Often when people decide to make a lifestyle change and start a fitness plan or eat better they manage to get one or two components right but neglect to have a complete plan. If major changes are needed with your health, such as losing weight, restoring good health or putting the brakes on aging you do need to get all the components of a fitness plan otherwise the results are likely to be disappointing.
The components of an effective fitness plan are: 1) A healthy eating plan. 2) Proper strength training exercise. 3) Cardio interval training. 4) Attitude and mindset
A healthy eating plan comes first on the list of your fitness plan as you need to eat properly if your fitness or weight loss goals are to be realized. You need quality nutrition to support your exercise program so you can put the necessary effort and intensity into each session.
If you feed your body with mainly processed and refined non-nutrient foods you will have very poor results as your fat burning and appetite regulation hormones will be ‘out of whack’ and working against the changes you are trying hard to make. The rest of your fitness plan will not work as well as it could. You are kidding yourself if you think you can beat a bad diet with lots of exercise.
Use quality whole foods as part of your fitness plan
The bad news is – no amount of exercise can EVER make up for a bad diet. You will never truly get into great shape if you are eating pre-prepared artificial non-foods on your fitness plan. Get yourself back into the kitchen and get cooking natural whole foods from scratch.
This really is the backbone of your fitness plan. There is good reason why physique and figure competitors eat this way. They get much better results and have far more energy along with better overall health so they can keep moving forward towards their goals so their fitness plan must contain all of the components.
Number two on the list of a complete fitness plan is a proper strength training exercise program – and yes it is above cardio activity as this alone will not cut it if you seriously want to lose weight or get into shape.
Strength training will on its own get you into fantastic shape even if you never do any form of cardio on your fitness plan but it does not work the other way around. Strength training is the only way you can rebuild and tone up weak flabby muscles that have lower than normal energy requirements. This is likely to be the root cause of you becoming overweight in the first place. No fitness plan could be complete without it.
Next comes cardio interval training and one or two sessions each week is a great way to help keep the metabolism boosted so your fitness plan can burn more off more body fat. A session could involve simply sprinting for 30 seconds and walking for a minute or more repeated 8-12 times.
And lastly one of the most important parts of your fitness plan is your attitude and mindset which is the glue that holds everything together. Like your muscles it gets better with exercise and being used.
Your mindset really matters when it comes to your fitness plan
Many people fail to even consider this part of a fitness plan when they jump into one. Then a few weeks (maybe days) into it they do not have the strategies in place to deal with set backs and fall over at the first hint of trouble.
Having disciplined behaviors and high motivation levels such as getting your workouts done and healthy eating is achieved by ongoing positive mental programming and always will be an important part of a doable fitness plan.. Just like a computer you can reprogram your mind so it is more closely aligned with your goals. How to do this?
By putting ‘good stuff’ in you can push aside (or out) the unhealthy and not so good behaviors such as a no-exercise lifestyle and eating rubbish foods. Like anything it takes practice but once you get your fitness plan and the components working together you will make unstoppable progress towards your fitness and weight loss goals.
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