Pay Attention To These Things When You Decide To Improve Your Fitness Level
No matter how young or old you are, making a change to your body is a big undertaking. A lot of people make the mistake of focusing on one particular thing and going all out on that one thing. For instance, if they want to lose weight, they will just limit their food intake and not pay attention to anything else. That severe reduction in food intake does give some results in the first few weeks or even months, but soon the individual hits a plateau, and the technique becomes ineffective. What’s worse is that during this time their health is also suffering.
The body needs a minimum amount of nutrients and calories to operate and stay healthy and severely constricting your diet negatively impacts your overall health. To improve fitness, you need to focus on a broader range of things and ensure you are giving your body what it needs to reach peak performance. Here are some of the main things you will need to consider when trying to maintain great health.
Base Health
A great strategy is to start off with an evaluation of your current health. This will give you an idea of how your body is really performing because the external appearance of your body is not a very accurate indicator of internal health. To do this, you can visit your local doctor or hospital and ask them to give you a complete evaluation. This will consist of a few different tests including some blood work.
This will reveal the performance of all important systems in the body as well as any deficiencies or any other problems that may be present but are not having a major impact on your body at the moment. This way you will know exactly what you need to work on and how you can achieve these goals safely. If you have any medical problems or injuries, you should also talk to your doctor about these so they can help you develop a safe fitness plan.
Water Intake
A lot of people don’t consume enough water. In fact, many don’t even consume enough fluids. While they aren’t suffering from any visible signs of dehydration, the lack of water in the system is causing the body to perform sub-optimally. Water plays an important role in a lot of different operations. Everything from your mental health to endurance to muscle growth and many more things require proper hydration.
Moreover, water also impacts your appetite and sense of hunger. In many cases, you will actually be dehydrated but your body will confuse this as hunger which causes your mind to tell your body to find food rather than water. Consuming the minimum amount of water every day can help improve health tremendously.
Cardio Health
Big biceps and a six-pack definitely look good when you need to hit the beach, but your cardiac health is just as important, if not more. A lot of people getting into fitness will focus on the outward appearance of their body not realizing that cardiac health is actually more important for their overall wellbeing. Doing cardiovascular exercises is extremely important, but it is equally important to maintain good cardiac health through a good diet and positive lifestyle choices.
In terms of food, you want to eat good fats such as Omega-3 and stay away from bad fats such as saturated fats. Similarly, quitting tobacco smoking is an excellent lifestyle choice you can make to improve cardiac health and prevent further damage. Your heart is one of the most important and sensitive organs in the body, and damage to this organ can be very difficult to undo.
Supplements
Supplements are going to be very important in improving the quality of your diet and also making up for any deficiencies you might have. Generally, men tend to become deficient in testosterone as they age since the natural production of test in the body slows down. However, testosterone is a very important hormone in the body of both men and women. It plays a pivotal role in functions such as bone density management, hypertrophy, hair production, insulin sensitivity, immunity, and even weight management.
If you are extremely deficient in testosterone, you could choose to use test supplements. For a mild deficiency, you could make changes to your diet and your workout routine to help your body naturally produce more testosterone.
Weight Training
Many people who want to get healthy basically want to lose some weight and look better. For this, they will focus on reducing their food intake and doing basic cardio work such as walking or cycling. While this is a great start, you can improve the process by adding in some weight training. You don’t have to lift extremely heavy weights, but even just doing some calisthenics work can help you lose weight faster and build better muscle tone. Weight training also has a big impact on cardio health and it’s a great way to improve your joints as well.
If you have never done weight training before, then it would be a good idea to talk to a coach or a trainer to find out what will be right for you. Generally, doing big compound movements such as squats and deadlifts is a great way to burn calories and also build some muscle. Plus, these simple movements are easy to master and it gives you a great workout in just a few minutes.
Nutrition
If you are already training and your body seems to have become unresponsive to any stimulus, it might be time to change your diet. What you eat and how much you eat has a big impact on how your body looks and how healthy it is on the inside. Ideally, you should implement a balanced diet that gives you all the nutrition that you need and also gives your body the building blocks to develop and grow properly. This can be a little hard to do since modern diets are deficient in some things while they offer far too much of other things.
A good solution is to talk to a nutritionist and find out what your body currently needs. The nutritionist can also help you formulate meal plans that will come as close as possible to giving you the fuel you need through a natural diet. Just making small changes such as changing the kind of oil you use can have a huge impact on the nutritional profile of your meals and on your health. When you stick to good eating habits and proper nutrition consistently, it improves your health drastically. In fact, just eating the right kind of food can help you stay in great shape without having to do much else.
Sleep
Sleep is another pillar of health that often doesn’t get the attention that it warrants. Sleep helps regulate a lot of processes in the body including weight management. If you are finding it hard to gain or lose weight, it might be because you aren’t getting proper sleep. Ideally, you should be getting the right amount of sleep, the right quality of sleep, and sleep at the right time. Sleeping for 12 hours during the day has a very different impact on your body as compared to sleeping for 8 hours at night. Moreover, having a consistent sleeping routine is also important.
If you can go to sleep and wake up at the same time every night, you will quickly see a big improvement in your physical and mental health. Try to understand what conditions give you the best sleep and try to replicate that scenario every night so you are recharging your body and mind properly. This will also improve how you are able to exert yourself in your training and dieting.
Joint Health
Beyond looking after your organs and muscles, you also need to take care of your joints. All the work you do with your muscles is counting on your joints to be able to handle that stress. A lot of people end up injuring their joints because they either don’t exercise properly, or they don’t take care of joint health. Doing proper stretching, warming up, and then cooling down after a workout session are very important processes to ensure you maintain healthy joints. Similarly, eating enough calcium and consuming good fats that promote joint health is very important. Just like other parts of your body, joints get weaker with age so taking good care of them as you get older should be a top priority.
If you don’t have the time to go to a gym or you don’t like the idea of just moving a few weights around or spending hours on a treadmill, consider taking up a sport. Some kind of active sport such as football, basketball or volleyball is what you need. This will give you the kind of workout your body needs to stay healthy while also being a mentally stimulating activity. It’s often the small lifestyle choices that have the biggest impact on our health, but the key is to do them consistently.
Just working out for a couple of months or taking a few multivitamins for a few weeks will not give you long-term health. These are small things that you need to practice every day. Make a conscious effort to move your body and mind in a direction that will improve your health. These changes aren’t easy, but that is how you will get healthy.