Track Your Progress

Photo By: tea.honey.bread.peace

Track Your Progress
By Jessica Watts ©

A lot of exercise books and programs will tell you that you need to keep a journal of your daily diet and exercise routine. Most find this hard or just plain impossible, but from personal experience it is very eye opening. Some tips to help you keep track of your daily activities is:

• Get a Journal – Most feel a great release when writing down what they have done or felt in a personal journal. Well keeping track of your daily food/caloric intake is a life changing experience and can really help you get your life on track. Get a small pocket journal and keep it with you all day, at all times. Write down every snack, every drink, and every vigorous activity to get an accurate reading of your daily habits.

• Subscribe to a Free Site – There are hundreds of sites that help you keep track of your food and exercise habits and give you calories earned/burned. Also, on mypyramidtracker.gov it will give you tips and extra information, along with a history analysis of your habits with suggestions for improving your habits to lead a healthy lifestyle.

• Pre-Plan – Instead of writing down what you have done write down what you should do! You can do this on your calendar to section off time for exercise, or write down your meals in your notebook a week ahead of time. This will help you keep on track versus seeing how off track you are.

• Do Your Research – Its okay to look things up or buy a book on something new. Buying a low calorie cookbook would be a great idea when starting a new diet to help you plan your meals in advance. You can also look up many exercise routines from different online journals or exercise websites. Remember to use variety in your diet and exercise programs so you do not get tired of your new routines. This will help you stick with your new lifestyle change.

By tracking your progress you will not only be able to change some of your bad habits, but stick with your lifestyle change. No matter how discouraged or hard it seems to keep up with, you just have to stick with it! Sticking with your program is more important than starting it, so stay motivated!

Lifestyle Makeover Success

Photo By: Se7en Summits

Lifestyle Makeover Success
By Jessica Watts ©

I will admit I am guilty to watching the many makeover and fashion shows, such as “10 Years Younger” and “What Not to Wear.” However, many people that go on these shows admit to watching it and still not following the advice! Everyone, at some point, has made a plan to get in shape, eat right, or just get out more and failed to pull through for one reason or another. Most make New Year’s Resolutions, but stop trying to achieve their goal until it comes to summer a.k.a. bathing suit season. Don’t be discouraged, though, because now is the perfect time to start your new routine for next summer.

Some lifestyle makeover success tips are to:

Make a Plan –

Most of us just think of what we should or want to do in our heads, but nothing gets written down. I suggest you find a calendar (computer or book planner) that is dedicated to your lifestyle goals and fill each day with a goal. Example: My mother has recently suggested running a marathon with me next year and I kept thinking how we would need to plan to run almost every day of the week to be in shape on time.

How to approach this goal would be to first pre select an ultimate goal. Which marathon(s) we would want to run and then write those dates in the calendar. Once you have evaluated the length of time you have, then plan small incremental goals to accomplish your ultimate goal on the date specified. If the goal if a healthier diet you can pre select meals for each day of the week and give yourself a free day to reward yourself. If your goal is to be with the family pre plan activities your family can do and this will also ensure all members can attend. Planning is a great way to get on track with your lifestyle makeover.

Spend a Little –

Now most people use money or time as excuses, but your calendar should eliminate time constraints. To eat healthier, you may need to spend more on food. Children’s cereal that is full of sugar is half the price of the healthy grain and oat cereals that have the fiber your body needs. So, if your goal is to eat healthier you will need to assume your grocery costs will go up. You may be able to offset this, instead of buying a $2 bag of chips or cookies, buy $2 worth of fruit that is on sale. Its healthier and the same price for a delicious snack.

For a fitness goal, you may have to pay for a gym membership or invest in some at home equipment. Depending on how hard it is for you to stick to a goal you may even want to consider going some place where you can get one-on-one help. Having someone tell you exactly what you need to do and what you should eat may be exactly what you need to meet your goal, so be prepared to incur some start up costs.

Get Your Own Helga –

“Helga” is a nickname I have earned from my mother and stepfather. My mother has tried quite a few diets and had more than one exercise goal every year. I have dedicated time and effort to help her stay with these goals by asking or calling her to see if she had been sticking with the plan. You may need your own cheerleader or coach to help you reach your fitness goals. I know I was more than annoying, but it would occasionally work. Find someone who is honest with you no matter what and is not afraid to speak his or her mind in front of you. You will need someone who is as dedicated to your happiness as well as your health. If you are lucky you could find someone who will participate in your makeover challenge with you. This could be a spouse, friend, child, sibling, or parent. This could be your key to success and they will not allow any excuses for shunning your calendar or going against your routine (diet or exercise).

The main thing is to stick with your goal and see it through. The sense of achievement is a great esteem booster and a motivation for future actions. Multiple goals will also help you feel good, even if you only make three out of five, that’s still three huge goals you have accomplished. Remember, make your goal achievable and make mini goals to make meeting the larger goal easier. Do not set yourself up for failure or else your self-esteem could suffer greatly. Also, keep a positive attitude or else you will get what you expect (if you expect to fail you indefinitely will). Reward yourself and be supportive of yourself and others. Take these things to heart and you can’t fail!

Find a Hobby

Photo By: richardknaus

Find a Hobby
By Jessica Watts (c)

Most people go through life just doing what they must do without taking some downtime to do what they want to do. It is always nice to have an activity to help relieve stress and just “take a load off”. Modern day relaxation activities usually include watching television, movies, or something involving little to no activity or brainpower. Some ideas of a more productive and healthy hobby are:

• Gardening – A great hobby with a beautiful outcome. Now that it is getting into summertime most people are out doing yard work and making it hard work. A good hobby would be to take pleasure in your gardening activities and make it more of an enjoyable activity. Planting activity can help create a little exercise and a good amount of fresh air. Try to learn as much as you can about your environment and your plants to ensure the healthiest outcome for both. Also, do not get discouraged. If you plant seeds some may not sprout and that is okay just try a new method and soon you will be a pro, but do not stress about it, that is the key!

• Walking – Although most find this a boring idea and do not know what the benefits would be of such an activity this is another good way to incorporate physical activity into a stress relieving activity. By walking through your neighborhood or a park you can look around at the scenery and all the wonderful things we have in this world. This can help to clear your head while taking a break from other stressful activities or events in your life.

• Sports – This is another basic hobby, but without the super competitive edge. Find a sport activity that you can do and actually relax at the same time. Some people get too competitive, which is good when you are playing to win, but if you can find a sport that you enjoy playing win-or-lose then this is the best relaxation activity for you. Golf, disc golf, tennis, football, baseball, basketball, and so many other sports are good choices if you can go and have a great time.

• Family/Game Night – There are many types of board games or other family oriented games that are fun and active (some mentally and some physically). Twister is a good example of something active to play inside or badminton, tennis, or catch are great activities to play outdoors when the weather is nice. My family makes a point to do some type of family game, from Yahtzee to Wii Bowling, at least once a week and we not only have a great time, we are also closer than ever!

• Crafts - For most this may sound childish, but there are tons of people who make things out of virtually nothing and don't think of it as a craft. This can be building things from wood, carpentry, sculpting various materials, sewing, quilting, crocheting, making jewelry (string and beads to welding), and restoring a car. There are a multitude of activities that can be considered crafts that could relieve stress and help you actually create something. Some actually do these activities for money, but I would suggest to not put that much stress on yourself or the activity may no longer be relaxing.

The goal is to find something you enjoy that can help you alleviate stress from your life and give you something of value. The above are just recommendations I could come up with, but there are tons of activities that people find relaxing and everyone is different. For instance, I find video games very relaxing because I like the challenge, but I know a lot of people who find them frustrating and throw their controllers. You must find the activity that best suits you and your lifestyle. It is up to you to make your life better.

"Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action." ~Benjamin Disraeli

Get Outdoors

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Get Outdoors
By Jessica Watts (c)

It is springtime and the sun is out! This is the perfect time to get outdoors and get started living healthier and happier. There are many activities you can participate in outdoors that can help you get active and you can also do a number of activities with friends and family. A list of possible activities include:

• Sports – There are a multitude of sports you can participate in outdoors at your local parks, schools, or gyms. Tennis, Golf, Disc Golf, Football, Basketball, Baseball, and many more types of sports are out there. This area of outdoor activities is best for a large group of friends or the whole family to participate in. Also, in games such as golf try to walk as much of the course as you can. This should produce a challenge, as well as give you more of an active experience.
  
  

• Swimming – Now that it is after Memorial Day most of the community and personal pools are open. This is one of the best cardiac activities to participate in outdoors. It is good to walk constantly, jog, or swim laps in the water. Also, you can work on triceps dips or pull-ups on the side of the pool. This is a great way to enjoy the sunshine while creating an active outdoor experience.
  
  

• Walking/Jogging – Enjoying the fresh air of a walk or the cool breeze of a jog with a friend is a great outdoor activity. Also, variation is good so try to go on a different path or trail every few weeks or even vary your speed while you walk. You can mix jogging with walking to help get your heart rate up and create more of circuit type training. Variation of speed on the body can help heighten endurance and increase cardiac exercise.
  

• Gardening – A lot of people want a beautiful yard for all their neighbors to see, but hate the hard work. Well make gardening and plant care an enjoyable activity that helps you start a healthier life. Most people make this a year round hobby and learn as much about planting as possible. However, indoor gardening is less physically active as outdoor gardening that is done about once a year. Now that its warmer in the year it is time to get out and get dirty. Pulling weeds, raking, and other yard work done every few days will help increase your physical activity level as well as giving you a beautiful yard.
  
  

• Bicycling/Rollerblading – Both of these are great ways to travel to increase physical activity and save you a little money. If you live in the city close to the store or any other buildings you frequently visit, even work, you should try to travel by bicycle or rollerblading. Not only will you save gas, but also this will increase your daily physical activity.

Enjoy the fresh air and feel better each day from increased cardiac and physical activity. Do not just keep thinking that you should do something with your life or that you should do something more physical, just get up, get outside, and do it!

Organize Your Life

Photo By: Avenue [Handmade]

Organize Your Life
By Jessica Watts (c)

Being a young college student I learned more than my fair share about time management (the hard way). At first I just figured students kept planners and such just to remind them when assignments were due and to fan out long projects to make sure they got it done on time. This may just be a big tradition in college, but I realize after talking with people and watching their lives how disorganized people can become and it causes them emotional chaos!

Just a few tips to help get your life organized and lift some of that unwanted and unneeded stress from your life.

1.) Get a Calendar - This is the most basic and simple thing you can do for yourself to help manage your time and tasks. I personally have a little calendar on my computer and many computer email programs have them as well. Although you don't want to live perfectly by your calendar you should at least set it up so that you have slotted times for certain tasks.

First would be work, obviously, and next you should set time for home tasks or cleaning or extra work that needs to be done. Since I am a huge believer in exercise to rid you of stress I would also recommend giving yourself a time slot for exercise times (if you go to a local gym you could slot the time for an aerobics class or something you enjoy, such as a sport).

2.) Don't Rush Yourself - This is one of the hugest things that get you flustered and then you will not only be stressed, but will probably snap at others in your frustration. This also goes with the above Calendar; when you are planning your events for the day giving yourself enough time to complete the task is essential. You should actually give yourself more time than you think is necessary! If you think that mopping will take you 30 minutes, then give yourself an hour. This not only ensures that if something goes wrong you still have time to fix it and complete the task, but it actually could give you time to start early on the next task, or even take a short break.

The last thing you want to do is get flustered and angry with yourself for packing too many things into your day. Just take it slow and give yourself plenty of time. Its not a race and you want to eliminate any and all unneeded stress from your life.

3.) Plan something fun - Everyday you need to make sure you have something wonderful planned for yourself or even your family! My family and I used to make sure we had dinner and would play a game just about every night. Not only was it fun, but it brought us closer together! Sometimes you just need a night out with the guys or with the girls, so plan those nights ahead of time to ensure a fun time to help get the work week off your mind.

4.) Get into a Routine - This does not have to be just for exercise, but get into a daily routine to help you remember things. Most people get up and first thing is a shower, so most people have a morning routine that encompasses a variety of things in a particular order. By setting routines for other things you can increase productivity in those activities and also help to ensure things get done. A huge one for me is putting dishes right in the dishwasher when I am done with them and when I wake up automatically unloading the dishwasher. By doing this, dishes never pile in the sink and I don't ever have to worry about setting aside time to do them later. Little things like putting items back where you got them and basic things like that go a long way with stress relief!

5.) Make Your Schedule Flexible - Like I said before, you do not want to just live by the schedule. That would make life dull and feel like a job in itself. You want to make sure your times are flexible and there is space between activities in case something unexpected comes up and you have to reschedule some things for later (such as someone comes to visit, or you oversleep what you expected Saturday morning, etc). You want to make sure if you are a little extra tired from a long week that you can sleep as late as you want and roll out of bed as slowly as you want. By having a flexible schedule you are more making a to-do list with time lengths attached, not making a list to live or die by. A flexible schedule will make things feel much more stress free and relaxing for you.

By taking these tips into consideration in your everyday life you can work through some of your daily routines and needed to-do tasks and eliminate a lot of stress. Once you make a routine out of it you will love it and you will not let this go. You will, guaranteed, live a happier, healthier life!