Basics for Starting a Health and Fitness Routine

05 Dec Basics for Starting a Health and Fitness Routine

The basics for starting a health and fitness routine aren’t as complex as you may think. As many people are getting ready to make their New Years resolutions, it’s smart to know what points to consider when it comes to health and fitness routines. You must focus on your diet, exercise and daily habits to truly be successful with a health and fitness routine. Here are some tips to get you started!

Consider Your Fitness Goals

Millions of people gain weight over the holidays, and many blame their weight on holiday parties and events that happen more frequently than other periods of the year. However, that weight gain never has to happen if you start implementing the right health and fitness goals before the major holidays start.

Cravings drive your need to eat outside of the times you physically feel hunger. It is the reason many people fail at diets and why reaching for a greasy or sugary treat is so easy. However, if you know certain plates will be especially appetizing, you can save up your calories for those dishes instead of indulging the entire week prior to an event. This is one aspect of sticking to fitness goals: not giving into temptation. You do that by creating a balanced, achievable routine.

Create a Balanced Routine

Start with the goals you’ve written down. Then, create a routine that will help you achieve that goal. You may have to work with one of our professionals at Mile High Spine & Pain Center if you’re working around injuries or health conditions. With any goal, start off low and progress slowly. Jumping into exercise too quickly often ends with injuries and low morale. When dieting, cut out one food item that’s unhealthy, then another until you reach your ideal diet. Doing too much too fast will often lead to a 1-week diet with lots of cheats. Small changes over time lead to real results.

Make sure you build activity into your daily routine. That means using the stairs instead of an elevator, doing jumping jacks during tv commercials, and finding a few minutes here and there to be active. Switch up your routine with exercise every day to keep it exciting, so you’ll likely keep exercising. Make sure you’re leaving in time for recovery (as in a recovery day every few days) so you avoid injury.

Put It On Paper: Smart Goals

The Mayo Clinic makes excellent recommendations for being successful in health and fitness routines. We’ve covered some of these points of a proper routine:

1. Consider your fitness goals.
2. Create a balanced routine.
3. Start low and progress slowly.
4. Build activity into your daily routine.
5. Plan to include different activities.
6. Try high-interval intensity training.
7. Allow time for recovery.

You create your goals and rules for all of these areas and then you stick to them. This is also known as creating “SMART” goals. This is a popular method for achieving any goal that you have. SMART stands for “Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound”. These are areas of goal setting that you can write down and see if your goals are actually attainable. For example, if you’ve never exercised a day in your life, you wouldn’t set a goal to run a marathon within the week. That’s why putting goals on paper is so important.

Be specific in what goal you want to achieve. When focusing on health and fitness, maybe make a goal to eat only one favorite holiday treat on Christmas instead of 10. Or you will exercise for 30 minutes, 5 days of the week. Be specific and stick to your goals. Have the goal relate to what you’re actually wanting to achieve. Fitness routines for specific amounts of time work well with a goal of losing 5-10 pounds.

Set a time frame for when you want to achieve that goal and check in every day and every week with your SMART rules. And always, always, write the goals down where you can see them every day. That’s one way to be “smart” with health and fitness, especially during the holidays and vacations.

Tips to Help Make You Successful

No one wants to start on their health and fitness routine goals, only to have to stop due to injury. Countless people get injured for the first time during exercise. Common causes of injury include improper posture when lifting, squatting and doing other types of exercises. Overusing a muscle can strain or tear it, which is why warm up and limits are important. If you exercise often, you might go through many different types of injuries, especially if you run marathons or do triathlons. Some basic tips for preventing injuries while exercising include:

• Never lift with your back. Always lift with your legs or get someone to assist.
• Learn the proper posture for exercises, especially repetitive ones.
• Warm-up before you do stretching. Studies show it’s best to work out for a few minutes until your warm, then do light stretching before continuing your workout. Stretch extra after exercising to release lactic acid from the muscles that cause you to be sore.
• Listen to your body. Don’t keep exercising if you’re hurting or feel too exhausted.
• Hydrate! Your body needs lots of water to recover properly. Start drinking an hour before your exercise and drink at least ½ your body weight in ounces each day.
• Make sure you’re getting about 4 servings of protein each day to replenish your muscles and build cells effectively.

Health and Fitness Routines for Success

We want our patients to reach their goals with health and wellness. It can be hard to know where to start, even when you have all of this information. Studies show that you can be much more successful with health and fitness goals as well when you are accountable to another. Let us help you with your health needs and getting started on a healthier, more fit life. Call Mile High Spine & Pain Center at (720) 507-0080 for your free consultation!