Before your holidays you were determined to keep exercising and eating well despite the inevitable blow out days that the end of December and start of January brings.
You had every intention of feeling great once you returned from your holidays because you had read my previous blog post of how to get through the Christmas and New Year period guilt free.
You’ve returned from your holidays and quite frankly you feel terrible because you did none of the above.
Sounds like you? You’re not alone!
Many of my clients, friends, family members, and fellow gym goers have developed a guilty conscious thinking back of their holidays. Some are doing something about it, some aren’t, but many still feel guilty to a certain extent. But now it’s time to move on. If anything, a break from training and/or food tracking may have given you some much needed time off for you to refresh the batteries. And while you think you may have put on a copious amount of body fat, you really haven’t. It’s only been 2 or 3 weeks, not enough to completely ruin your body! The time spent with family and friends with the enjoyment of different food and drinks is something to cherish, not remembered with guilt over your nutrition choices that day.
Now it’s time to focus on the now and the future. Remember the goals you were working towards, or refocus your mind on some new goals for 2015, and just get started in some way, shape or form. Put behind you whatever guilt you may have. Having your mind right and thinking about the positive rather than the past or the negative is crucial for achievement and fulfilment. Without that, you won’t succeed.
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday, now be the best you can be in 2015!
Keeping with the trend of all things ‘techy’ in this month’s JS-PT newsletter, we’ll be riding the continuing wave that is the health and fitness app rage.
Without further ado, here’s our top 5:
#1 My Fitness Pal
Holds the title for being our favourite, as well as many of our clients. My Fitness Pal is an easy to use calorie counter (and exercise tracker, although that’s not what we use it for) to help you stay on top of your nutrition. With supposedly the biggest food database of any app, this makes tracking your food intake a piece of cake. To achieve the best results, tracking your calories and macronutrient intake should be of the upmost importance, and with apps like these to assist you, it makes the job much easier.
#2 Sleep Cycle
Often forgotten and severely underrated, a good nights sleep should be one of your pillars of success if you are wanting to gain the most from your training and eating regime. Sleep Cycle follows your movements in bed to analyse the quality of your shut eye, and wakes you during your lightest phase of sleeping allowing you to feel more energised for the day ahead. You can also include notes about your day such as caffeine intake, stress levels, and activity levels to gain a better understanding of which activities affect your quality of sleep.
#3 Zombies, Run!
Let’s be honest, running can be boring. So make it interesting by forcing yourself to escape from zombies (yes, you did read that correctly)! Zombies, Run! puts together an audio narrative while guiding you through a solid running interval training workout. Created by an award winning novelist, this app is sure to get your heart racing in more ways than one!
#4. Tabata Pro – Tabata Timer
Anyone who has had a session with us knows about Tabata training, and has definitely heard this app in action. Interval training is made simple by being able to easily customise total time of intervals, number of cycles, and number of Tabatas. With a clear voice over, and easy to hear alerts (over or without music), this has everything you need to nail your high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions.
#5 RunKeeper
A favourite amongst clients and colleagues, RunKeeper assists in tracking your running/walking with the aid of the GPS on your smart phone. Whether you’re training for a 5km fun run, or just wanting to log how much you’re walking, this app will help you figure a route to follow while logging your pace, time, and steps which allows you to compare your progress at any time. RunKeeper also integrates very well with My Fitness Pal and Fitbit.
