Hello there!
Thanks for the great discussion on HIIT. I loved reading about all of you who incorporate HIIT into your weekly exercise routine! Who knew there were so many of you?! Awesome. I am so excited to play around with the training. The possibilities are really endless. And let me tell you, I have never had a runner’s high like that (in 28 minutes to boot!).
Now, as promised…
This week I will be sharing some of my favourite health tips that have worked well for me on my road to health. I thought it would be a great way to open up dialogue and get each other inspired to have a kick-butt Spring season (and beyond!).
Health Tip #1: Have Fun With Your Health!
For years, I did not nurture my health. I did not have fun with food, exercise, or my health. I basically succeeded at making myself miserable. I struggled with disordered eating and rarely took pleasure in food because everything about my diet was so strict, regimented, and rigid. All I ever thought about was how many calories or fat grams I had left to eat for that meal or day. Some days I would ‘succeed’ and some days I would ‘lose’, but regardless, every day was essentially the same- a battle against myself.
The same was true for exercise. It was all about squeezing in the most exercise I could in a day. I would walk at lunch, walk home from school, hit the gym, and attend softball practice at night. I have always loved being active and participating in sports throughout childhood, but somewhere along the line I lost the carefree joy that I got out of it. No longer could I just rollerblade for fun- I had to be thinking about how many calories I burned and how long I would make myself go for. I would do endless circles around the cul-de-sac on our street. Where I was going? I just don’t know…
After years of this, I finally figured out that this way of life was not sustainable long-term. I decided that I wanted to take pleasure in my health and stop this cloud of negativity that surrounded me.
I wanted my health, diet, and fitness to be FUN!
I wanted to bound out of bed in the morning and be excited about taking care of myself and my health. I wanted goals…positive ones.
It was not easy to just start to have fun with my health, do not be fooled. After years of fighting my body, I honestly didn’t know how to have fun with it. I had to learn how to ride my bike with training wheels again. I decided to put on some rose-coloured glasses and fake it ‘til I made it.
Over time, I discovered a passion for health and nutrition and I started to look at it in a new light.
I. HAD. FUN.
Here are a few things I started to do:
- Experiment with recipes and new foods
2. A lot of reading and research in the health field. Any chance I got in my undergraduate and master’s programs I chose health research!
3. I asked myself what types of exercise I enjoyed and I started to do those more.
4. I stopped counting how many calories I burned while working out and I focused on how exercise made me feel (amazing, proud, strong!) and what benefits it had on my daily life (tons!).
5. I read inspiring blogs and discovered that there were so many people out there who had a passion for health, just like me. So many people who overcame a lot and were now happy.
6. I found surrounding myself with inspiring and positive people made all the difference in my recovery and my passion for life.
It has now been about 3-4 years since I decided to have fun with my health. There are so many things I want to try that I haven’t done before! I want to run more races (my next half marathon is on May 30th!), climb a mountain, skydive, scuba dive, and so much more. All it took was reframing the negative into something positive and seeing my health in a new way.
Is food, fitness, and health fun in YOUR life? What do you do to keep it fun?
Was there a time in your life when food and fitness was NOT fun?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how YOU make health fun in your life! I think that positivity is really contagious and through our dialogue we can keep each other inspired!
Coming up on Health Tip Week, I tell you what I eat once daily that keeps me on track (and no, I’m not talking about Green Monsters!)
“I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”
– Martha Washington
Food and fitness used to me a chore for me when I was living in a disordered way. I would push myself on the elliptical for 45 minutes, never doing anything different but trying to lose weight. I hated food because I wished I didn’t have to eat it, and counted every calorie.
Then something changed my mind. I have changed up my exercise routine, I do body pump, my boyfriend is teaching me about strength training, I run now and have goals to be stronger and be able to accomplish more: running a 5k or lifting 5 more lbs, instead of looking at the scale. And I love it! I love seeing results that make me proud and happy, that I am taking care of my body so it can do more, not weigh less.
I also found a passion for cooking and started a cooking blog. I wanted to share my love of food and healthy recipes with people to show that healthy eating can be creative and fun! By making healthy living fun, I am now healthier than I have ever been before!
At the root of it your healthy equals your life! If you are miserable with how you keep yourself healthy, you are going to be miserable in life. It affects EVERYTHING!
It took me awhile to stop counting calories and just have fun! Sure, my weight fluctuates, and I get weird looks from some friends because of my food choices, but who cares?!? I’m healthy and happy about it! I have also been able to pass the torch to my husband who recently took charge of his own health, stopped worrying so much and has never felt better!
By the way, you should go skydiving and scuba diving. They are both amazing experiences!
THANK YOU! It’s good to know I’m not the only one felt at odds with food/exercise. I overanalyzed to the point where I hated eating and hated working out. I never felt good after a work out. I felt guilty that I hadn’t done enough.
I’ve stopped counting calories. Recoring my eats keeps me on the straight and narrow, so I do count Weight Watchers points. For me, this style of tracking doesn’t create the same obsession that calorie counting did. Hopefully one day I’ll be more aware of my body and simply listen to hunger cues and make healthy choices. Baby steps to success.
I used to be just like you were…squeezing in exercise every possible second, counting calories…everything was so rigid! I feel so much better now that I’ve stopped doing that (for the most part). I am learning how to have fun!
I make health fun by buying new cookbooks. My most recent favorite is “Clean Food.” And I keep health fun by doing what I enjoy for exercise so that I look forward to it. Right now, that’s teaching group fitness classes at the gym. but when I burn out on that, I won’t be afraid to slow things down.
i LOVE this tip because it’s so applicable to my own life! i used to be the same as you in regards to health not being fun (and sometimes I still am that way), but through the amazing blogging community i’ve been able to re-ignite my passion for health by seeing how other amazing women and men have fun with what they do! AWESOME tip miss angela :)
This is a wonderful post!!! I completely agree that eating healthy, workouts, and everything else that goes into a healthy lifestyle have to be enjoyable. Otherwise, it isn’t completely healthy. I definitely had a time where eating “right” and working out was not fun. I trained 12 weeks for a fitness competition and had to track every morsel of food and workout at least 2-3 hours/day and was OBSESSED! I HATED it because I felt like it was no longer enjoyable. It has been hard to get back to a happy place with food and exercise. But I love life so much more now. Even if I am definitely bigger than I was then.
I struggled for many years with an eating disorder and have been struggling some recently. I have started to experiment with new recipes and trying not to count calories. This has seemed to help some and I am enjoying trying new healthy foods.
Great Post!
I’ve practiced several of Angelas points. I also go to a personal trainer who is very positive and motivating. I also love cookbooks and cooking magazines so I enjoy new and healthy recipes
Nice tips. That’s pretty much what I try and do every day for my health. :)
I’ve always loved to exercise, so that’s never been much of an obstacle. But learning to “eat intuitively” after years of restricting and then years of binge eating is what I’m challenged with right now. Gotta love a challenge, I suppose! :)
Inspiring as always. I was never obsessed with being thin or with working out but both have always been on my mind. Well at least since undergrad in college. I feel like my exercise was never extreme and always balanced with strength training + cardio. I got a good amount of lifting experience from playing sports in high school, and I always tried to keep that part of the routine. Plus I had a meathead [haha] b/f in college [before chris] that was always at the gym. Anywho…I ate okay but definitely was caught up in “low-fat” “south beach diet” type things. I cooked a lot but a lot of the food was still coming from a box and I can’t tell you how many boneless skinless chicken breasts I ate. SICK! Once I got to grad school and started researching for my thesis on food + architecture I really started to learn SO much. I was hooked on FOOD research. I read Michael Pollan’s books + read about the Slow Food Movement, etc. My eating style has slowing changed over the past 3 years and I am feeling fabulous. Food + Fitness are finally FUN!! I’m not just working out to keep my weight in check and I’ve never loved food + kitchen experimenting more! To keep it fun with food, I try to incorporate a new to me food into my diet as often as possible. With working out I just try to switch it up. I’m currently swimming + biking, strength training 2x a week, and rock climbing at the gym with my husband. SO much fun!! Thanks for this post :)
I love this post! Once I started exercising for fun (not as a chore) my life became soooo much better :-)
Great post! I love seeing progress in my fitness.. being able to run farther, faster; lifting heavier weights, etc. Another great motivator to exercise and eating well are the health benefits- I dropped 40 points from my cholesterol! Can’t beat health :)
One thing my Pilates instructor always says before we attempt a particularly difficult or odd (because sometimes they’re just weird!) exercise is, “Remember, we’re just having fun!” At first I thought that was quaint but now I’ve really come to internalize it! I wouldn’t go to Pilates four or five days a week if I didn’t enjoy it already, so why not have fun with it? Now when I fall accidentally or mess up somehow, I kind of laugh it off, breathe, and try again. It’s HONESTLY fun for me to make mistakes so I can learn how to not make them in the future!
I’m trying to incorporate this attitude in correcting my disordered eating – I mean I’ve always liked to play with green smoothies and juices to see what kinds of colors I could make, but now I’m expanding that to challenge myself to make the MOST COLORFUL plate for dinner (because, I like colors), or recreate fun flavors in my salads, and it’s working out! I’m actually learning to l ove food again because I’m trying to enjoy it.
Great post!!
LOVE this quote:
“Remember, we’re just having fun!”
I think that is why yoga used to stress me out.
Even though I count what I eat and how many calories I burn I make it a total game. If I’m running I’ll go to the next 50 or 100 calories even if I’m done my distance. And I try to come up with recipes that give me more bang for my buck. I can’t eat a ton of processed stuff so I enjoy spending part of the day searching for food I can eat. It makes cooking fun instead of a punishment that I can’t eat certain things.
If you don’t keep a healthy life fun, you won’t sustain it!
To keep it fun I challenge myself by working towards goals: whether it’s a marathon or a bikini season tune up!
I love your insight here. I also am trying to focus on the fun with it. I joined an intramural soccer team to make fitness more fun. And it REALLY is.
I would do the samething -walk to work, go to the gym at lunch, walk home or go to the gym afterwork -it became tiring and prevented me from enjoying other activies becuase I had to work out every spare second. I would also watch EVERY thing that I ate – even good fats were off limits. I clocked when i ate how many calories – it became a second job. I have finally learned to get away from all that and go to the gym only four out of the five work days and do yoga on the weekends – i no longer stay away from good fats and don’t count calories anymore and if i have one small cookie I don’t feel the need to run 5 miles. I am one of the lucky people that actually enjoy working out so I have put the joy back into working out and taken the work out of it – so instead of working out – it’s joying out !
So inspiring! I must say that right now, I am at the ‘bad’ stage of my life. RIGID is my middle name. I am changing that though. Some days I am able to think clearly and show myself what I want in life, but some days…
I am growing everyday and I KNOW I will be where you are in your life right now VERY SOON!!!
Thank you!!!
yes u will!!