So, you have lost the excess weight, toned those flabby muscles and increased your overall fitness levels.
Congratulations!
It is fantastic to know that your body is in the best shape for endurance trips and marathons. Unfortunately, your body won’t miraculously remain fit and healthy forever. Except, of course, you take measures to maintain high fitness levels.
Every fitness enthusiast knows that core muscles have to be consistently exercised; else, they will weaken and permit the body to accumulate excess fats.
Research has shown that physical exercises are important for people of all ages to maintain high fitness levels. But there are other things you can do to maintain the best fitness levels possible. Once you have the right information, all you’ll need are the right mindset, focus and persistence.
Below are my top 5 health and fitness tips for maintaining high fitness levels throughout your lifetime.
1. Creatively Invent New Fitness Goals
Being creative with your fitness goals is a great way to stay motivated and fit. Experts have shown that constantly reinventing your fitness goals is a good way to maintain high fitness levels. This will increase your chances of reaching your goals.
Be smart and realistic when setting new fitness goals. Ensure that your objectives are specific, measurable, realistic and timely.
If you find motivation in competitions, then you might want to stay abreast of marathons, races and cross-country walks within your catchment area. Each contest can be a motivating factor for you, especially because different competitions require different fitness exercises and training.
Training for each event will give you a new milestone.
What better way to main your fitness levels than to set new fitness goals.
2. Maintain A Healthy Diet (Take Magnesium Supplements)
The role of a healthy diet is no longer a secret.
As the popular slogan goes, “You are what you eat.”
Research has shown the body releases cortisol in stressful situations. When you skip meals, stay up late or significantly reduce water intake, the body is put under a lot of stress and strain.
The downside to this is that human beings are likely to eat processed ‘fast’ foods because they contain a lot of sugars and trans fats, which temporarily calm the body. But of course, the excess sugars ingested are stored as fats in our hips, arms, waists and stomachs.
This can be avoided if you take steps to imbibe the culture of healthy eating.
If you feel stifled by diets that care not a whit for your creativity, then perhaps, you should experiment with healthy traditional foods from various countries.
If you want to maintain high fitness levels, it is important to sleep well and on time. Supplementing your diet with magnesium is also a wonderful way to improve not only your sleep quality but your insulin sensitivity.
Take care to ensure that you get sufficient magnesium daily especially if you live in hot climes where you might lose this mineral through sweat.
If you don’t like supplement tablets, you can eat a lot of magnesium-rich foods such as spinach, black beans, almonds, pumpkin seeds, yogurt, and so on.
3. Incorporate Outdoor Games into Your Routine
As often as you can, engage in some outdoor sporting activity, even if it’s once a week. Don’t ignore opportunities to engage in active outdoor games with your family at least once a week (more often during the holidays). There is a disturbing trend of spending a lot of time sitting in front of the TV and/or video games.
Research also revealed that this disturbing trend has many drawbacks.
People who spend less time playing outdoors are at a higher risk of getting obesity, type II diabetes and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anxiety disorders, depression, and attention deficit disorder.
Most adults have attested to the remarkable benefits of outdoor play. As a fitness freak, I can say that outdoor games tend to boost not only my fitness levels, they provide amazing opportunities for me to enhance my energy levels and creativity.
Even growing children need outdoor play to stimulate their minds. Spending the whole day in front of a TV screen isn’t healthy.
There are many amazing outdoor games families and friends can play. These games can range from snowball fights to walks or even paintballing. The most important thing is to ensure that you are burning calories and essentially, improving your health and fitness levels.
4. Drink A Lot of Water
Exercising and staying active can cause you to lose a lot of fluids through sweat.
If you don’t replenish lost fluids through drinking a lot of water can cause dehydration. Your body needs to stay hydrated else you risk suffering from organ failure and many other illnesses. People who pay attention to their bodies have attested to the amazing health benefits of drinking lots of water.
Not only does it flush harmful toxins from the body, it also keeps the body looking younger and healthier. Research has shown that drinking water can cure headaches.
Eating lots of watery fruits can provide your body with alternative sources of water. Examples of such fruits include watermelons, oranges, pineapples and pawpaws.
So if you want to stave off fatigue and increase your fitness levels, drink water whenever you have a chance.
5. Don’t Lose Focus (Keep Your Eyes on The Prize)
Workout gurus always recommend that workouts be appropriately timed and that the intensity should be increased slowly. Workouts are also to be structured to last for short periods of time.
Maintaining toned muscles involves a stimulation of muscle groups every 3 days. But if you want to tone specific parts of your body, you’ll be better off with weight-training exercises and/or strength exercises.
Much as your muscles need to be subjected to the exercises that toned them, they also need to be challenged. Stimulating your muscles in different ways is likely to help you maintain high fitness levels.
Exercises such as the prowler sled, Jacob’s Ladder, and ERG rowing machine will challenge and stimulate your body in unique ways!
It takes the body between twenty to forty minutes to release a maximum amount of muscle-building hormones.
In conclusion, maintaining fitness requires a lot of hard work and determination. Avoid situations that force your body to release the stress hormones called cortisol. Cortisol is notorious for preventing your body from burning fat and building muscles.
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