Fit Tip: How to Make Exercise a Priority

With only 20% of the population working out, it’s obvious that exercise for the typical American is not a priority. It’s not necessarily that the majority of people don’t want to lose weight or get fit and healthy… it’s more that they don’t fit exercise into their everyday lives. The point is, if you don’t actively work to make sure you workout 3-5x/week, you most likely won’t just stumble upon the time to exercise.. unless you work in a gym of course!

Whether you’re part of that 20% of the population or not, you most likely struggle from time to time to make it to the gym. It seems more convenient than not to just skip today… “oh, I’ll get there tomorrow!” Easier said than done. How do you KNOW you’ll get there tomorrow? What are you doing to make sure you will step foot in the gym and workout hard? If the answer is nothing, you might just keep putting it off another day.

So what do you need to do to get fit and healthy? Make exercise a priority! Do this by tackling the reasons or excuses you come up with for not working out. Are you tired? Workout first thing in the morning. And not only that, but you have to plan how that workout will fit into your day. You can’t go to work and say you’ll workout on your way home if you don’t bring any exercise clothes with you. It’s not just going to happen… you have to make it happen! Here are a few examples of overcoming those excuses. If you know you are tired at night after work and you’ll most likely skip your workout, PLAN to workout in the morning. Do what you need to do to workout in the morning. This might consist of going to bed earlier, laying out your clothes the night before, preparing your breakfast if you’re in a hurry, and having a backup plan. Another example is if you tell yourself you’re not going to workout because you’re hungry after work…. Bring a snack with you! Another big one is “I don’t have time.” That’s the whole point- you have to MAKE time! Do you have time to watch TV? Surf the web? Talk on the phone? Trust me, you have time to workout.

As always, you should have a backup plan. To make exercise a priority, you have to put it FIRST before doing other things. If you have the mindset that you can’t do any other activities until you workout, you will plan ahead and fit that workout where you need to! Make exercise a priority TODAY! It will benefit you in more ways than one.

Stay fit~ Stay fabulous~

Is Diet Green Tea Good for You?

I was in one of our W3 locations the other day, and a member approached me with a nutrition question. She asked me what I thought about diet green tea and is it good for you? Interesting question I thought…. Anything with the word “diet” in it is usually altered in some way, usually more than one, so no, it’s not good for you. I went on to explain…

Natural green tea has zero calories in it. “Diet” usually means that it is reduced in calories, oftentimes to zero, so if natural green tea has zero calories, diet green tea shouldn’t exist. She looked perplexed.

Basically, it’s backwards, and kind of sad that the food/diet industry would take such a great, natural product and morph it into something unhealthy… and then marketing it to the public as if it’s going to help them lose weight. WRONG!

Basically, unnatural green tea products, so any type of bottled green tea that is sweet, was created by adding tons of sugar. This sugar=calories. In today’s world, every sugary drink needs a diet version, right? So the food/drink industry went on to create a diet version of green tea, so they basically do the same thing that you would do to make Coke “diet.” You take out the cane sugar and replace it with additives and fake sugar/aspartame, making it zero calories and extremely (unnaturally) sweet…. basically this makes drinking diet green tea equivalent to drinking diet coke. I don’t recommend it.

It’s unfortunate that it’s marketed in such a way that it’s good for you. Green tea IS good for you and has great health benefits; it’s even linked to helping you lose weight! But that’s natural green tea. I have a great recommendation for you. Buy unsweetened, natural green tea. The bottle should literally read 0 calories and the only ingredients should be green tea and water. If you don’t like the way it tastes, add zero calorie, natural sweetener, such as Truvia or Stevia. It has zero calories and doesn’t include the dangerous aspartame. It’ll make it sweet and keep it healthy!

There you go- hopefully that answers the question!

Stay focused, stay fit~