#18. HOW TO GET BACK INTO HEALTH & FITNESS

If you are somebody that is looking to start a fitness journey, get back into the gym, start working on your health, Wellness, anything to do with that, then this episode is for you. We're going to give you everything you need to know about getting back on the wagon.

Starting slow, so I feel like a lot of the time when you fall off the wagon, please let us know if there's a better term for this situation, 'cause we can't think of 1. So essentially, when you stop exercising or you or your healthy eating and healthy habits go out the window. That is what we are referring to as falling off the wagon, so starting slow would probably be the best place. For you to start, so obviously don't go from doing anything to doing everything. You were doing a month ago in a day, yeah, I guess. Uhm, so focus on one healthy meal a day rather than being like OK Monday, I'm going to eat three salads. That's my day. Just focus on one what you've been eating normally and adding maybe like. I know have edged veggie stir fry for dinner or like whatever meals are easy for you to control and you have the most time to prepare. Focus on making that you're healthy meal for the day and then. You remember how good healthy eating made you feel, I guess. And then yeah, automatically. You'll start to want to eat the other two meals more healthfully. Yep. Get. Up next is to focus on one to two workouts a week. This is a big thing, the most very common thing that a lot of people do. They have an exercise for a month or a couple of weeks so they're like I've got to go every single day and go in way too hard. Way too hot and justice either injure themselves or that so they can't move for another two weeks. Yeah, menu, it just ends up being a vicious cycle. Yeah, so start slow. Start with some resistance training. Build up that sort of. Resistance muscle base. It's going to help you stop getting like you won't get injuries. It helps your body function properly. It makes you feel a little bit better and it's just simple to do. You don't have to go hard into it straight away. Just start one or two resistance training workouts a week.

Good quality workouts and if you don't know what that looks like, that's when you need to reach out and ask one of us. But yeah, just one or two resistance training a week. You don't need to jump into a hit training or run a 20K yeah race or anything like that. Just make it super easy. Start these at home. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you have to go back to the gym straight away. Resistance training can just be bodyweight. Yep, bodyweight movements can be just resistance as well. So what's the last one you got there to add more fruit and vegetables rather than taking away the food that you're eating? So I feel like a lot of people think, oh, we've been having. It's a bad meal, yeah, like, well, basically if you've got in the habit of getting takeaway for lunch each day, don't stress about that. The easiest way to do it just takes a bit of fruit or two to have with that, take away. With your lunch, yeah, rather than just cutting everything out and then being like I have no joy in life. Yeah, I just have to eat these fruits and vegetables. Yeah, and a lot of the time if you just start eating more fruits and vegetables then you leave less room for wanting snacks and more unhealthy foods I suppose. Yeah exactly. And you're not that we do that all of a sudden brings in all these Tupperware containers to work. Unless their meal prep, you can still join him for fun, but just add a couple of bits of fruit or veg. As well as having fun doing that sort of stuff, cool so the next bit is sort of stepping it up. So the first one there starting slow was just for those that just want to take it easy. Ease back in and start moving and being healthy. If you've done those and you're looking for the next step or the next way to kick it up a little bit, it would be to focus on your habits and the first one. Is to drink more water. I feel like it's a very obvious one, but if you have fallen off the wagon then you probably had drinking things that are more. Like calorie dense

I suppose, or sugar dense like more soft drinks juices all that kind of stuff. Alcohol, alcohol. And because you're drinking those liquids, I feel like you just forget about adding water or drinking water. Or they replace your water. And water is super important for a lot of things. If you listen to a podcast you would, you would know that by now, Yep, so some easy ways to start adding more water in is, I feel like my favourite is having a glass of half a water bottle of water first thing in the morning so I don't know how people don't do that. Like you wake up and I'm dying of thirst and so just put a water bottle by your phone and get a litre water bottle and take it everywhere with you. Then you can monitor how much you've been drinking.

Don't mind the dogs having a little fight on the ground there. Uhm, a lot of people don't like their folks like the taste of water after going from drinking soft drink and then back to the water. It's so plain and boring. So like add fresh fruit to it. Lemon and lime. You can get carbonated water mineral water like it doesn't just have to be tap water. And one habit that I did speak about with the client is when you go to events where you don't drink water for three hours, which you wouldn't normally do at home, like going out for dinner or whatever. Not out for dinner at to say a barbeque. Then take water and put it in the S key with your alcoholic drinks and then every time you go to get a new drink, have some water because otherwise, I feel like there are three hours of the day where you don't have any water because you're drinking another liquid. Yeah, for sure. Yeah yeah. The next one is to sleep on. Those are the Ben. Listen for a while. Would wondering when would sneak this one in but sleep so generally when we 4th wagon you're staying up watching movies late at night, waking up that little bit later so it's just more about sort of pulling that back a bit. Going to bed a little bit earlier, waking up a little bit earlier and just making that consistent. So don't just do that one or two nights, but try and do that every night of the week and just try and have more consistent sleep. Like going to bedtimes and waking up times and not staying up too late and just trying to improve on the quality of your sleep as well. Yeah, which I think we have a whole sleep podcast if that's where you want to start. I think we've got a couple of those. If you want to go back and listen to that. Yeah, the last point on habits I guess is focusing on movement in the morning, so I feel like a lot of the time if you get up, have a coffee, go to work, and then sit at a desk for eight hours, you haven't moved, you feel like sluggish. Probably tired like and who wants to move after work when you've been in that? Like the pattern of sitting at your desk for eight hours. So if you move first thing in the morning gets the blood pumping. It wakes you up a bit more.

You feel more energized, you feel more focused and it sort of reminds you. Throughout the day. I guess you'll keep thinking about how good you felt this morning after you did yoga or went for a walk. And then you're more likely to want to do a small activity after work. Doesn't have to be a huge workout, but yeah, and let's face it, as soon like when you do drop off and try to get back into the gym or back into work. That's probably one of the hardest things, and doing it first thing in the morning, like waking up and just getting it done, is the best thing you can do. Yeah, otherwise you're going to come up with all these excuses during the day not to do in the afternoon. Yeah, you don't have any time to think about it if it's stressful. Yeah, just a lot of people will set up their work if they're doing it at home. Just set up your gym at home, have your workout gear ready rock'n'roll so you can just wake up, walk straight in the gym, get it done, yeah? I guess on that topic of exercising I would say to do a type of exercise that you enjoy. Like, don't just do exercise because you feel like that's the type of exercise that's going to help you. Achieve whatever your goal is like. For example, don't do hit just because your neighbours' friends said it helped them lose weight. If you don't like it, don't do it. There are hundreds of different ways to exercise. It doesn't have to just be one that someone else would work for somebody else, so you feel like it has to be the one that you have to do. Yeah, so don't stress about results and all that sort of stuff to start with. Just start the exercise and start moving. Start feeling good again. And yeah, as Mac said, choose something that you enjoy doing. Makes it a lot easier. OK, before we go into things that you should avoid doing when trying to get back on the wagon, I did want to mention it slightly. I guess abnormal one people probably don't consider which is. To journal, it's not for everyone. Not everyone likes it. I find it helps me when I have no motivation or I'm like why am I doing whatever it is that I'm doing.

I just feel like it makes you slow down, like writing down your thoughts you don't have 900 different. Like for and against? What's going through your mind? You're just writing down what you want to believe or think, and it can also help you remember like your why like why you side exercising in the first place. Was it so you're healthier for your family and friends so you can live longer so you feel better so you can get more work done so you have more energy like I feel like sometimes the reason we stop is that it's just like we're going around in circles. And why did we even start? Yep, Yep, so journaling is very helpful to get. You don't even have to have a journal. Write it. Write in the notes on your phone. Doesn't have to be too extravagant. Yeah, 100%. Even if you want to just journal that your day. Things you need to get done. Yeah, things you want to add in and get done. That can help sometimes as well. Yeah, constantly. OK, things that you shouldn't do and trying to get back on the wagon. Go up so don't wait to start next week or next month. It's very common for us to hear that as coaches when we talking in your client and they're like, Oh yeah, we're just going to wait until next month when things are quieter and easier. Yeah, true. This month a little bit busy so will start next month and they don't start next month. Yeah, yeah, there's never gonna be a quite a time or an easier time to start. You have just got to commit to your health and your Wellness and your fitness and just. There will be time if you want there to be time for the things that you want you they'll be time and this sort of comes back into the journaling thing. If you haven't got time, we've said this in the other podcasts. Journal out your day. Yeah, make a time diary hour by hour and you realize how much time you're wasting and how much you could add-in.

Just taking a step back and looking at your day gives you a big. You know insight into how much time you do have, yeah, or you can organize your time better and I feel like on the starting Monday mentality. Is so silly because if you say you're eating well and then you have to take away Wednesday night and then you're like I've ruined my whole healthy eating, I'm just going to eat junk for the rest of the week and start again Monday. You're just putting yourself further back from where you were original. Every day that you do that. So just start the next day, start the next hour. I tell my clients like if you've had, I don't know something that you didn't want to eat and you feel guilty about it. It's done like there's a new minute new second. Every day, so just start from the next hour, the next meal that doesn't have to be Monday, Yep. Cool, so don't go from zero to 100. Yeah, I feel like we did touch on that at the start, but yeah, in examples like don't go from training zero to five-seven days a week. Don't go from eating. Takeaway every night to for dinner to eating salads every day. Yeah, and another thing on that. Yeah yeah, another thing on that eating topic I would say is. Don't try to eat. Healthy meals Monday to Friday and then you'll end up eating junk. On the weekends, because you've restricted yourself so much, so I guess like we said at the start, just focusing on one healthy meal rather than going all or nothing like I think I've said in the past, 50% is better than 50% most of the time is better than 100% one day of the week, yeah, or even 20% for the week is better than. 0% Yep. And what do you lose one day? No, I think I just covered it, yeah, so I guess I'd just finish off by saying just give, cut yourself some slack. Yeah, don't beat yourself up like Mac said, if you do have one bad meal, it is just one bad meal.

If you give in to temptation and eat a chocolate bar or something like that, deal with it. It's happening, move on and don't let it ruin the rest of your day, month, weeks, years. Just accept it and move on. Just do it. Isn't that an anarchic quote? Yeah, it is. It is, but it's a good quote. Yeah yeah just. Stop and again if you have everything set up in the morning to do a morning workout and you don't get to do it, don't stress. It's just one day you can do it again the next day. Uhm, cool, I think that's all we had for you. Let us know if there's any tips or any tricks and stuff that you have used in the past to help you get back into the swing. Black living the lifestyle that you want to live, I guess. Yeah, take a screenshot of this episode on your phone. Put it on your story and just say this is what I like. Just give us a little brief. Description In your stories of what you do me back on the wagon tag us. I'll be on Instagram at @Jack_insitu body and I'm @Mac.insituhealth. So tag us in your stories and your story about getting back on the wagon. Or if you've got another analogy for getting back on the wagon that would be good as well. But we'll chat to you all on a Friday wrap up. Make sure you hit, subscribe or follow wherever you're listening now and will talk to you in the next episode. Have a good week, bye.