Healthy Living is a Lifestyle Progression

Hello everyone, it's Sheree here from spicefitness.com. I had a couple of ideas on what I was going to do for a live today. So I did think, let's just show you how you can wear fitness clothes wrongly.

Because if you have a pair of tights on, for example, and they roll down all the time, you're going to get a muffin top. And I just want to show you how normal that is and how abnormal some of the photographs we see on Instagram and Facebook are. But I decided in the end, maybe I'll do on Friday.

So in two more days time, I'll do a live on just some really easy things that you can do day to day to keep your body strong and toned. And today I thought more and I'm also going to show you how the easiest way I can find to get up off the floor. And I've taught quite a few of my older clients how to do that.

And so I'll do that in the live I do in two more days time. But today I'm just talking about some simple little things you can do for a stronger, fitter, leaner body. And that's based on some simple changes.

So many of the times I've asked clients, do they prefer meal plans, or do they prefer just to have some lifestyle changes that they can make when they are making changes to their whole life. And some people like meal plans and what is good about meal plans and what's not good about meal plans. So meal plans are great when somebody tells you what to do, what to eat, what time to eat it, how to do it.

So it's a very temporary thing. And that will help you if you are time poor, if you kind of think to yourself, well, I don't know what to eat. It can work for a while.

And that's great. But ultimately, if you want to get the fittest, healthiest body you've got, meal plans are not going to do it in the longterm. Hi, Lanelle, great that you could join me.

Oh, Gwen, Gwen, maybe I don't. And so yeah, so meal plans are great for a first step thing. But meal plans are not going to be great for your whole life, because ultimately, we just need some simple tips and simple rules that are going to help us when we are starting to get into a healthy lifestyle.

And so meal plans, do they work or not? Yes, they do. They are designed for short term, but they're not designed for our whole life.

And the thing is that with meal plans, we get busy. We may have been called away on a weekend trip and stuff. And then we find it harder to stick to the meal plan if life comes at us.

So many meal plans are focused on the actual nutrients you eat. So they're this much protein, but as human beings, we eat real food. So we need to know how do we eat real food so we can enjoy them and be healthy at the same time.

So our diet as with movement is on a spectrum. And we always aim to get that little bit better each time. So if your meal right now, if your main meals are like you go to McDonald's or you go to KFC and you buy that, and that's what you have most of the week, well, you can alter that just slightly.

For example, go to KFC, buy your favorite chicken, then come home and have a beautiful, big green salad on the side. That can be step one to becoming all that you want to be when you think about your diet. Then you can be maybe the second week, still go to KFC and enjoy your chicken, but have a big green salad on the side.

And rather than that soft drink that you got with your meal, have a beautiful chilled glass of water with some lemon, some natural lemon or something in it. So this is where I'm talking about everything's on a spectrum. So whether it's how you move, you get stronger, whether it's your body being fit and healthy, everything is on a spectrum.

And we're always aiming to do one little thing that will take us to where we need to be. And so, yeah, being able to plan and prep for things. So being able to plan ahead, chop up our stuff, maybe pre-cook some stuff or cook some stuff on the weekend, so we're all ready to go.

It could be that vegetarian lasagna we cook on the weekend. And then during the week, we've got our salad already chopped up and ready to go. So all we have to do is put a bit of dressing on top and we've got a beautiful meal ready to go on that very busy Monday when we always know that we're home late.

So it's just great to be prepared. This all needs to become a lifestyle thing. So the aim of whether we're strong and fit, did I get my biceps overnight?

You know what? Biceps take a while, body takes a while to get stronger as a body takes a while to get healthier as well. Great that you could join me, Kelly.

And so, yeah, so life is a spectrum. We're always aiming to make one small change at a time. It's when we make too many changes, we get told you must do this, you must do that, you do, do, do.

Our head gets overwhelmed and we can't stay with it. But if we make one small change at a time, then that works really well. So where do you sit on the spectrum?

What is one small change you can make today? I'm not staying on here long today. It's quite a short one, but I just want to inspire some people out there to have a look at what you're already doing with your body and with your fitness and your health and how you can make one small change today.

So pick one meal. So I will just put something to you today. I know that quite a few people will watch this as afterplay, but pick one thing that you think you could change today.

And it could be diet, it could be the way you move. So maybe you've been on the couch for the couple of days, you've worked and you've come home. So you've sat in a chair at work all day, you've come home, you sat on the couch, you've just taken whatever food and you go to bed and you do it all over again.

So what is one small change you can make this day?

It could simply be going out for a 20 minute walk and making that walk the fastest you can be. Maybe do it as an interval walk. You can walk hard, power off, go hard for eight seconds and then walk normally for 12 seconds.

Then power off again, get those arms pumping for eight seconds, take it down again for 12 and make that whole walk one where you come home, you feel slightly out of breath. So you know you've worked it. Or it could be that your meals have been crap this week.

We all know what a crap meal is. We don't need any expert to tell us. It could be that we've gone to takeaway every single day and eating huge amounts and we're already full, but we'll get to the end of it and we'll squeeze that last bit in because we've already paid for it.

So it could be that this week, as I said before, if you love KFC or something, still go to KFC, but come home and make this lovely big green salad on the side and make it that it's still got the taste you love, but just making that one change can be the way to get getting you to lead the rest of your life as a healthier person. So add some protein if you can. Protein helps to fill you up.

So if you feel that you're going through the day feeling like you're starving, try some protein. Protein comes in so many forms, comes in meat, but it also comes in other forms of food. So think about your protein.

I love my Greek yogurt and I'll often have blueberries with that as a snack. So when I'm feeling starving and I want the chocolate because I'm a real chocoholic trying to get away from that, but I will either have that or I'll have my high protein balls. So what I do nowadays in my fridge all the time, I have balls that are made up from multiple seeds.

I should actually do this on one of the lives as well to show you all, but it's made up of so many different seeds and sometimes I'll throw a bit of protein powder in there as well. So two or three of those balls, maybe even one sometimes will fill me up for hours. So the aim is to try and fill yourself up well so you're not stacking on snacking on stuff that you don't need.

Add fruits and veggies, add more nutrient dense whole foods and add slower and maybe a bit more slower. And mindfully, I remember maybe years ago when I could, we'd get pasta and we'd down it and shovel it down. It wasn't until someone said to us one day, well, you guys eat quickly.

And we realized that by the time we'd eaten this mountain of pasta, we didn't sense the fullness till a little bit later. But as you get older, of course, you're not going to be able to eat the huge amounts you did when you were a teenager and you had a faster metabolism. So just be mindful.

If you eat slowly, take a glass of water, eat another mouthful, take a glass of water, you will get fuller far quicker than if you just go, right, I'm starving.

I haven't eaten anything all day. And you bog it in.

You don't get that sense of fullness till after it's gone because you're enjoying every single mouthful. So just eating a bit more slowly is amazing how you can eat far at the end of the day. Hi, Kathleen.

Great that you could join me. And so, yeah, so just being able to add things as well. So this is what I'm just talking about today and I won't be here for long, but it's just changing one small thing.

If you don't move right now, move more. It could be that every day you're going to make your way down to the oval and back again. And you're going to try every day just to walk that bit faster or do some interval training when you mix it up.

And if your food's not good at the moment, make one small change. It's one small change today. Do that change for a week.

And the next week, make one more small change. It's not hard to do. One small change.

We all know that what we need to do to make ourselves healthier. And I think it's just great with every meal that I do now, I add greens, a heap of greens. So last night I had some, I just cooked up some meat, some chicken.

And then on the side of that was this humongous green salad that took me about one minute to prepare. So what it was, was I added kale to that. I had some spinach leaves, some cucumber, and I also had some coriander and some basil as well with some homemade vinaigrette.

The vinaigrette was the vinegar, apple cider vinegar with that. I can put that down at the bottom here, because I can't remember all the bits and pieces. There was some olive oil in there as well.

I just poured that on top and oh, that meal was to die for. It was gorgeous, but it was all healthy. So even if nothing else, just making one little change.

Take away a whole pile of mashed potato and stuff and maybe add some greens instead. It could be the only thing you do. It could be you still have your mashed potato, but make it a smaller portion and add a salad, colorful salad or green salad on the side.

So what does your perfect meal look like? So maybe take your perfect meal, the most perfect meal you can think of, and then just start making some small steps towards getting to that place. And it's the same as I said before, when you move your body.

If you're in a workplace, particularly where you're sitting down all day, and I'm just about to end here, if you're sitting down at the desk all day, then you're already at a big disadvantage because the blood's not flowing well, your body's not doing. Being able to stand up at a stand-up desk for half the day, Fitness Australia have found that that's the same, about the same, because your body has to hold itself up as a one-hour walk, a one-hour brisk walk. So if you can stand up at a stand-up desk for half the day, like three or four hours, then you've already done way more stuff than you would have if you'd sat at a desk all day.

So change one thing this week, whether it's moving, whether it's your diet, you're on the way to where you want to be. And I was just going to make a little point in here about micro workouts as well. Look, it could be that you don't have time to get the gym, or you don't have 15 minutes in your day to do much, but just put a skipping rope outside your shed door.

So when you come home in the car, you may maybe do two or three minutes of skipping. That will be so valuable to you, will be so good. If you're out on a walk, come home and just do a few little squats on the wall and some push-ups as well.

And you can do that for five minutes. Five minutes is better than not doing it at all, because if you do that five minutes every day, then at the end of the week, you would have done like half an hour worth of stuff that you may not have done otherwise. And when I'm on my bike, like I'm going out for a ride on my bike soon, I will stop at a picnic bench and I will time myself.

So I will do 10 push-ups. I'll turn around the other way, do 10 tricep dips, works the back of my arms, and I'll do 10 mountain climbers. Then I go down to eight push-ups, eight, eight, eight, six, six, six, four, four, four, two, two, two.

And then I'm done. I feel like I've done my whole upper body. So there's little ways you can do micro workouts into your day as well.

That's all I wanted to share today. So just one change. If you make one change with your diet today, what would it be to make it more of the diet that you would hope that you would eat more of the time?

And hey, I know we're not, don't do this every day. I have days where I break out and every single thing I can eat that's not good for you, I do. But that's normal.

And that's not to make ourselves feel guilty when we do. It's just that the day after, we don't want to be doing the same thing again. Let's get back on track.

So one small change today, what can you do to make your movement better and your diet better? Okay. I believe in everyone that I see, all my clients that come through the door, I know they make great changes, but it's not, they don't get to here because they started there.

They start way over here, way on the spectrum back here. And they make small changes one after the other, after the other, till they get to where they want to be. So have a great day ladies.

I know you can do it, believe in you and go see what you can do today at making one small change, just one. Okay. Have a good day.

Bye.