DAILY HABITS THAT PACK ON THE POUNDS | Heart Smart Minute

Heart Smart Minute

Success with your long term Heart Smart Minute fitness and nutrition plan all comes down to the accumulation of daily habits and choices. Everything adds up–so whether you are making a last minute dinner decision, or thinking about skipping out on your daily fitness plan, it will all add up. Here are the FIVE most common habits people have which may greatly contribute to weight problems! Being aware is the first step to changing bad habits into great ones!

Heart Smart Minute Fitness and Nutrition Tips:

Drinking Soda: Drinking just one soda per day increases your risk of being obese by nearly 33% percent, according to a 2005 study. Diet soda is not any better, and in fact, may contribute to the obesity problem. Artificial sweeteners stimulate the appetite cues which causes you to eat more!

Skipping Meals: No matter how busy you are, or how much you don’t like to eat breakfast–never skip a meal. Skipping breakfast, according to the Journal of Epidemiology, can make you up to 4.5 times more likely to be obese. Skipping meals cripples your metabolism and makes you even hungrier. The body goes into fat storage mode for survival, making long term weight loss impossible. Stick to small, balanced, nutritious meals throughout the day to keep your blood sugar stable. Add in a solid fitness program and you’re good to go.

Family Style Eating: As great as it may sound, eating with large serving plates on the table is horrible for portion control. People who eat “family” style consume 35% more calories during the meal than those who leave serving dishes in the kitchen.

Not Drinking Water: A German research study found that drinking 6 cups of cold water a day can stimulate your metabolism to burn more fat. Drink 2 cups of water before your Heart Smart Minute fitness program and another 2 cups before meals and you’ll lose water weight!

Eating Before Bed: Your body wants to burn fat while you’re sleeping, but if it’s too busy digesting a meal you just ate, it can’t do that. Those who eat past 8pm are have the highest BMI’s and are more likely to be obese, according to Obesity Journal. The best rule of thumb is to eat a good, nutritious meal about 3 hours before bed. This way your body has time to digest before going into sleep mode.

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WHY YOU LACK MOTIVATION… – FITNESS

Fitness

In fitness it’s how you spend your time, not how long you spend working out. If you only have a few minutes, that’s okay. A few minutes spread through out the day can add up to a 30 minute workout, do that a few times a week and before your know it you’re seeing and feeling a HUGE difference.

The biggest excuse people give me when it comes to their health is there isn’t enough time for a consistent fitness program, when more often than not, you have more than enough time. Too much time causes a lack of structure and can lead to laziness and lack of motivation. Don’t look for motivation to jump start you out of bed in the morning and make you want to run to your gym or outside for a power walk before work.

Motivation isn’t there, you won’t find it waiting for you, knocking you upside the head with a feeling of excitement to go exercise. Very few people experience that–so how do you get motivated for your Heart Smart Minute fitness plan? Simply this, STOP LOOKING for MOTIVATION, JUST MOVE YOUR BODY. Motivation comes from the habit of doing. Motivation comes from consistency and doing a little each and every day, even when you don’t want to. Motivation comes from being able to put your head on the pillow at night and know you’ve done your best for your body and yourself. DISCIPLINE leads to HABITS, which cause RESULTS, which give you the MOTIVATION needed to continue.

It’s not enough to say you want to lose weight, get strong, stop your arthritis from crippling your body, or get rid of junk food, you have to be disciplined enough to control your actions to achieve your goal. It’s not meant to be easy, anyone who tells you such a goal will be easy and fun all the time is lying to you.

I often tell new clients to write down five realistic goals on a piece of paper, copy that sheet and put it in the rooms your frequent the most in your home, such as your bathroom, kitchen, or den. Every time you see the sheet you are to say the goals you’ve written down aloud. Let your mind hear you say it over and over, creating a memory and discipline of success. This way, everything stays front and center in your mind. So, are you the person who does this every time you see your goals? Do you have the discipline to create the motivation? Or are you the person who passes over the sheet and never takes the 10 seconds to say your goals to yourself? That is the difference between those who achieve their goals and those who put it off to another day.

MOTIVATION is the byproduct of discipline. DISCIPLINE is the key to unlocking your endless possibility.