Your Lifestyle Matters
Make the Other 23 Hours of Your Day Count!
By Fernando Paredes
E
veryone is always in search of the “super” exercise, routine, stretch, food, diet, etc. to get them to their goals. And, yes, the workout is important to making or breaking your results. However, the workout takes up how much time of your day? One hour? What about the remaining twenty-three hours of your day? What you do the other twenty-three hours of the day what you do outside your workout time is what will make or break your success. Here’s a cold, hard fact for you: Your lifestyle, how you live your life outside your workout, matters. Your lifestyle habits determine if the workout you did was in vain or if it will lead to a transformation. So, my question to you is: Does your lifestyle support your training goals? If so, keep going! If not, keep working on it! Here are top three lifestyle habits that get overlooked the most and, in my experience, matter the most to health, fitness and performance success. Get these three wrong, and you make your progress that much harder to attain.
1
DRINK ENOUGH WATER. Yes, I know that you’ve heard this over and over again. There’s a reason for that – it’s the truth. Water is a critical yet overlooked
nutrient. It’s nature’s super-tonic! Over seventy percent of your body is water and your brain is eighty-five percent water. The kidneys need enough water to manage electrolytes, blood pressure and flush out waste properly. When you don’t drink enough water, you get dehydrated. And when you drink too much coffee and soda, you dehydrate your body even further. Dehydration causes: brain-fog, water-retention, poor circulation, muscle tightness and cramping, digestive issues, constipation, poor skin elasticity and slows down fat loss! Though water needs can vary, the general range most people need to drink every day is between sixty-four to one hundred ounces. Here’s a quick self-test: if you’re urine is consistently deep yellow in color, you may not be drinking enough water. Make sure you drink enough water every day for vibrant health, fitness and energy.
2
GET ENOUGH SLEEP. Quality, restful sleep is critical for the body to recover and repair itself. During sleep the body releases seventy percent human growth hormone (HGH) helping it to repair the heart, blood vessels,muscles and eliminate waste from the brain. Not getting enough sleep on a regular basis is dangerous, leading to increased risk of heart disease, blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, lower immunity and slower brain function.
Getting six to eight hours of sleep every night will ensure that your mind stays sharp and your body continues to become healthier, stronger and leaner. To ensure you get a good night’s sleep you must prepare the body to sleep. Try these simple practices thirty to sixty minutes prior to bedtime: slowdown and stop doing work-stuff, do something relaxing like reading a book, deep breathing or performing some easy stretching; turn off electronic devices, dim bright lights and try drinking chamomile tea. In time, you’ll be waking up refreshed and raring-to-go every day.
3
BREATHE. Proper breathing is one of the simplest yet most overlooked habits that can improve your overall health and fitness success. Most people are “high-breathers” incorrectly using their neck and chest muscles to breathe. Breathing using the diaphragm is critical for proper core stability, cardiorespiratory function, relieving stress and fat-burning. Improper breathing becomes very apparent when I see new clients unconsciously hold their breath during simple exercises. A dead-giveaway there’s a breathing problem affecting the function of the deep core. Not good. You see, holding your breath during exercise locks the diaphragm creating intraabdominal pressure to stabilize the torso. Continued on page 6
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MAY/JUNE 2021
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