6 Simple Things You Need to Know to Build that Body You Always Wanted
We all want a better body. Whether we’re extremely overweight, for fairly fit, we can all look better. It really doesn’t take a lot of effort to do these things, just a small bit of discipline. If you just pick one tip at a time and master it, before you know it, you’ll be doing them all and on your way to a better body.
Water
Regardless of what shape we are in, we need to stay hydrated. Whenever you exercise you are going to sweat. When you sweat you need to replace that water loss. Make sure you drink enough water every day; in fact, make sure you drink more water than you think you need every day. We don’t mean drink soda or sugary drinks, and regardless of what the sports drink commercials say, just drink water. Drinking water will give your metabolism a boost and help your health overall.
Protein
It has been shown that the average person does not get enough protein per day. Protein is the building block for everything. Without enough protein, it is almost impossible to build muscle. Protein is really just a fancy way of saying amino acids. These are the building blocks of your health. Eat more protein than you think you need, from various sources. It doesn’t matter if it is meat or vegetable protein, either one will move you well along the path to getting a better body.
Sugar
This is going to be a hard one as sugar is very addicting. One of the ways to get rid of sugar out of your system is to eat more protein and fats and save the sugar for one day a week. It’s almost impossible in the beginning to deny yourself sugar, but you can probably talk yourself into waiting until Saturday. If you can keep this up, eventually you’ll find your desire for the sugar falls away. Contrary to popular belief fat is not that fattening, as long as you avoid the sugar.
Eat slowly
One way to cut down on the number of things you eat is to eat slowly. It takes about 15 minutes for your hunger to catch up to what you have eaten. So if you eat half of what you normally would eat, you’ll still be hungry when you finish. Interesting enough though after about 15 minutes you will find that hunger is no longer there. One way to fool yourself on this is to eat slowly and take your time. Give your hunger cues time to catch up
Sleep
Although we may all think we don’t need that much sleep, studies have shown that we need at least 8 hours of sleep. It is more detrimental than you can believe if you don’t get enough sleep. You may feel that getting 6 hours of sleep a night is fine, it is not. After less than a week, your mental performance is the same as if you had stayed up over 24 hours. You just can’t judge it yourself. You also cannot recover by sleeping extra for one or two days, you need a week to recover fully from sleep deprivation. For your mind and your body, you need to make sure you get enough sleep.
Get outside
Sometimes it’s as simple as getting up off the couch and taking a walk. If you can do something sporty then that’s even better. Go toss a Frisbee in the park, or play a game of tennis. It doesn’t really matter what you do as long as you raise your heart rate. Just get up and go.
These things are all fairly obvious, and you probably already know them. Our job here is to remind you to do them. Are you doing them? Which ones are you missing? The best thing you can do is just start. One at a time or all together is up to you. We find that if you start slow, one at a time, that it becomes much easier. Suddenly you’re doing healthy things without even realizing it was hard. Just do it.