Personal Trainer
Master of Professional Kinesiology
Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit
Starting your journey towards better health and fitness can be intimidating. With so much information available it can be challenging to know where to begin.
The best way to start your journey to better health is by focusing on the fundamentals. In this blog, we’ll refer to the fundamentals as the “low-hanging fruit” of lifestyle changes. They are:
- Increasing daily physical activity
- Eating nutritious food more often
- Getting more (and better quality) sleep
- Managing and reducing stress
These fundamentals are easy additions that often provide more benefits than other changes. If you were to look beyond these, to the fruit at the top of tree, you’d find strict routines that are harder to maintain. Often times, those high-hanging fruits offer similar, or even less, immediate benefits.
Back to the Basics: Think Big Picture
- Am I active regularly? Am I challenging myself when I exercise?
- Am I drinking enough water? Eating enough protein?
- Am I getting at least seven hours of sleep each night?
- Am I managing my stress well? Am I reducing it where possible?
Focus on the Fundamentals
I’m sure we all want to know what the ‘ultimate’ bicep or glute workout. However, if we find ourselves struggling to add activity into our daily routine, we may need to simplify. The idea is to avoid complicating things early on in your journey. Doing so can leave you feeling stuck, like a deer in headlights, without a direction to run in.
Here are some examples of ways to focus on the fundamentals while keeping it simple.
- Start your morning with a 10-minute walk
- Make sure your plate is 1/2 veggies, 1/4 protein, and 1/4 grains
- Choose water instead coffee, tea or juice
- Make sure you get at least 7 hours of sleep per night
Prioritize What's Important to You
While beginners should focus on the low-hanging fruit, it may not be the most important thing to you. It all comes down to priorities.
If you are staying active, eating well, sleeping well, and managing your stress, then it’s time to level up. You can invest your remaining time and energy into improving in other ways. Perhaps you set a goal to improve your running speed and look for new workouts to help. That should take up 10% of your focus, while the other 90% is still the fundamentals discussed here.
Don't Compare Yourself to Others
I’ll wrap up with one last bit of advice – don’t compare yourself to others.
Sure, your friend who is a former athlete, physiotherapist, and avid runner is incorporating certain strategies into their routine. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, but maybe not yet. Make sure that your routine aligns with your goals. We all have different aspirations and motivations, so focus on the reason you want to accomplish the goals that you’ve set.
To learn more about getting started – or restarting – your health and fitness journey, check out 4 Fundamentals to Help You Get Started.
Begin Your Journey with Us
If you’re finding it challenging to get started on your journey, feel free to reach out to us for a complimentary consultation. We would be more than happy to offer some guidance to help you move forward. Sometimes taking the first step is the hardest, so don’t hesitate to get some help to kickstart the process. We all start somewhere.