What Healthy Is

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Being healthy is not:

Being a certain weight

Being a certain size or shape

Being ripped / having defined visible muscle

Being able to run a distance in a certain time

Being able to lift really heavy weights

Eating really strictly

All these things can be a result of being healthy but in themselves they are not indicative off being healthy.

I know people who live incredibly disciplined lifestyles and look in great shape. They are undoubtedly fit. That doesn’t mean they are healthy.

You can be in great shape but have difficulty managing your training and beat yourself up if you don’t stick to your training schedule and feel like you must do a certain amount each day.

You can be in great shape but beat yourself up for eating certain foods or having some time off from your normal diet, or find yourself being careful on nights out to avoid causing damage to your fitness.

You can have an Instagram worthy routine and lifestyle and find yourself turning down social events because it would interrupt that.

Equally you can be a little bigger than you’d like and eat a more rounded diet and still be fit and healthy, and importantly healthy in more way than just one, because you know that not doing things perfectly doesn’t matter.

That’s not to say I think being overweight is healthy. If you don’t do any exercise and eat too much that is likely to lead to health problems and not be healthy.

We don’t have to live to an extreme though and a balance where we eat well and move (preferably in a way we enjoy) to allow us to feel good and enjoy life is probably the healthiest way to be.

Tired

How are you feeling right now?

Tired!

I got in at 3am this morning and was in work today first thing. My flight back from Croatia was delayed so I got even less sleep than I was expecting. I had a great time though so I’m not too bothered.

The other thing I’m pleased with is how I’ve slipped back into my routine. Even though I was tired I made a nice breakfast, some lunch and snacks to take with me and had a pint of water and my supplements first thing. I’ve got my gym kits so I can go to the gym later. That’s helped me feel better even though I’ve had a lack of sleep, much better than if I’d just grabbed something from the work canteen or ordered a takeaway. Those small changes in habit recently have definitely had a positive effect.

Habits are key

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

Real life health is all about habits.

You might think it’s about eating ‘good foods’ or training every day or drinking protein shakes but really it’s about creating small habits that you can do everyday without really needing to think about it that help improve your general well-being.

Here’s a few things I try to do daily that have now become habits I barely even think about.

1) Drinking at least 3 litres of water. Staying hydrated is good for you.

2) Drinking a pint of water and taking supplements when I first wake up. Helps with habit number one, wakes me up and the supplements help contribute towards anything I might be lacking. I only take a general multi vitamin and Omega 3, nothing expensive – whatever shop brand I happen to come to when I need to buy some. The Omega 3 I take because it’s supposed to help combat depression and I have taken them since 2015 because of this (even if it’s a placebo effect I take it!).

3) Getting at least 10,000 steps a day. NEAT is arguably more beneficial than exercise in staying healthy.

4) Having a simple but regular morning and bedtime routine. Just simple things that tell my brain it’s times to wake up and time to go to bed because I do them daily. The routine helps me wake up and then later in the day fall asleep!

5) Eat 5 portions of fruit, veg or salad. It might be an old fashioned number to aim for but if you can get this in as a minimum daily you’re likely getting plenty of vitamins in.

If you can’t train or eat your normal diet or do the perfect things every day but you can keep to some simple daily habits you’re more likely to stay on track. These things can also act as anchors, things that keep you feeling in control even if you don’t manage to do everything you planned in a day. Mentally that can be a good thing to help you stay on track because a lot of the time it’s mindset that matters when it comes to making progress and staying consistent.

A Less Articulate Google

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

So I like taking these blog prompts and trying to answer them in line with the purpose of my blog, i.e as a personal trainer.

So, the last thing searched for was reviews for a restaurant in the old town of Trogir, because I passed it yesterday and liked the chairs, but really even I know you don’t eat somewhere based on the chairs. The reviews were good by the way so I’m writing this blog from there and it’s lovely, busy, atmospheric as it’s right in the maze of Old Town streets so you can people watch and they have a set menu which I think is great value and so far the starter was lovely.

But back to my blog. My aim with this page is to try and answer the sort of questions I think people often Google regarding their health and fitness. How do you lose weight, tone up, what sort of training should you do, when, how often. I listen to clients, class members, family and friends questions and I try answer those over time because if they are thinking it so are slots of other people.

You know when you Google something and you type in a few words and the rest of the question comes up and you realise that random thing you didn’t know but wondered is something lots of others have clearly also asked? Fitness questions are a lot like that and there are lots of things that people might be scared to ask because they think it should be obvious but the fact is those things aren’t obvious and lots of people do wonder the same thing. That’s why I try and talk about common questions and themes here to try and be a little bit like a less articulate Google!

When do you train?

What’s your favorite time of day?

This question was posed by WordPress today so given this is a fitness blog I’ll rephrase it, what’s your favourite time of the day to exercise?

Mine is morning. Now I hate getting up in the morning, my most committed relationship in the world is with the snooze button to be honest, but, once I’m up I love training first thing.

You just throw something on and go do it, nobody looks ‘put together’ in the gym first thing, and then once your done you can go shower, get dressed and feel smug for the rest of the day because you’ve already trained. I feel like when I train in the morning I just feel more positive and alert throughout the rest of the day. It’s so much easier to put training off as the day goes on and things pop up that you need to do, so when you’ve already done it before the day really starts you’ve just removed some of the pressure from yourself.

I do train in the evening, and more often than not at lunchtime, but I find both of those times never feel quite as good as morning sessions do. In reality lunch time is the most practical time for me because we’ve got a gym at work so I do tend to go quite frequently, but when work gets stressful I find myself skipping the session. I also try to limit the type of things I do because I need to be showered and back at my desk within the hour so whilst it’s a convenient options it’s not optimal. Evening sessions often leave me not ready to sleep and also when I get in from work I’m hungry so it throws out my eating a bit.

So the best time to train for me varies, and I’m lucky I can train either before or after work or at lunch time, but the time I always feel best for getting up and doing something first thing in the morning.

Small Changes

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

I came across this question the other day, and to be honest when I first set up a blog I just planned to write about myself and my own fitness, almost like a diary.

Over five years later it has developed into something that I hope is a bit more useful. I still write the odd post about me and what I’m doing (it’s cathartic right!) but I try to make the majority of posts about nutrition, training or mindset with either advice on how to overcome common problems or discussion about why certain fads or methods do or don’t work. I try to keep posts to around 300 words a time so they are quick and easy to read for people.

My blog has a modest reach (around 1,370 followers) and I share the posts on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. For the first few months it had a handful of followers and they were all friends who I’d asked to follow me, it’s gradually grown overtime, hopefully because some of those posts have been useful and made people think I could be worth a follow for future useful content.

That’s what I hope my blog provides. It makes me no money, but if every now and then one post teaches someone something useful to their fitness journey then it’s made an impact. As fitness professionals our aim is to help the people we train make positive changes to their health and lives. By also writing this blog I can hopefully spread that net of small changes a little wider (beyond people I know, have met or trained) and as the blog (hopefully) continues to grow it can hopefully also help create more positive changes to more people’s fitness journeys.

Think, Plan, Do, Check In

How do you plan your goals?

Goal setting, something which can help you focus in on what you want but also something that can seem a little overwhelming. Like honestly how many times have you put of doing something until you’ve planned it out and put off planning it out because you just don’t know where to start?

Goals and all they entail come in two parts – firstly you need to know what you goal is and why, because honestly, a goal you don’t really care about will not help motivate you. The goal you have needs to mean something to you, be something that will bring benefit to you in some way.

Then they need to be achievable. If you’ve never run before aiming to be in the next Olympics probably isn’t going to happen right. But even the more mundane of goals needs to be realistic. If you’ve got a full time and kids aiming for something that requires 5 hours of gym time a day is setting yourself up for failure. You want something that will push you, that’s tough sure, but it does need to be possible for you and your lifestyle.

Then you get to the planning, the how. Here I find it easiest if I break it down. Work backwards, what do I need to be able to do, how can I do those things and what will I need to do step by step to get there. Once you have those steps you can plot them, how much time will you need on each one, when will you do them, how will you fit them into your week, what equipment will you need, who will you need to ask for help from. Once you’ve done that your plan is literally mapped into your diary, it’s appointments that you just need to keep each week. Your goal suddenly is just something you’re doing anyway and that makes it’s way easier to reach.

Regular check ins with yourself are then needed. Each week or month you want to see if you’re where you wanted to be. If you are great. If not you’ve got the chance to rejuvenate your plan a bit. Do you need to slow things down, do a bit more, repeat a few steps again.

Goals once reached sound inspirational, great, like someone just woke up one day and said I’m going to do xyz and just did it via pure determination. In reality, you need to think, plan and create habits to reach goals and realistic planning is the key.

If you’d like to hear more of my ramblings on goals here’s a podcast I did last year …

https://anchor.fm/heather-sherwood/episodes/Goal-Setting-Your-Why-and-How-e1pver7