Step 1 start incorporating healthy food and eliminate unhealthy food
The first thing that you need to look at will be your diet. This can help you start other lifestyle changes more easily due to the impact a healthy diet has on the body. With healthy food going in you will become more energetic, have better mood, start to see some fat loss and start to feel less lethargic. All of these have a great impact on other areas of your lifestyle.
However, it is hard to change this area of your life quickly. You will want to develop a plan to eliminate bad food slowly and incorporate heathy ones slowly too. This will keep you on track and develop a healthy habit between what is good and what is bad. Start by adding in one extra vegetable a day to 1 meal. And taking away something bad that isn’t serving a healthy lifestyle. For example taking sugar out go your coffee or tea every time you make your self a cup. It’s simple and achievable because that one spoonful of sugar maybe 2-3 times a day can amount to a lot at the end of a week.
Step 2 Start light exercise
You can’t just jump into doing hardcore workouts and lifting heavy weights straight away. You have to build your foundation and go through a number of different steps before you get to that point. However, you will want to start to increase your movement by walking each day for at least 30-40 minutes. Once you can do this easily you’ll want to start build up you r health rate by trying to walk a little faster. Until eventually you’ll start a light jog and walk combination.
This would also be a great time to incorporate some beginner core exercises that will help you strengthen the trunk of your body. Core movements like plank, Deadbug, Mountain climbers and balance variations will help you strengthen your whole body because you’re making use of many body levers and stabilisation muscles.
Step 3 establish what bad habits you have and decrease them
If you are starting from scratch and say you’re in your forties, you’re bound to have habits that have built up over the years. Now some of these habits are going to be bad for your health. You want to get rid of these slowly because cutting them out all together will just bring them back into your life again and again. Develop a system that works for you. For example if you eat to many sweet treats then cut them down by 20% at a time. This will gradually take 20% of what you usually would have eaten and cut it out completely. The power of this is enormous.
By week 5 if you cut out another 20% it will more of a difference and then you will see the power of gradually taking away bad habits. Which will make you think what else you can change in your lifestyle to improve it.
Step 4 Once you’ve started the first 3 steps look for a coach or personal trainer.
This step is about trying to establish accountability and how you are going to stay accountable to your goals and lifestyle changes. There is no good in starting and stopping. You have to stay accountable and keep going so that you can see the long term effect all these changes have on your life.
If you hire a coach or online personal trainer you will have someone who is in your corner giving you a programme to follow and developing your habits through frequent contact and reinforcement. They will want you to keep building up your foundation of strength and fitness as well as staying on track with your new nutrition guidelines you have established for yourself. These are going to be different for everyone depending on what stage you are at.
Step 5 start strength training and looking after your cardiovascular health
Now this is where you might want to see if your online coach can also be mobile and have the ability to come see you once in a while. A mobile personal trainer has a benefit of being able to instantly change the way you are moving and developing your movement patterns. This is better than learning on your own because its hard to look back and redo all your hard work. You might as well do it correctly the first time around.
However, starting to develop your strength and cardiovascular ability will increase your BMR Basil metabolic rate which allows your body to have the ability to burn more calories if you have more muscle on your body. You will also get a great feeling after each training session knowing that you are developing your strength every time you put in the effort.
Step 6 Continue and stay consistent with your new lifestyle
This is the most important part of developing your new lifestyle. You have to stay consistent throughout every week and month. It doesn’t matter if you have a day when you eat the wrong thing or you don’t exercise. This is not a reason to spot pulling yourself in the right direction. Just put is behind you and move on the next day by doing your workout and preparing a healthy meal.
If you keep this in mind for the rest of your life you will stay healthy, have a strong body, feel good, decrease the risk of illness of disease and most of all be happier with your lifestyle. So, there you have it David Thomas’s 6 steps to changing your lifestyle.