Look Good, Feel Good, Be Healthy

When people ask me for help with improving their health and fitness or creating a program for them, I ask them what their goals are, and the most common goal I get is “I want to look good and feel good”. Now, as much as I understand and respect that, you are not really giving me a lot to go off here. So, I continue to probe for things that they would like to be better at or would like to get back to. This generally involves me asking what their likes and dislikes and their past exercise history are. In doing this, I need to try and gauge their personality type and willingness to change, I look at their schedule, what access to equipment they have to try and identify facilitators and barriers to progress.

I would not have to go through all of this if people came to me with more specific goal/s and purpose. This does happen with some people. Their needs and wants come flowing out the minute you give them the opportunity to share that with you. Having a clearly defined aim is necessary to gain any insight as to the direction you should go.

My big thing is that you should enjoy it (as much as possible) and if “exercise is not your thing” you should consider taking up or becoming more involved in an activity that will require you to be active and get moving.

You need to define what “looking good” and “feeling good” means to you, so I have a better idea of how to help you get there.

One big take away is “that watching your weight isn’t everything”. Firstly, your risk of dying due to your unhealthy habits are largely taken from your fitness and not based on how much you weigh. Being skinny and unfit is worse than being fat but fit. Of course, the more risk factors the worse off you will be, but still! Secondly, when you start working out for the first time you might not see much change visually and you might find that your weight actually increases as you become fitter, more toned and stronger, putting on more muscle. That is why I much prefer the term “weight management” as opposed to weight loss. Although, if you are trying to slim down a bit, you need to get your body on board with burning fat as an energy source.

You also need to develop a good relationship with food. This does not mean starving yourself, this means eating less processed foods and eating more fresh food. Sugar is a real problem in all of this because unless we are all endurance athletes and are using it for optimum performance, it is typically doing you more harm than good.

Some good places to start looking and feeling better include:

• Ensuring your sleep is in check

• Ensuring your diet is not full of crap

• Doing an activity or many, that makes you breathe heavily, from physical exertion 3 – 5 times a week (aerobic exercise)

• That you are working on building stronger relationships and deeper connections with the people around you

• That you are actively practising ways to bring joy into your life and others, regularly.

• Practising gratitude regularly.

All of this takes some initial effort to set up and then consistent action for a little while until it becomes a way of life. Once you have developed healthy habits, it all becomes quite simple. Taking regular checks to ensure you are on track is necessary. It is okay to go off course, it is not okay to stay off-course. As long as you keep trying you will get there and will reap the benefits.