Hi everyone! Throughout this school year, I’ll be teaching you about health, fitness, nutrition, and everything that comes with it.
Why me? I work at the J.B. O’Keefe Fitness Center, I’m a certified Ski Instructor, and I’m in the middle of getting my Personal Trainer Certification through Fitness N.B. As you can tell, health and fitness means a lot to me.
Those of you familiar with an active lifestyle know that it’s important to set goals for yourself. I’ve set a few for this column. I’d like to teach readers how to begin a work-out program, how to introduce fitness into their busy schedules, how to eat better foods and how to monitor and improve their physical, mental and emotional health. Basically, everything you need to have a better life.
I know from experience that improving all those aspects of your life gives you way more energy and confidence, and will give you a more positive attitude in general.
This week, I’m going to focus on general lifestyle improvement. We’ve all got that one habit that we know we could change or improve, but just don’t have a kick-start to help us begin. It could be the daily bottle of pop you drink, the extremely late bed times you’re pulling just to watch movies, or one of my past flaws – doing the same workout over and over with no variety.
The key is to identify this habit then take steps to stop it. If it’s something unhealthy you’re eating, try this: limit yourself to having one cheat day a week where you can eat whatever you want (just don’t gorge yourself!). For the rest of the week, eat very healthy foods.
Every meal should have one or two servings of fruits or vegetables, and have a good source of protein, like eggs, meat, nuts, or dairy.
If you want to go the extra mile and eliminate this food or drink from your diet entirely, after a month, switch your “cheat day” to once every two weeks . Then after another month, switch it to once a month. By then you should notice a difference in how you feel. If this is unhealthy food you’ve cut out, you might have lost weight, your skin might have cleared up, and you’ll probably feel healthier and have more energy.
I hope a lot of you can even manage to cut out the food entirely. Doing this, I was able to stop eating chips, fries, and pop. Now when I eat them, they actually taste kind of gross, and I’m not interested in them anymore.
Another important factor for wellness that a lot of students neglect is sleep. We’re all familiar with being told that the body needs eight hours of sleep a night, but sometimes we think we can go to bed at one, wake up at eight, and we’re good to go. Wrong, my friend.
On average, it takes your body half an hour to fall asleep. Maybe you’re lucky and you can hit the sack right away, but a lot of people should be climbing into bed an hour before they hope to see the sandman.
Sleep and good nutrition are vital when you plan on amping up your fitness levels. Your body and muscles need rest and energy to work. When you begin working out, they’ll need more than what you’re used to. Next time, I’ll go into detail about started a workout program, but for now I’ll say this: Get active.
You can bike to class everyday, go for a half hour run after supper, do laps at the UNB Pool, or come over to the J.B. O’Keefe Fitness Centre – it doesn’t matter which. As long as you get at least half an hour of physical activity into your daily routine, you’re on the right track to improving yourself.
See you at the gym!
Alex Vietinghoff is a certified Ski Instructor, works at the J.B. O’Keefe Fitness Centre, and is currently studying to be a Personal Trainer through Fitness NB. He is also vice-president student life of St. Thomas University’s students’ union. Questions or comments about his column? Contact him at [email protected].
