October, 2021 - Wonderfully Fit

Lifestyle Habits Which Relieve Stress

October 25, 2021/in Blog

So, smoking, drinking too much, not getting enough sleep, over-dosing on caffeine and hanging around people who stress you out can all contribute to your stress levels rising through the roof. But, when you try to give up these harmful habits in order to help with your stress and anxiety, which ones are the best to replace them with? Often, replacing a habit with another habit can be a great way to help you quit the first one.

For example, those who smoke may want to replace smoking cigarettes with vaping, which is less harmful but provides them with something to do instead of lighting up a cigarette. Others prefer to swap harmful habits for good habits which are drastically different – for example, someone who drinks too much alcohol may decide to start lifting weights to give them something else to do instead of having a drink.

Exercise

We’ve dedicated this whole article to exercise already, but it’s so important that it needed to be mentioned again. Regular exercise is one of the best lifestyle habits that you can have when it comes to improving your mental health and making sure that your stress levels are under control.

Taking part in activities such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, yoga, and even weight lifting or playing a team sport can boost physical fitness, improve strength, and increase self-esteem and confidence, all of which can help to improve stress and anxiety. Exercising itself releases feel-good chemicals in the brain and has been clinically proven to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Meditation

When it comes to combatting stress, meditation is a great habit to take up and integrate into your lifestyle. For centuries, meditation has been used to help people deal with their stress and anxiety levels and feel calmer within themselves. Meditation helps you to find the positive energy inside of yourself and feel more connected and at peace with yourself and the world around you.

Those who meditate regularly find that stressful situations no longer overwhelm them as much; they are calmer, more relaxed, and able to take on more and more. Whether you are a spiritual person or not, there is no doubt that mindfulness meditation can help you to feel more relaxed and in control.

Even the act of taking the time to sit in quiet and collect your thoughts for a while can help to reduce stress, as meditation requires you to breathe deeply, which will oxygenate your brain and give you more energy to deal with your stress. Mindfulness mediation can be done at home, or in a class. You can also use a range of essential oils or music to aid you.

Creativity

Getting creative can be one of the best ways to deal with stress. And the best thing about using creativity to combat stress is that you don’t have to be particularly artistic in order to so successfully. There have been many studies which directly relate getting creative to lower stress levels, with adult coloring books and apps for stress being a huge success.

The simple act of coloring in pictures, or perhaps doing something creative such as baking, needlework or even DIY, can be very therapeutic and can distract your thoughts and focus from your stress and on to something else. So, if you’re feeling stressed out, it might be time to think about taking up a new creative hobby.

Friends and Family

People who are mentally strong do not dissociate themselves from those who are closest to them. When you’re feeling stressed out, it can be easy to try and hide your stress levels from your family members and close friends as naturally, you don’t want them to be worried about you.

However, knowing when to ask for support and having the best people around you to offer that can be very important when it comes to effectively managing stress. Building and maintaining strong relationships with your family and close friends means that you will have somebody to talk to when the going gets tough, which can be extremely helpful for stress.

Having somebody to talk to and confide in about whatever is stressing you out can help you by giving you an outsider’s perspective, which can often help by putting your own thoughts into a better perspective. Along with that, having people to turn to can stop you from taking too much on yourself, giving you more time to relax and keep on top of your mental health. We at Wonderfully Fit Personal Training are here to provide nutritional, and exercise support you may have. Contact Terrine today. https://wonderfullyfit.com

Your Active Lifestyle

October 6, 2021/in Blog

When you’re feeling stressed out, exercising is probably the last thing on your mind. However, having a lifestyle which is active and participating in some sort of exercise regularly can actually help you to feel calmer and less stressed.

Cardiovascular exercise has been proven to have a wide range of health benefits besides weight loss and increased fitness and has been shown in studies to actually reduce the symptoms of depression. Because of this, taking part in regular exercise should be an important part of your lifestyle when it comes to dealing with your stress.

Best Stress-Busting Exercises

If you’ve ever been stressed out and went outside for a while to ‘walk it off’, you’ve probably found that this approach works. Exercise, no matter how gentle, can often be the best thing for stress and anxiety. Walking has been proven to have a number of huge physical and mental health benefits, so if you’re not used to exercising a lot or don’t want to join your local gym, there’s nothing to worry about as simply going for a walk could be enough to help you feel better and clear your head.

If you’ve had a stressful day or something is really getting to you, getting out for a walk can be the best, quick-acting antidepressant. This is especially true if it’s a nice day and you’re getting some sunshine as well, as Vitamin D is crucial for mental health.

Simply heading for a walk up the road or setting off to your local park to wander around for a while can help to take your mind off whatever is stressing you out, allow you to clear your head and put things into perspective, all of which can help you to manage your stress and deal with your stressors in a calm, collected manner.

This is because walking, which is a simple exercise that most of us can easily do, releases endorphins, which create feelings of increased happiness and euphoria. So, if you’re feeling like stress is taking over, hitting the pavements for ten minutes or taking your dog for a walk can be a quick solution.

Your Regular Routine

Whilst exercise can create a great ‘quick fix’ for those who are feeling anxious and stressed out, sticking to a regular exercise routine can actually help to improve symptoms in the long run. Doctors recommend that people who are suffering from chronic stress, depression, or anxiety to make sure that they get plenty of time in the gym.

But don’t worry if you can’t or don’t want to join a gym or fitness center, as there are plenty of exercises which you can do from the comfort of your own home. For the best physical and mental results, you should mix a range of cardiovascular and weight training exercises.

This could include walking, jogging, cycling, or swimming, for example, along with exercises such as push-ups, squats, lunges, sit-ups, crunches, and stretches. Combining these two types of exercises will not only improve your mental health by releasing feel-good chemicals to your brain, but you will also reap the benefits of a body which is stronger and healthier. We at Wonderfully Fit Personal Training are here to provide nutritional, and exercise support you may have. Contact Terrine today.

Rule of Thumb for a Good Diet

October 1, 2021/in Blog

A good diet is supposed to be simple and not over-complicate things. Because the key to a sustainable fitness lifestyle is to have your diet simplified so that you’re able to stick to it long-term. For those who seek to gain muscles, your priority is not food restrictions. Instead, you should be focusing on the number of calories you’re going to take throughout the day.

For starters, I recommend tracking your daily calories intake to have a clear picture of how your diet looks and how you can manipulate it afterward. Next is to determine what are your macronutrients percentage and finally the essential micronutrients (which can be easily covered with supplements). Trust me, by becoming aware of your daily food intake, you will ultimately make better food choices in near future.

Diet Plan Tip: Preparation is the key to eating healthy. It may sound tricky and complex to prepare. Do not over-think it, instead choose foods that you enjoy eating and make a balanced meal.

Foods to avoid

Generally, you should be avoiding food that makes you feel ‘bloated’, ‘sick’ and ‘low-energy’. This includes processed, highly-toxic (with chemicals), junk food and sugary foods. Sugar is the main factor that you should really look out for as it is present in foods particularly that aren’t fresh, frozen or dried. Additionally, sauces such as pasta sauce, ketchup and chili sauce contain sugar as well. Moreover, fruit juices and fizzy drinks are things that you need to avoid as well.

Supplements To Avoid>

Supplements today are expensive! And if you’re not careful, you’ll end up burning a hole in your wallet with supplements that do not work. There are a lot of people these days sold to the craze of muscle enhancing supplements that promise jaw-dropping muscle mass development.

But honestly, do they even work? There are various supplements that would improve muscle growth but only handful of it are actually scientifically proven to work if consume in the recommended method.

Supplements that do not offer any muscle growth are considered placebo pills and powders which is merely an implication to your mind that it affects your body.

The key to building muscle is proper training and nutrition, not reliance on supplements.

Protein Supplement Scams

We like protein powder. It’s a quick, convenient and cost-effective way to hit our daily protein targets. Whey protein is not the cheapest, but it is popular due to the high BCAA content, particularly leucine, which is critical to the muscle building process. Now, with consumers becoming wiser there is a rising demand for products that claim to have been lab tested, but this comes at a time of overall rising global demand (and thus prices).

With consumers becoming sensitive to these price increases and a lack of general education about what they should be looking for on the packet, the incentives for companies to cut costs by cheating the system are all there, and many do. I’m talking about the rise of the phenomenon known as ‘protein spiking’. The way it works is this: some labs test for the total amino acid content rather than the amounts of the individual amino acids themselves.

This means that protein companies can dump cheap amino acids into the mix (mainly glycine and taurine), skimping on the actual whey content, which is expensive, and yet still pass some quality tests.

Of course, there are other useful supplements worth mentioning such as Multivitamin, BCAA, HMB, Beta-alanine, glucosamine etc.

Now there’s always some subjectivity in deciding whether these supplements are worth being on this list or not and as with all of my advice, feel free to disagree with it based on your own judgment. Additionally, it is quite likely that this list will prove to be outdated in a few years as more research comes out. We at Wonderfully Fit Personal Training are here to provide nutritional, and exercise support you may have. Contact Terrine today.

Lifestyle Habits Which Relieve Stress

Your Active Lifestyle

Rule of Thumb for a Good Diet

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