impacting your mental health).
- Avoid mindless eating (snacking in front of the TV, at your desk, in the car etc.) You are usually consuming unhealthy food and your brain is focussing on something else so your body doesn’t know it’s full.
When you are ready to take your long-term health seriously, book a complimentary health and lifestyle review with Adaptive Strength (formerly Box33) to find out how a tailored fitness program can put you on the right track.
