Most of us eat badly when we’re tired/fed up. It’s much harder to eat well, make an effort to cook and do our workouts when we don’t have the energy to start, and if we don’t exercise and eat badly we have less energy. It’s a vicious cycle and trying to lose weight can leave you going around in circles.

Doing our daily workouts isn’t enough in its own(sorry to tell you) so alongside our training let’s try and create new habits for the year ahead:

WAKE UP EARLY
Many of us will see our sleeping pattern become later and later while off work/furloughed/working from home. The 6am alarm becomes 7 and then 8, 9, 10 and before you know it you stay in bed until midday and find yourself wide awake and staring at the ceiling at 2am. This makes it so much harder to feel energised and exercise.
You have to make an effort to change a habit.Force yourself to get up early and be productive. The more you do the more you’ll feel like doing.

10,000 STEPS
This is your daily goal. It’s approximately 5miles which may sound a lot but when you add up all the steps you do walking around the house/doing chores/going to the supermarket/going for a walk it’s more than achievable. If you become more active in general, as well as working out, weight loss becomes a lot easier. Without changing your diet and just increasing your daily activities you burn more calories. More calories burned =more of a calorie deficit = weight loss. This is called increasing your NEAT(google it).

PROTEIN IN EVERY MEAL
Protein is important for so many things and one of those is muscle growth and repair. This means your recovery will be better after working out and you’ll be able to do more because you don’t have such badDOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). Muscle also uses more energy than fat. To explain: 1kg of fat uses less energy to survive compared to 1kg of muscle.Meaning, the more muscle you have the more calories you burn day to day. Once you build the muscle you can essentially eat more because that muscle that you build needs more calories consumed to survive. Your BMR will have increased(google it). Protein also keeps you fuller for longer 

6-8 HOURS OF SLEEP
We’ve touched on this in the first new habit.Being tired makes it harder to stay committed to your goals. It also makes you feel less happy, less motivated and sometimes a little emotional! Stay on track, wake up early and go to bed at a sensible time.

2-4L OF WATER
This is your daily goal. 2L is the minimum. If you exercise you should drink even more. We as humans are 70% water. We need water more than we need food. We are basically cucumbers with anxiety so drink up! 

STRETCH
Get up and stretch throughout the day. Whether you’re working, sitting by a desk, lying on the sofa or very active. We all need a stretch and it makes you feel good. It will also wake you up if you’re feeling lethargic after staring at a screen all day.

On average it takes 28 days to form a habit. If you stick to these for the month of January you’ll be set for the year.

Get to it!
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