Lighter meals

In winter it can be tempting to ditch the salads and go for the warmer meals, but this doesn’t necessarily have to mean higher in calories. Healthy lean protein and fresh seasonal vegetables in a healthy clear soup is a fantastic way to enjoy a lighter meal that will warm you up from the tips of your toes to the top of your head!

Lighter exercise

While it can be tempting to really rug up in heavy sweatpants and a bulky hooded jumper, there are in fact lightweight exercise clothing available that helps keep you insulated while not restricting your movement during a workout. Think lightweight jumpers that you can easily tie around your waist if you get too warm, leggings, and maybe a beanie.

Lighter workload

Think of ways that you can reduce the amount of work that you do around the house so that you have more time for physical activity, meal planning, or preparing healthy meals and snacks.Take inventory of the time you spend at home, where could things be streamlined?

Could you do a little declutter and live off a minimalist wardrobe and cut down on your loads of washing? How about getting your home clutter free so you spend less time cleaning and maintaining it? Think about ways to free up your time for healthy behaviours.

Lighter environment

The winter months come with less natural light through the day, and this can result in mood changes. You might find that you are feeling a little less energetic, or positive. Setting automatic timers for your bedroom lights so that you wake up to light instead of dark, sitting near a window during the workday if possible, and walking to and from your car 5 minutes each way in the sunlight can all help.

Lighter mindset

Try and set aside some time for meditation or mindfulness exercises. This can help bring you back into the moment and clear your mind of stress or concerns, allowing your brain to recharge and process things better.

Lighten that guilt

Having a perfectionist attitude towards health can lead to some serious guilt if you deviate from your plan. Give yourself a little more room to move, and allow yourself occasional indulgences and slip-ups and understand that this is all part of the process. If the majority of your choices are healthy, chances are those times when things don’t go to plan really aren’t going to have too much of an impact. After all, life is to be enjoyed!

 Think about the last time you overindulged in unhealthy food. Were you thinking about something upsetting, had a stressful day, were you watching TV, or chatting to someone? Before you knew it, you’d eaten far more than you had intended without even really being aware of what you were doing.

So in what ways can we practice mindfulness to improve our health?

During exercise

Paying attention to the burn of our muscles as we push against resistance. Being aware of our body so that we are using the correct technique to make the most of each rep and avoid injury. Being aware of that happy rush of endorphins when we find our flow. Noticing greenery around us or the way the early morning breeze feels on our face.

All of these bring us into the moment, letting us get the most enjoyment out of our workout and perform at our best distraction free.

Avoiding multitasking

Study after study has shown that while many of us think that the ability to multitask makes us more productive, the opposite is actually true. Bring able to focus on just one thing from start to completion is far more efficient.

Planning your meals for the week, writing out a shopping list, preparing dinner, packing your workout clothes, scheduling your workout times into your calendar. All great examples of activities that would benefit from mindfulness.

Breaking the stress cycle

The more time you spend stressed, distracted, worrying about the future, the more time you spend in a negative frame of mind. Persistent and prolonged negative emotions can actually alter your brain chemicals, making you more prone to experience anxious thoughts and further negative emotions.

Taking a few minutes here and there to pay attention to what is happening right now, what you can see, feel, taste and touch in this moment without thinking about the future can help break this cycle. Mindfulness is a lovely, gentle strategy to help ease stress and other uncomfortable emotions.

What other ways have you found where being present in the moment has helped you? We would live to hear your top tips on being more mindful!

So what can you do to turn things around? It’s as simple as 1, 2, 3.

1: Change your standards of measurement

How do you measure success… is it perfection? Change it up. Instead adopting an 80% rule can not only lead to incredible benefits for you, but also a higher likelihood that you are going to keep making these changes long term. If 80% of the time you stick to the plan, then you can actual enjoy yourself when you deviate from it on occasion.

Said you will exercise every day but did 5 days instead? Well done! Now really maximise that downtime on the days you have off and enjoy every minute.

2: Shorten your list

Do you have a lot of resolutions you are working on? Choose the three that will have the biggest impact on your life, and stick to those. Having too many resolutions means that you end up feeling too restricted, too pressures, and is a pretty impossible standard to maintain. So keep it short.

3: Ditch the hard ones

Have you set yourself resolutions that are going to be incredibly difficult to achieve, and that deep down you know that there is no way that you could ever get there? The danger in this is that is sets you up for failure, which makes you have less confidence in yourself, and makes you less likely to succeed in the future. Instead tone down your resolutions so that the overall goal is actually reasonable, can be done in the time frame that you set for yourself, and that isn’t going to make your life so miserable that it can’t be maintained.

Fingers crossed that working through this list gets you on a better path to achieving your health goals in 2018.

So what’s the real deal with avocado? Let’s take a look…

Fats

Yes, avocado contains fat. But the types of fat found in avocado are considered to be “good fats.” That is, they contain unsaturated fats which are linked to lower incidences of heart disease, as well as important for the absorption of certain fat-soluble vitamins, and healthy brain function. Being a plant product, they are also cholesterol free.

It is actually essential that we take in some amount of fat in our diet every day, and avocado is a great choice as a healthy spread, in salads, fillings, or as a baking ingredient.

How much?

One whole large avocado has around 400 calories. That’s equivalent to almost a whole meal in itself. The majority of us wouldn’t consume a whole avocado in one sitting though. We might use a couple of tablespoons as a spread/filling (50 calories) or even a quarter in a salad (100 calories).

These types of portions are absolutely fine, and as long as you look at the calories you are getting from avocado as just one part of a balanced diet, there’s no reason to avoid them.

Keeping you full

An added benefit of including avocado in your diet is that the good fats and fibre can help to slow digestion, meaning that you have more sustained energy levels. This helps to avoid those blood sugar highs, and crashes that make you feel tired or lethargic.

Great news for letting you make the most out of your day! Try pairing avocado with some healthy whole grains and lean protein for maximum benefits. And most of all, enjoy!

If you find it difficult to keep up the momentum in making lifestyle changes, these simple tips might make it easier for you!

Choose 2-3 things to change in a week

Rather than trying to change absolutely everything in your life, just pick 2-3 of the most important things. This could be something like- making a commitment to walk for 15-20 minutes every morning, plus eating fruit at breakfast every morning, and cutting off caffeine after 3pm.

All of these will have significant benefits to your health, are easy to remember, and aren’t too difficult to implement. Once these new habits have started to feel more automatic, you can decide on some new goals to include. And don’t be too strict with this tip. If you get to the end of the week and don’t feel like you are ready to make any new changes, then leave it for another week!

Make being healthy easier

It’s hard to choose healthy foods when there’s nothing in your pantry but high sugar high sodium pre-packaged foods. It’s difficult to get out there and exercise when you don’t have any workout clothes that fit properly. It’s very hard to make a healthy choice when you’ve skipped lunch and are absolutely starving, and the local drive through is your way home.

Plan ahead a little, and think about what you could do now that will make those healthier choices more likely in the future. Maybe it’s laying your exercise clothes ready for the next morning. Packing a healthy lunch the night before to grab on your way out the door. Even putting together some recipes and making sure you have the ingredients on hand through the week.

Celebrate your changes, not whether you’ve reached your goal

Make sure you take a minute to celebrate all the healthy changes you have made, and that you are on your way to serious progress with your health. Rather than getting irritated that all your hard work only changed your weight by half a kilo, or that you aren’t running an hour straight without a break yet, look at what you have accomplished.

This way you will be much more likely to feel positive about the experience, and be able to continue your changes long term. Before long you’ll be hitting your goals and you’ll have enjoyed the process as well!

Is eating organic something that you should be doing? The answer to that is a resounding… maybe.

First things first

Before getting into the nitty-gritty details of vitamins, minerals, trace levels of chemicals, let’s take a step back first. Are you, in fact, eating the right amounts from each of the food groups in the first place? That is, 2-3 serves of fruit a day, 5 or more serves of vegetables or salad, 2-3 serves of reduced fat and no added sugar dairy products, a serving of lean protein or meat alternative, and plenty of whole grains.

The majority of us aren’t, and if this is you, then in the grand scheme of things whether you are buying organic or not isn’t going to have anywhere near as big an impact on your health and nutritional status as just making sure that you are eating well in general.

Fruit

One serving of fruit is a piece the size of a tennis ball, 2 golf ball sized pieces, or 1 cup chopped up. Bonus points for leaving skin on or for edible seeds. Be wary of dried fruit or fruit juice, which is more concentrated in natural sugar.

Vegetables

A serving of vegetables is half a cup of cooked vegetables, or 1 cup of salad vegetables. Be mindful of portions when it comes to more starchy vegetables such as potato, sweet potato, corn, peas, pumpkin, parsnip, and try and include plenty of non-starchy vegetables to make up the bulk of meals.

You should aim for vegetables at both lunch and dinner, or even breakfast!

Protein

Lean meat, poultry, or fish prepared in a healthy way such as boiling, steaming, grilling, or oven baking with just a small amount of healthy oil such as olive or rice bran oil is a good idea. A size about the palm of your hand is the right portion size, fish a little more.

If you want to enjoy meat free meals sometimes you can substitute in eggs, nuts, legumes, or tofu. Avoid heavily salted forms of protein, and be wary of processed meat.

Dairy

If you can tolerate dairy, choose 2-3 serves a day. A serve is a glass of milk, 2 slices of light cheese, 1 tub no added sugar yoghurt etc. If lactose is a problem then soy milk may be your next best option. Be careful of rice or almond milk, sugar content can be much higher and calcium levels much lower.

Whole grains

Grainy bread, brown rice, grainy crackers, whole grain unprocessed cereals, and wholemeal pasta are great options. The least processed the better as a general rule.

If you are meeting all of these requirements on a daily basis, and your budget allows for the additional cost of organic produce, by all meals swap your local supermarket purchase for the organic farmers market. If however like most of us you aren’t getting your recommended daily intake from each of the food groups, it might be best to start there and make improvements afterward.

Being mindful simply means to be present in the moment, that is- to be aware of your surroundings, notice things happening around you so that you get out of your own head for just a moment. This does miraculous things for relieving anxiety or depression and acts as a type of reset button when you start to get overwhelmed with planning or details.

So what is being mindful? It’s simply making the effort a few times a day, one an hour, once in the middle of the day- whatever frequency works for you- to take a moment and pay attention to what is happening around you. What can you see, smell, hear, feel and taste. It’s just being present in the moment, for a moment.

Why bother? Well, let’s discuss the health benefits of mindfulness.

It reduces stress

Lowering your blood pressure, allowing you to better regulate your emotions, to cope better, and improve your mood. Chances are that if you are stuck in your own head, it’s because you are worried about something, or feeling a little overwhelmed. Reducing your stress allows you to think more rationally and less reactively.

It reduces pain

Those suffering from chronic pain have found that mindfulness can help them to manage pain better and actually report lower levels of pain overall. This may be related to lower stress levels, as it’s thought that stress makes pain worse.

It decreases anxiety and depression

Being mindful can help stop rumination in its tracks, and divert negative thoughts to more neutral ones. It allows the mind to have a break, and therefore be able to take a step back and identify unhelpful thoughts more objectively.

It helps you lose weight

Mindfulness practices have been shown to improve outcomes for those trying to lose weight, with reduced unconscious eating, emotional eating, or comfort eating, as well as more enjoyment of healthy foods and exercise.

Less self-destructive behaviors

Mindfulness has been shown to help improve self-regulation of emotion and impulses, such as drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes.

So overall there are many benefits of mindfulness in terms of your health. What have you found to be the biggest benefit?

All these questions and more answered below…

Why do we need to stay hydrated?

The majority of our body, around 60%, is made up of water. It is required to allow the movement of cells such as red blood cells, nutrients, fuel sources such as sugar, fatty acids, and proteins, and many others through our body, as well as allowing for toxins to be removed from our system through the urine.

Just 1% dehydration can start to affect how well our body can function- including concentration, energy levels, reflexes, exercise capacity, and memory. To keep your body running as well as it possibly can, staying hydrated is a very important element- along with healthy balanced eating, adequate rest/sleep, and regular exercise.

Why do we become dehydrated?

We lose water through our breath, through sweat, our urine, and bowel movements. The hotter the environment, the more you sweat and need to rehydrate. Exercise is another factor that accelerates water loss- through both breathing and sweating. Even indoor heating where the air is dry can result in increased water loss through the skin.

Being unwell can also exacerbate dehydration such as through vomiting or diarrhoea, fever, infection, or draining wounds.

How much?

When it comes to daily fluid intake to keep you hydrated, you have probably heard the stock standard rule of 8 glasses a day. When professionals calculate daily fluid requirements, they often use the formula of 30ml/kg of body weight. So a 70kg person would need 70 x 30ml = 2100ml, or 2.1L a day.

For every hour of exercise you complete, it is a good idea to try and drink at least 1L of fluid as an estimate, or alternatively you can weight yourself before and after your workout, and replace every 1kg of weight lost with 1L of water.

Where from?

If this seems like a lot of water to you, it might help if you understand all the different sources of fluid in your day. About 20% of your fluid needs are actually met through the food that you eat, assuming you are following a healthy diet including the recommended serves of food groups.

For the 70kg person above, this is about 420ml. This means the total fluid for the day to get from liquid forms is 1680ml/day. Simplified, 1.7L a day, or 7 glasses of water… sounds pretty close to the general guidelines right?

Well what if you are heavier than 70kg? Lets say, 100kg? Thats 3L fluid a day, minus 600ml from food, 2.4L which is close to 10 glasses a day. This is where aiming for 8 glasses a day just won’t cut it if you are overweight/obese.

Luckily, this liquid form of fluids doesn’t need to come from just plain old water. Fruit or vegetable juices, milk, electrolyte drinks, ice blocks, herbal or black tea, coffee, soups, smoothies, cordials, and soda water all count. Just make sure that these are fitting in with your healthy eating plan- you do want to try and make the majority of your intake be through water to prevent excessive calories/sugar, and watch your caffeine intake through tea and coffee.

This all seems a bit complicated…

Before you pull out the calculator or start recording every ml of water you drink, there is one pretty easy way to tell if you are getting enough water, and that’s to check the colour of your urine. If it is colourless, or a very pale yellow, you can be pretty sure you are drinking enough.

Just remember that vitamins or other supplements can change the colour of urine, and a bright yellow colour can be seen even if you are fully hydrated.  In this case, just make sure you aren’t feeling thirsty and are roughly consuming the right amount for your weight.

One last thing- it is actually possible to drink too much water, which saps the electrolytes from your body and can lead to a dangerous condition called hyponatremia. Although this is rare, it is something to be aware of- more is not always better.

And as always, you know your body, and everyone is an individual, so make your decisions about the amount of water you need based on your own individual circumstances, and then just enjoy the benefits to your physical and mental state from staying hydrated.

So what can you do to keep making progress but also take care of your body?

Rest weeks. Now before you jump in and tell us that you couldn’t possibly stop exercising for a whole week, let us explain what we mean by “rest”,

Lets use a very basic example of weights training. A progression plan might look like this:

Week 1: 10kg

Week 2: 11kg

Week 3: 12kg

Week 4: 13kg

Week 5: 14kg

Week 6: 15kg

So small increases in weight (resistance) each week. If we know that the improvements you have made to your fitness and strength can start to deteriorate in as little as 7 days, then of course we don’t want to be taking every second week off do we?

But what we can do is give our body a break in a different way, by implementing a “rest” week, which is a week where exercise is done at a slightly lower intensity, and so is putting less strain on the entire system. A 4 week rest cycle might look something like this:

Week 1: 10kg

Week 2: 11kg

Week 3: 12 kg

Week 4: 11kg

Week 5: 12kg

Week 6: 13kg

At week 4 you drop back to the level you were at in week 2, so you are still exercising, don’t lose the fitness gains you have already made, but your body treats this like it is a rest week, and can repair and restore, setting you up for better results in the future, and minimised your risk of injury or overtraining.

What about recovery between sessions?

Cardio you are generally fine to do every day as long as the duration isn’t extreme, but resistance exercises or weights training is ideally spaced 48 hours apart to allow for recovery and your muscles to repair and rebuild micro-tears. One option if you exercise daily is to work upper body and lower body on alternating days, so that the individual muscle groups worked are getting a 48 hour break.

Lastly, make sure you are providing your muscles with adequate carbohydrate and protein in the hour before or after exercise, to offer the building blocks required for recovery.

Feeling anxious, a racing heartbeat, an inability to concentrate, insomnia, and dehydration due to caffeine being a diuretic are some of the negative side effects of consuming too much caffeine. To make sure you can enjoy that coffee and get the most out of it, follow these tips…

Space them out

Did you know it takes around 50 minutes for caffeine to take full effect? If you are waking up in the morning and doubling up, thinking after 20-30 minutes that you are still tired and need another cup, you may find yourself with the jitters by mid morning.

Hydrate

To counteract the dehydrating effects of caffeine, the rule of thumb is to have a glass of water with every caffeinated beverage you consume. Although contrary to this advice, evidence has shown that the greater your tolerance to caffeine- such as if you have been regularly drinking coffee a few times a day for years- your body learns to process caffeine more efficiently and so the dehydrating effect is less than for someone who only occasionally consumes caffeine.

Still, many of us don’t drink the recommended amount of water in a day, so it may pay to increase your intake anyway. Keeping a full drink bottle with you during the day that you can sip on is a great trick- you might also be less likely to make yourself another coffee out of thirst this way.

Warm up other ways

Hot beverages are a great way to warm yourself up, whether you are getting a chill in the cooler seasons, or from the air conditioning at work. Dress a little warmer, and try caffeine free hot drinks such as fruity herbal tea, decaf black tea, or even just hot water with a little lemon for flavour. This way you still warm up but aren’t overdoing the caffeine.

Keep to the guidelines

In general it is a good idea to limit yourself to under 200-300mg of caffeine. To put this in perspective, a cup of instant coffee has roughly 70-80mg of caffeine, black tea has 30-40mg, green tea has 10-20mg, barista/brewed coffee can have anywhere between 100-200mg depending on where you buy it from, and you need to watch sizing- a large takeaway coffee may have more than one shot in it.

Be aware of lasting effects

The half life of caffeine – that is, the amount of time it takes for the body to eliminate half of the caffeine ingested- is anywhere between 3-7 hours depending on a number of factors such as body weight, pregnancy, liver function, age, and whether there are any other drugs such as prescription medication that the body is simultaneously trying to process.

This means that if you are having a caffeinated beverage every few hours, there is probably going to be a build up effect, and each subsequent dose will have a greater effect. Experiment with this yourself- what is the optimum timing for you?

Is one in the morning and one mid afternoon just right? Or does one is the morning and one at lunch time mean you sleep better at night? Does one last you all day?

Occasionally detox

What we mean by this, is that if you regularly drink caffeinated beverages you will build up a tolerance, which means that you will no longer get the same boost to your energy levels, and will instead need a caffeine hit just to feel normal, let alone energised.

Occasionally cutting back or cutting out caffeine for a few days or a week allows your body to reset to some extent, and when you start drinking coffee again you will notice more of an effect. Of course, one could argue that exercise, good diet, and drinking enough water should be your primary method for improving energy levels, and caffeine should be only an occasional indulgence.

But really, it comes down to what works for you, your body, and your lifestyle.