Going into the start of this year, many of us turned away from our initial fitness and health goals that we intended to maintain throughout the year. Others were a little better and managed maybe a few months before deciding to give in. Regardless, let’s make 2018 a great year for physical fitness and good habits. The most efficient method of maintaining healthy habits is to focus on three aspects: physical fitness, diet and sleep.
Physical Fitness
Working out and weight training could be an entire article on its own, but knowing the bare basics is essential for a healthy life. Generally, physical exercise varies for each person depending on their own personal capabilities. One thing to keep in mind is to not physically stress out the body, as it may lead to serious consequences. This is very important. When starting out, your muscles will be new to the pain and physical adjustment, so it’s recommended that you take at least five to seven day breaks before each workout session until your body adapts with time. Managing fitness with the rest of your schedule is also part of the hassle. Sophomore Azel Chalid recalls his first experience with the gym.
“I only worked out twice a week freshman year,” Chalid said. “My body wasn’t accustomed to it on a daily basis. This year though, I started playing for football and our offseason workouts require gym for three days a week and conditioning for one day, so basically four days of workout a week. It prepared me a lot for the season so I think the workout was necessary.”
Chalid’s schedule is more of an extreme, but it’s required for intensive body activity such as football. The important part of physical exercise is that you keep your body active whilst consistently developing it.
Diet
The next crucial thing is a good diet, specifically, knowing what exactly you’re consuming. You can start by finding the best meal plan online that fits your needs, those contain most of the nitty-gritty details that’ll help you most. With that, keep track of meals to follow and avoid. Generally, a good healthy meal plan emphasizes vegetables, fruits and fat-free products, while also limiting trans fats, sodium and additional sugars. Getting high protein is also mainly the best bet while also looking at your cholesterol and calorie intakes, especially if losing weight is your primary goal. For the most part, the easy part is reading and research. Once it comes to actually maintaining the goal diet, that’s when it gets tough.
Helpguide.com goes in depth with the details of maintaining a good diet, outlining the different nutrients and meals that should be considered. The article also provides a Healthy Eating Pyramid from Harvard University’s Health Publication which outlines a graphic for different meals.
Check out some more healthy eating tips here!
Sleep habits
One last general thing to keep track of is habits, specifically sleep. Sleep is very important. While it may be hard maintaining a healthy sleep schedule, with seven to nine hours recommended each night for high school teenagers, it’s crucial for good health. Consistently getting less than seven hours can affect a student more than just physically by significantly hindering muscle growth, ability to sleep and control of emotions. That’s why sleep deprivation hinders performance at school. At the same time, try not to get too many hours each night as it risks diabetes and heart problems. The big thing that we’re practicing with healthy habits is discipline.
