Rules, Ritual and Routine

The three R's to help you stick to your fitness program - Rules, Ritual and Routine

There’s no need to struggle in keeping up a new fitness program. The biggest hurdle was starting (see one of my earlier blog posts on goal setting) so here’s some tips to help you keep going:

RULES

Give yourself a rule, something you must do no matter what.  What Bevan James Eyles calls black and white rules: no excuses. For example, I have 2 rules.

Rule 1 - Drink 2 litres of water every day

Rule 2 – I can drink alcohol only after I’ve drunk 2 litres of water

One rule is enough. The rule relates to your heatlh and fitness goals. If you’re quitting smoking then the rule would be to engage in a healthy activity (like taking 10 deep breaths or going for a 10 minute walk) every time you felt like lighting up. If your goal is to manage your weight then your rule would be to record everything you eat and drink in a food diary. If your goal is to run a marathon then your rulewould be to run every day.

RITUAL

Ritual is where you exercise some self discipline.  Something you do regularly and at the same time. Something that relates to your health and fitness goals.

For example, my ritual is to stretch every morning,  what Kit Laughlin taught me as the Daily Six (many years ago).  I’m quite lazy when it comes to flexibility, which I need to improve for running, swimming and power lifts, so this ritual works great for me.

Your ritual will be something that you want to become routine.

Maybe you’ve heard the saying ‘practice makes perfect’ or even of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule? Repeating an action instils it in you; repeat something often enough it becomes routine.

ROUTINE

A routine is simply something you do, like brushing your teeth or washing your hands. Again, it should relate to your health and fitness goals.

My routine is to get up every morning at 5.30am. I had to train for this: The initial RULE was to get up out of bed at 5.30am no matter what (I could always go back to bed if I was overly tired or sick) then; I made it a RITUAL to bounce (be exuberant, like Tigger in Winnie the Pooh) out of bed at 5.30am every morning; so now it’s normal to get up at 5.30am every morning (and be in bed by 9.00pm every night).

Your routine might be to eat breakfast every morning, or go for a morning walk, or to take a half hour lunch break away from your work place, you get the idea.

Next blog post:  The half way point for your New Year’s Resolution

Exercise more, on ­your terms

I so much enjoy helping people on their fitness journey and want to share with you how easy it can be to exercise more on your own term, that is, the way you want to exercise.

Eat less, exercise more (ELEM) is the key to lose excess body fat and there are countless books, articles and web pages on the ELEM principle. It’s usually dressed up to be really complicated but it’s quite simple: Eat less, exercise more. It’s really not that hard. See my last post for Eat Less.

Exercise more than you do now.  That’s it. That’s how easy it is. Not exercise strenuously or hard or by doing something you hate doing, just do more than you do now and do it regularly.

Try this exercise on paper: Write down the exercise you do every week. Read what you’ve written. How can you do more of the type of exercising you enjoy?

To give you an example, one of my clients wanted to shed some excess body fat. She said that she wasn’t doing any exercise at all but liked cycling, so I asked her if she could cycle the 1km from her home to work and back every work day. Yep, no problems, and that was enough to get her going.

The trick to exercise more is to choose something you enjoy doing.

Next post: Three R's to help you stick to your fitness program - Rules, Ritual and Routine

Eat Less: eat what you like and never mind the food snobs

I love eating so I want to share some of my ideas about food and nutrition.

I use The Australian Dietary Guidelines to inform my food decisions so that I get the right balance and amount of nutrition. The key here is that they are guidelines.

Everyone has their own eating preferences, food dislikes and likes and habits. Some people eat for reasons other than nutrition, sometimes these reasons can be self-defeating and other times these reasons are celebratory and life-affirming. Some people choose to eat soley for nutrition.

I like to eat lots of grains and vegies and am very picky what kind of fat I eat. As a child I refused to put margarine or butter on my bread, I still don’t butter my bread or toast and can happily snack on a thick piece of black rye bread just like that, or maybe with a nice cheese.

I know a 30 something year old woman who thrives on grilled crispy bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast, eats fresh fruit all day and has a small meal in the evening. She’s slim and fit.

A middle aged man I know is happy to eat a large meal mid-morning and not eat again until dinner. He trains hard to put weight on and loses weight when he stops training.

Eating well is about getting the right balance of foods that suit you; eat less of the foods you don’t want and don’t need  and more of the foods that are good for you. To do this you can employ a dietician or nutritionist (ask your GP to refer you, you may be eligible for a reduced rate) or use the Guidelines.

I ask my clients to do a 24 hour recall. We write down absolutely everything they’ve eaten and drunk in the last 24 hours and tally up how many portions of cereals, vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat and extras they’ve had. We then compare this to the Guidelines (4-6 portions of cereals, 5 veg, 2 fruit, 2 dairy, 1 meat and 0-3 extras).  This is also a handy exercise to do whenever you think your nutritional intake is lacking (or excessive!). Give it a go and tell me if you don’t find it quite the eye-opener.

It's easy to eat less as long as you're getting the right nutritional balance for you.

Next post – Exercise more, on ­your terms.

Eat Less Exercise More (ELEM) : I lost 2.6 kilos in 8 days

I had put on 4 kilos in 4 weeks of holidaying, a pretty good effort except it was all water and fat and I think I may have lost a bit of muscle mass as well.

So, to shed those unnecessary kilos I needed to get rid of my fluid retention, boost my metabolic rate and burn calories. This is what I did to lose 2.6 kilos in 8 days:

Every morning* – warm up 400m jog, 10 x 50m sprint intervals with 50m active rest (walking), cool down 400m jog, half an hour of stretching.

HIGH INTENSTIY CARDIO-VASCULAR TRAINING HELPS BURN FAT THROUGHOUT THE DAY – THIS PHENOMENOM IS CALLED EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption)

Breakfast half cup untoasted home-made muesli with ¼ cup natural plain yoghurt and a cup of plunger black coffee with a splash of skim milk.

Every day* – 5km easy bike ride, 30 minute easy freestyle swim, 5km easy bike ride

LOW TO MODERATE INTENSITY CARDIO-VASCULAR TRAINING FOR AN HOUR TO TOP UP THE MORNING’S EFFORT

Lunch 150g fish (wahoo seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled, or raw slices of tuna with wasabi and soy sauce), 1 cup boiled basmati rice, 2 cups steamed broccoli.

FISH HAS OILS GOOD FOR YOUR HEART AND PROTEIN TO BUILD MUSCLE, YOUR BODY CONVERTS RICE TO SUGARS FOR ENERGY AND BROCCOLI HAS FIBRE, VITAMINS AND ANTI-OXIDANTS

Snack of either fresh coconut water or half a piece of fruit.

Every evening* - CrossFit, well a modified Crossfit Work Out of the Day (WOD), and if it was rest day I hit the punching bag for 5 rounds of 2 minutes each with a 30 second rest. This type of training is high intensity, either a heavy weights session of just 10 minutes or not so heavy weights with lots and lots of reps, should be just on the edge of impossibly hard.

HIGH INTENSTIY RESISTANCE (WEIGHT) TRAINING TO BUILD MUSCLE

Dinner of vegetable soup – I base my recipe on the QuickStart Diet Soup recipe; it’s simple and yummy made with garlic, ginger,  tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, green capsicum, green beans, shallots, fresh parsley, beef stock and whole pimento.

VEGETABLES GIVE YOU VITAMINS, MINERALS, FIBRE AND ANTI-OXIDANTS AND ALL IMPORTANT CARBOHYDRATES (CARBS OR CHO) FOR ENERGY

In addition to all that I drank 2L of water every day and had as much green tea (cold, no sugar or sweeteners) to drink as I wanted.

TO GET RID OF FLUID RETENTION DRINK LOTS OF WATER.

GREEN TEA GIVES YOU A LIFT AND HELPS ENERGISE YOU DURING WORKOUTS.

* I had two lay (rest) days. One on day 5 when I stretched and walked everywhere during the day; the second on day 7 when I still did sprint intervals in the morning but then spent the day snorkelling.

The first 5 days went well, on days 6 & 8 I had a blow out eating two mini Reese’s peanut butter cups and a couple of Corona beers, that probably made the 400g difference to losing 3 kilos!

This kind of stringent meal plan is not sustainable long term but it, along with 3 bouts of exercise most days, did the job (I'm at 66.4kg, in the normal weight range for me) so now I’m back to eating normally.

 

Next post - Eat Less: eat what you like and never mind the food snobs

Exercise is fun!

No matter where you are or where you travel there's always opportunity to have fun exercising.


 Singapore has Fort Canning. Lots and lots of steps, nice undulating paths and a exercise station where you can do a few chin ups to break it up.



 


Kuala Lumpur has the city central park. A 1.3km running track, mostly rubberised but with some pavement (great for intervals) circles the park. The track is marked at 100m intervals and there are two drinking fountains on the run.


Running, walking and playing in cities' public places is a lot more fun than sweating it out on a treadmill gym!

What's your excuse?

I've heard quite a few excuses from my clients as why they didn't show up for a training session, why they didn't do or only did part of their program of exercises, why they're not keeping a food diary ...
I know an excuse when I hear it, but often when you're the one making the excuse you believe that it's the reason.
I tore a calf muscle several weeks ago and used that as an excuse to have a week of lay days. The reason I didn't do any exercise at all (I could have worked on upper body flexbility or strength) was because the injury put me into a funk - I had built up my barefoot running distance to 6km since the beginning of the year with no problems and then could barely walk. So the excuse 'I'm injured' was not the real reason; the real reason was that I needed some time to get to the doctor's for diagnosis and treatment and put a recovery plan in place. Three weeks later I'm running again.

Excuses are just that, excuses. Rather than come up with an excuse, come up with the reason. If you can't come up with the reason, 'the dog ate my homework' is as good  an excuse as any :)

Your Health and Fitness Routine check-up

By now you should be into your health and fitness routine for the year.

Pay attention to any niggles, pain and injuries no matter how slight you think they are - get them checked out now by your trainer, coach or GP and make good use of any specialists they refer you on to and listen to your trainer's, coach's or gym instructor's exercise instruction.
Are you making progress? Progress can be as simple as looking forward to and enjoying your training sessions, feeling happier, sleeping well. Progress can even be re-learning and re-training your exercise technique, or taking some rest days to allow you to recover so you can continue to train.
If you're not making any progress or feel that you're going backwards then it's time to review your program and your goals.
Haven't started yet? - well now's a good time to get moving!

Spring into action!

Spring is here so why not renew and revive your health and fitness goals?

Remember to be SMART setting goals.

Depending on what your overall goal is you could set milestones like:
Bench press a tonne in one session - sure you can do it, lots of reps and lots of sets!
Walk 10km in a week - that's only a bit more than 1km a day.
Skip (with a skipping rope) for 5 minutes without stopping.

My goals for September? Every week I plan to run 10km, cycle 30 km and swim 1km to increase my cardio-vascular fitness :)

Go Red for Women challenge starts 1 June 2011

Go Red for Women is a National Heart Foundation campaign focussing on improving women's cardio-vascular health.
There's lots of informationa and great tools - including goal setting on their website
I've already registered, it takes a little time and is free so why not? There are a range of goals to choose from including nutrition and physical activity, so you can choose goals specific to you.