Top ten things you can do today to help you lose weight, gain energy and feel better to achieve you fitness goals

Top ten things you can do today to help you lose weight, gain energy and feel better to achieve you fitness goals

10. Track your weight.

This is vital if you want to lose weight, if you are not tracking it then it can be difficult to assess whether your efforts are helping you or hindering you and what next steps are on your journey based upon what you have done and what the outcome was from that.

“What gets measured gets managed”

9. Eat more fruit and veg.

So many people who have low energy also don’t have enough fruit or veg in their diet to support high energy levels.

Instead they can sometimes eat high sugar, low fibre, low nutritious foods which lower your mood energy and focus. Make sure you are getting lots of fruit and veg in your daily meals.

8. Reduce the poor foods and increase the healthy foods.

Okay so this is one that I encourage based not upon any sort of hard science but lots and lots and lots of clients running through my mind and body transformation program.

These foods that we like often can be unhealthy and eaten purely for taste. It can be challenging to cut back on these foods whereas none of us struggle to skip the odd salad here and there because we don’t fancy it.

My recommendation would be to have a healthy protein-based breakfast and start to the day fuelling your body with nutritious natural food. That way you won’t be hungry and it will be much easier to say no to biscuits and chocolates during the day when you are offered them by a colleague whose birthday it is or see them in shops.

The approach where we try to stick to a certain calorie goal but also try to eat as many Mars Bars we can in those calories definitely doesn’t work, I know I’ve tried it myself and failed… Lots.

7. Move more.

As simple as this may seem but your body gets very used to whatever you do quickly. If you can be more active throughout the day you will burn more calories without even going to the gym, will feel better and have more energy just from getting some fresh air.

I get my clients to have a break and take a 20-minute walk on their break writing down how they feel afterwards. More often than not they say they have more energy and are in a better mood and they also snack less too, which gives us even better results when we stop needing that sugar fix to make us feel better and more focused.

6. Be Honest.

If you are struggling with your food, your relationship with food and yourself then be honest. I am the first to admit that I struggle with things. It is completely normal; I know how you feel.

If you fall off the bandwagon and don’t feel great, be curious as to what has caused this and how you can improve this going forwards. This will serve you much better than beating yourself up, bottling it up or running away from the problem.

A food diary can help with this if you struggle to discuss this with people, as long as you are expressing what you are experiencing then you can start to look at changing those old habits and changing the record player in your mind that’s playing the same tune in your head.

No matter how long and how familiar that song is, it needs to change if you are going to.

5. Exercise for exercise sake.

Exercise is a celebration of our bodies so do what you like and enjoy it. If you love weights do that if you prefer cardio do that do whatever you like.

Try to avoid playing the game where we are exercising to lose weight, as no matter how fast you can run you are always going to find it easier to consume calories faster than you burn them off.

Instead opt for a balance of both food and exercise that gives you a better overall, long term result towards your goals.

4. Start a gratitude diary.

A great way to feel better about ourselves is to start a gratitude diary, noting down what we are grateful for each day and why we are grateful for those things. This has been proven to help those who are looking to improve in their nutrition and exercise as well as weight management by acting as a positive feedback mechanism. It helps the mind seek the positive rather than always focusing on the negative when done for 30 days or more consecutively.

3. Make bad choices.

Every now and then you should make poor decisions just to remind yourself of what that looks like. No foods are restricted in my program. We make allowances for going out and socialising.

By giving ourselves permission to do this we remove a huge amount of temptation that is built up from telling ourselves that “we can’t eat that” and “this will make me fat”

The reality is that you can eat what you want, and nobody really can stop you ultimately.

Instead of denying yourself and causing that temptation to mount up, look at taking regular “breaks” from your healthy eating pattern so you can help maintain your sanity and feel “normal” rather than watching what you are eating and eating too much… It doesn’t make sense and isn’t helpful.

2. Drink water.

At least 2 litres. Every day.

1. Give yourself a chance.

The best way of not getting the result in weight loss, improving your energy levels and feeling better is to tell yourself that you can’t. That your situation is unique and that you are different. I am not saying you are not unique but the challenges you face are not, once we face those challenges for what they are, together.

If you don’t believe in what you are doing then no matter how much you try you will find it almost impossible to make meaningful, positive steps towards your goals because you have already given up emotionally.

So, they are my top ten tips for weight loss, improved energy and feeling better.

I hope you have found this useful and helpful.

If you have, I would love to hear back from you and what your takeaways from this are.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best

Mike Howarth