Hi Everyone!
Karen and Stephen here at Nutrition Leaders UK and welcome 😃
It is so important to understand that exercise can't be used as a substitute for a poor diet-it takes a lot of physical activity to burn enough calories to make a difference. Even everday activities such as walking or riding a bike will help to keep your heart healthy and build or maintain lean body mass. Exercise also helps you look and feel your best.
We're going to be talking to you today about a section from our "It Starts Here-Discover the best version of yourself" series, this is one of ten excellent sections which will help you discover the best version of yourself in 2020 and beyond.
Today we're focusing on exercise awareness.
If you would like a FREE downlable PDF Copy of this great little booklet just send an email to info@nutritionleaders.co.uk and we will get a copy to you with our compliments :-)
Also, if you have any requests for topics or areas which you would like us to cover in future blogs please let us know...
Unfortunately a lot of what we are told about exercise is not true...
If exercise alone was the magic bullet for people who are overweight or obese we would not have a problem at all, as we hear from fitness professionals, medics and tv programs all the time that exercise is the key to weight loss. So people have been getting this message for years and years now and are we really expected to beleive that all overweight and obese people have really never tried exercising more!?
This is complete nonsense!!!
We work with a whole range of clients.
At the present time I am personally working with people aged 18 to 87.
So we've got people at all different levels of ability and interest in sports and fitness.
The good news for us as the No 1 Nutrition Company - Herbalife Nutrition in the World is what we have discovered personally is that the key to good health and wellness is actually 80% nutrition and 20% exercise BUT unfortunately we are not told this in the mainstream media or by those who are in a position of influence so most people get it wrong and think it's the other way round...
I used to too.
Many years ago Karen was trying to do a two hour round trip to the gym when she was overweight.
Karen - camera shy in her 30's
To body confident in her 50's
After 5 years of this I was still overweight and I wasn't shrinking and nobody at my expensive health club talked to me about nutrition and I used to come out and think "Oh, I have got a bit more leeway" and then I would fuel up on the wrong things, at the supermarket on the way home because I thought I had a little bit more room to play with!
It's Sooo easy to let yourself off the hook and just think you are not going to the gym enough are not exercising enough and that's the reason you are not losing weight and getting results.
And a lot of people who should know better actually re-inforce this behaviour.
They say "you need to go to the gym more. You need to exercise more"
Well No! It's actually all about how you are fuelling your body. You cannot out exercise a poor diet. The treadmill in the Gym does not put vitamins, minerals, macro and micro nutrients and protein in your body now does it!!!
As we said the key is 20% exercise & 80% nutrition and don't get this the wrong way round...
In an ideal world, we absolutely need to get both right to get the very best Health results.
So that's what we advise our clients to do. We're not fitness instructors, we're just normal human beings.
We're not nutritionists either.
We're Herbalife Nutrition Independent Distributors.
We recommend products that we've used ourselves for 18 years and 17 years respectively.
We are qualified to guide others as to how best to use these amazing nutritional supplements to enhance and plug the gaps in there every day diet along with adopting a healthy active lifestyle which is simple to follow and to continue long term for sustainable health results.
We're both in our 50s and we're feeling absolutely fantastic and in great health!
That's what we want for you and our customers.
So what would be some top tips for exercising?
What should a beginner be aiming for a?
Basically, you're looking for 20 to 30 minutes exercise a day, five days a week, and that could include simple things like riding a bike, stretching, performing bodyweight exercises, maybe lunges, squats. If you've got a lawn, just pushing the lawn mower would count!
Karen often does 10,000 steps in the garden easily.
So that would be how you could get going.
And if you're walking, just walk a little bit quicker or a little bit further, just small incremental steps will add up and work for a lot of people particularly for those who are more elderly.
Karen and I live in a small town, so we encourage a lot of our customers to walk more instead of taking the car where possible.
If you can, walk to get your shopping and walk back again, carring shopping evenly spread as a weight bearing excercise.
Use the stairs, don't take the lift, just think simple things like this.
And then as you move up to an intermediate exercise level of fitness (that's defined as 30 to 45 minutes of exercise five days a week) what that could look like is running.
Because when you have impact with your feet hitting the ground with running this can help with retaining bone density as you age.
Obviously, you need to achieve a balance with this.
You don't want to overdo it too quickly moving from beginner to intermidiate.
Just build up playing active sports, getting involved in football, tennis, dance, aerobics, swimming, and interval training is very good idea.
As Karen was put off exercise by spending so many years going to the gym and seeing very little results for her efforts its great that she is now very fit in her 50s after following the Herbalife Nutrition 5 weeks to 5K fitness plan for the last few summers and it has actually helped her go from beginner to intermediate fitness levels and now working on the advanced level!!!
The five week beginner programme is really great and just starts off with a gentle 20 minute walk on day 1 and then there's a bed rest day on day 2 followed by resuming again on day 3
Then it gets a little more serious with eight lots of 2 mins walks followed by 2 mins running and so on.
Karen followed this program very successfully and achieved good timings for somebody that doesn't really consistently exercise in this manner.
After this she moved onto the intermediate fitness level and followed this for another five weeks improving her times and then onto the advanced programme.
She has done this now over several summers, because being a bit of a fair weather exerciser she does not like to run outside in the winter!
Instead Karen likes in the winter to just put a little fitness video on in the morning
and push back the furniture in the lounge, get out her exercise mat and follow some free exercise sessions (without paying for pricy gym memberships).
It might be something from our Herbalife Nutrition's director of fitness and ex Olympic Champion- Samantha Clayton or it could be something from YouTube or perhaps Google.
Try some different exercises to keep you interested and to use different parts of your body.
HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training ) is a good one.
We both like to exercise before our brains have had a chance to think or wake up first thing in the morning.
We both know by the time it gets to evening, if we are not careful, we will make every excuse in the book to not make a round trip to the gym, or not put the exercise video on, so find out what works best for you and schedule it in and stick to it.
If you want to take it up to the top level, that's the advanced level then this is defined as anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes of exercise, five days a week, and a mixture of strength, cardio and endurance work.
What sort of weight lifting or weight resistance exercises can you do?
Well, you can use resistance bands which are very portable, running up hills and treadmills set to inclines, jump rope, extended bike rides etc.
Again, you can use power exercise DVDs, and Samantha Clayton workouts, which Karen was talking about earlier and she does a really good series that we've used ourselves and our clients as well use. They're nice, simple, easy to follow videos at different levels. The series we use and recommend are called Herbalife 24FIT- The Smarter Way To Work Out comprising of a comprehensive program starting with stability then strength and concluding with power.
Trust us, they go right up to another level and are really, really tough.
The other thing to do is to plan your week, so plan ahead, because what can tend to happen is life will get in the way. You've got good intentions but as things get busy during your week you can so easily be talken off track. So it's really good to plan at the weekend.
Just make a note of what does your diary look like for the week ahead?
When can I exercise?
How long have I got, maybe keep a journal and think about what type of exercises you can do?
Another top tip would be to have your gym bag already packed the night before you need it and ready to go by the door or in the boot of your car if you're going to work.
So on the way back, if you are going to do a gym round trip, you've got everything there and you're all set to go rather than sort of scrambling around looking for it in the morning and finding you have not left yourself enough time to get everything you need ready.
Because if you remove all the excuses, so if you've not prepared, then you can easily say I've not got my gym bag, so i can't do my workout.
Another good tip as well is you know,
If you want to exercise and be more social rather than workout on your own there's a lot availaible for example- dancing, you don't have to go with a partner, you can go to something like Ceroc or Salsa etc and you'll meet a lot of new friends.
Also Park Run's usually held on a Saturday over a 5K distance are hugely popular and really encouraging for beginner runners and you can get really involved in the running community.
Sometimes when you commit to do something with friends, you're more likely to do it because you don't want to let them down.
If you can try and make a commitment to work out with friends a few times a week that can help enormously.
We were talking about interval training earlier, Samantha Clayton, highly recommends interval training, because it gets your heart pumping with a more intense workout in a shorter time.
So very time efficient and excellent for busy people.
And in addition, because of the way it's designed, you burn calories after the exercise is finished. So you're actually going to be burning calories for a long time afterwards, which is really good. She recommends HIIT workouts very, very highly.
Another top tip from a nutrition point of view is the importance of being fully hydrated whilst exercising as this allows you to perform much better than if you are not.
We absolutely would encourage you to increase the level of exercise you're doing as this is all about you being your absolute best.
What your absolute best might look like will depend on a lot of thing's because obviously if
you're 80 years old versus 18, it's going to be very different.
But, for most people, we all probably know we can do a little bit better...
We all want to feel a bit better and look a bit better too usually.
But don't forget you can't out exercise a poor diet!
We would say yet again the key to Wellness is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise.
To finish off this article our main advice is to encourage you to just keep moving as your body is designed to move and even more so as you age this advice will absolutely help you.
Regular exercise will help you live well and produce happy endorphins, be great for your mental health as well as your physical health.
Just keep moving.
And more importantly have fun with it too!!!
Thanks for joining us.
Best Wishes,
Stephen & Karen