12 Effective Health and Fitness Tips

Here are some really quick and handy health and fitness tips that are easy to follow and introduce into your health and fitness regime. You'll get great results by following these tips. For your convenience I have divided these tips into Nutrition and Exercise. It is important that you realize that your health and fitness goals will require you to find the right balance of healthy eating and active exercise.

Nutrition:

• When deciding what to eat ask yourself 'can I grow this or can I catch this'. If the answer is yes then you'll know that it is a whole food that is healthy and nutritious for you.


• Keep all your coffee drinking to pre-noon. This will give you the benefits of caffeine while ensuring that you still get a good sleep. Sleep is a huge part of allowing your body to repair and get rid of body fat.


• Green tea is a great replacement for coffee as it helps to keep you alert while putting a lot of anti-oxidants into your body.


• Rather than microwaving food to reheat try steaming it. Steamers are a cheap appliance and steaming keeps more nutrients in your food.


• Never allow yourself to become thirsty. Mild dehydration stresses the body and is counter productive to your health and fitness goals.

Exercise:

• Become an exercise anywhere, anytime kind of person. Bust out 10 push ups anywhere you like. 10 Squats. You'll soon find that by adding random exercises to your routine your body will get fitter and stronger faster. Your friends might think it's a little strange that you do exercises here and there but eventually you'll inspire them to do the same.


• Keep your body guessing with a variety of exercises and levels of intensity. Don't always do hard and fast training and don't always go for low intensity workouts. Variety keeps your body guessing and gets great results.


• Join a club or training group as it is proven that people who train in a group are far more likely to stay consistent with their training over an extended period of time.


• Don't neglect flexibility as part of your training program. Try to stretch for at least 20 minutes a day.


• Invest in a foam roller and take the time to learn about self myofascial release. Foam rolling is a great way to prevent injury and to keep your body supple and flexible.


• When doing cardiovascular training such as runs/walks work for time. Try and go a little further in the same amount of time. This will help you to increase the effort you are giving on your workouts.


• Always listen to your body as far as your training goes. If you are feeling some aches and pains learn to tell whether it is a good pain or a bad pain. A good pain can be related to muscles that are a little sore from your previous workout whereas bad pain is normally sharp and more than gentle walking type pain.

If you can start to incorporate some of the tips above you'll be well on your way to developing good health and fitness habits. It is impossible to be genuinely healthy without taking care of both aspects of fitness. A healthy lifestyle is something that forms over time as you educate yourself about what to put into your body and how to move your body effectively.