There is no better time than summer to start focusing more on yourself. Maybe you’ve noticed that you’re using food as a substitute for real fulfillment and you’re not living the life you want to live. What’s the answer? Take time to remember to connect with your dreams and your true desires and what brings you joy. How? You could start with a Bucket List for inspiration. What things do you want to do in your life that will excite and fulfill you? Armed with some Bucket List ideas, decide what’s right for you. Start with deciding what you’ll do to have the health and fitness you desire at the weight you want to be so you’ll be in shape to enjoy your bucket list adventures and find fulfillment. Here are some fitness and healthy eating habits that can easily be incorporated into your everyday routine:
Adding 30 minutes of fitness to your to-do list:
Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans has provided weekly goals that adults should incorporate into their lives in order to maintain or help reach a healthy lifestyle. Those goals include 150-300 minutes of moderately intense exercise a week. Moderately intense activities could include walking, hiking, swimming laps at a slow pace etc. Spreading out the 150 minutes of exercise throughout the week will allow for an easy fit into what might be busy schedules. Making sure to fit a 30 minute fitness activity into our 24-hour day is an easy way to incorporate a healthy habit into our lifestyle that can result in long term benefits. Those benefits include heart health, weight loss, reducing stress, and boosting energy.
One example could be going on a 30 minute walk around your neighborhood. This can be a beneficial exercise due to the extra incline that it can add to your walk. It can also be beneficial to your mental health by providing 30 minutes out of your day to focus on yourself and clear your mind of your normal daily tasks that may be causing stress.
Intuitive Eating:
Intuitive eating promotes a healthy and natural weight loss by allowing ourselves to truly know when we are hungry. Some issues that lie amongst a struggle with weight loss is eating when we may not be hungry or trying to fill a void that we believe is hunger when in reality it may be something else such as thirst or boredom.
One way to evaluate yourself is through the hunger test. This test begins by placing your hands on your stomach. On a scale from 0 to 10, rate your hunger level. If your hunger level is a 0, then you are about to faint from hunger. If your hunger level is a 10, then you would be as full as you would be after a Thanksgiving feast. If you are at level 5, you would begin to feel hunger and know it is time to eat. Listening to your body in terms of when to eat and when to stop eating is a great way to induce weight loss while still being able to eat foods that we enjoy!
Setting nutritional goals for yourself:
Allowing yourself to set nutritional goals such as incorporating a certain amount of vegetables or foods high in fiber into our diet can be an easy way to reach our own personal health goals. Finding out what nutrients connect with which health benefits can allow us to see which nutrients to increase in our diets.
For example, adding dark leafy vegetables into your morning smoothies can gradually improve heart health. These changes can be slight yet extremely effective long term.
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Kay Loughrey, MPH, RDN, LDN
Transformational Speaker, Breakthrough Coach, Nutritionist-Dietitian
Lana Shahine
Nutrition & Food Science – Dietetics
University of Maryland, College Park | 2023