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Principles of Health and Fitness: 4 Components of a Healthy Lifestyle
There are a few basic principles of health and fitness that are essential components of a healthy lifestyle. If you want to look and feel better, have more energy, and lose weight, start by gradually working the following tips into your lifestyle.
First Principle of Health and Fitness: Attitude and Mindset
Having a positive attitude is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle. You have to believe that you can achieve the results you desire; otherwise, you’ll soon get discouraged and quit eating right and training.
So how can you stay positive? There are many simple ways to keep a healthy attitude… here are a few that I commonly share with my clients:
- Positive self-talk – The words you speak have a considerable effect on your beliefs. If you put yourself down, use self-deprecating humor, or constantly talk about your faults, you are sabotaging your own progress. Start reprogramming your brain by stating out loud several times a day such phrases as “I like myself” “I am able to reach my goals” “I can do it” and “I love working out and eating right.”
- Control negative thoughts – Choosing to dwell on negative thoughts and images can be very detrimental to our mental health. Whenever you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, acknowledge them and immediately stop dwelling on them.
- Be thankful – Motivational expert, author, and lecturer Brian Tracy
says that this is one of the most important things a person can do to maintain a positive outlook. Every day, think of five things that you are thankful for, and write them down. Do this for 21 days and I guarantee you will notice a positive change in your outlook.
- Give yourself permission to fail – We all tend to fail now and again; it’s an unavoidable part of the life process. Yet, when we fail to reach our goals we are in turn blessed with new knowledge and insights that we previously would not have had. So, every failure brings us one step closer to reaching our goals. Embrace this and you’ll experience a power you never knew you possessed.
Once you have learned to develop and maintain a positive attitude, the other (physical) components of a fitness lifestyle are a piece of cake.
Proper Exercise is The Second Principle of Health and Fitness
This means having a safe and balanced exercise regimen that includes the following:
- Cardiorespiratory training (for the heart and lungs; also known as aerobic exercise) – This can include jogging, swimming, biking, etc.
- Strength training (to build lean muscle tissue, which will make you stronger and increase your metabolism) – Weight training, kettlebells
, or bodyweight exercises all fit the bill.
- And Mobility training (which will keep you more relaxed, supple, and hopefully, injury free) – Yoga, Pilates, certain forms of dance, and martial arts all are great for this, and are also good core strength builders as well.
Proper Nutrition – The One Everyone Loves to Hate
Clients always want simple diet guidelines for a healthy lifestyle that don’t require a lot of thought. I don’t wish to go into too much detail, because there really isn’t the space for it here, there are a few simple things you can do to improve your health by eating right.
For starters, you should be eating a diet free from:
- Excessive amounts of fried food,
- Saturated fats,
- Dairy products (organic low-fat products are okay – just don’t overdo it),
- Refined sugar and flour,
- Alcoholic beverages,
- And fatty red meat
I say “excessive amounts” because I don’t believe in being a complete fanatic about eating healthy; you should allow yourself one day per week to eat moderate amounts of foods that are not in your regular fitness nutrition plan.
So, what should you be eating then? A balanced diet for the athlete consists of the following:
1. Approximately equal amounts of protein and carbohydrates.
- Proteins: lean red meat, one or two whole organic eggs every other day is acceptable, poultry, fish, beans, raw nuts;
- Carbohydrates: fresh fruits and vegetables, whole wheat breads and pasta, and whole grains);
2. A moderate amount of unsaturated fats derived from fish, raw nuts, and the like.
3. And at least eight 8 ounce glasses of water (preferably filtered) per day.
Avoid fad diets and any dietary regimen that will put you into more than a 500 calorie/day deficit (your body needs a certain amount of calories to function; what you don’t take in that your body requires, it will get by breaking down fat, which is desirable, or scavenging muscle tissue, which is undesirable).
Proper Rest, an Essential Principle of Health and Fitness
I can’t stress this enough. Your body grows and repairs itself when you are at rest, specifically, when you are asleep. For some people, 6 hours of sleep is enough, while others can’t seem to get by without 8 hours a night.
Figure out what is best for you, and allow extra rest (maybe a mid-afternoon nap) during periods of hard training or stress (finals week, for instance). In short, get your rest!.
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The Truth About Whether Turbulence Training is Any Good
Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training workout plan (and it’s Craig Ballantyne, not Craig Valentine) is arguably one of the hottest workouts on the internet.
However, I’m not into hype – I’m more into what works and sharing it with my readers. So, I picked up a copy of Craig’s Turbulence Training 8-Week Bodyweight Program to check it out and see what all the hype is about.
Initial Impressions of TT
My first impressions of the program were pretty much that it’s short – almost too short. BUt, after I read the first few pages I started to see the wisdom in Craig’s approach to writing this book.
Personally, I don’t want to have to slog through page after page of exercise theory and endless yammering about how such-and-such university study said this, etc.
That’s one of the things I like about Craig Ballantyne’s book – it doesn’t waste time, but instead gets right to the workouts. Cool – I don’t have to read any boring yammerisms on the theory of exercise.
Another Thing I Like About Turbulence Training…
When it comes to exercise routines, in my opinion, shorter is better. That’s another thing I like about this program… all the routines can easily be done in under 30 minutes.
That works out perfectly for a quick early morning workout, or working out on a lunch break or at the park on the way home from work.
“But Mike… Does Turbulence Training Require Me to Buy Any Equipment?”
Nope. All you need is a place to exercise and do the cardio routines in the manual. To me, that’s one of the best things about this workout.
Heck, you don’t even need to belong to a gym – you can do this stuff at the park, in your garage, your backyard, or even in the stairwell of your apartment building.
Drawbacks to the Program
It’s going to cost you $40 clams. That’s not really a drawback in my book, since two months membership at the local big-box gym costs you more than that. Plus, you have to drive to the gym, find a place to park, wait on equipment, and so on.
Also, it’s in a book format, and I know some people prefer videos. However, all the photos and explanations are pretty clear, so there’s really no need for a video to go along with it.
A Recap…
Okay here goes:
Pros -
- Right to the point, no time wasted on stuff you don’t need to know -
- Workouts can be done in under 30 minutes -
- No need to go to the gym or to buy any special equipment -0
Cons -
- Price is $40 (like I said, it’s MUCH less than a gym membership)
- It’s in a book format, so there’s no videos to go along with it (but you won’t need them anyway)
All-in-all, I think Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne is a good buy for someone who is bored with the gym and who wants a quick workout routine that will burn fat.
Click on this link to visit the Turbulence Training website now
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About the author: Mike Massie, BAAS, NESTA CPT, is a certified personal trainer and boot camp instructor from Austin, Texas.
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Five Simple Muscle Building Tips from Jason Ferruggia
5 Muscle Building Tips
Here are 5 random muscle building tips that may make a big difference in your training.
Muscle Building Tip #1 – Don’t exceed 5-6 reps on most of your warm up sets. Your first set could consist of a very light weight for 10-20 reps just to get loosened up and get the blood flowing but beyond that you want to keep the reps low. The reason for this is that you don’t want to build up too much lactic acid or accumulate too much fatigue with your warm ups.
Muscle Building Tip #2 – Don’t stretch before your workout in the hopes of preventing injury. This doesn’t work. The only benefit of stretching before a workout is to help you get into positions you might not be able to reach (such as a full squat) because you are tight in specific areas (such as the hamstrings and hip flexors). But stretching for the sake of injury prevention is an outdated idea and doesn’t really work.
Muscle Building Tip #3 – Don’t over-analyze and over-think everything you do in the gym. This never gets you anywhere. Don’t worry if the incline of the bench is supposed to be 50 degrees or 55 degrees.
Don’t worry that if you don’t supinate at exactly the right time that you won’t activate your biceps optimally. Don’t stress out about the exact grip width on the bar.
If someone tells you that a 16 inch grip on the bench press hits your triceps better than anything else, but because of an injury or anatomical difference you can only comfortably use an 18 inch grip, don’t sweat it.
People over-think themselves to death and they never get anywhere because of it. Go to the gym, get stronger, go home, eat, sleep and repeat. Don’t turn it into advanced calculus. That is one of the best muscle building tips I can give you.
Muscle Building Tip #4 – Always train both sides of the joint with equal volume. Therefore if you do six sets per week of pressing exercises you need to do six sets per week of pulling exercises. If you do two sets of curls you should do two sets of triceps work. And so on and so on…
Muscle Building Tip #5 – If you can’t get your forearms to grow, try hitting them with more frequency than other muscle groups. They can easily be trained three times per week and recover without any problem.
Also, try to hold the bottom stretched position of wrist curls for 3-5 seconds per rep. When you finish training the forearms, hit them with a deep stretch for both the extensors and flexors for 30-60 seconds. These muscle building tips should get the forearms to grow.
For more incredible muscle building tips please visit the muscle secrets website.
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Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out his site
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