Hello dear readers!

First of all HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Are you dressing up?

Sadly I am not because the costume that I was going to order won’t get it in time. But at least I’ll have something to put on next year..haha.

Anyway it’s been quite a while since my last post on this blog.

In this post I’m going to share my own personal tips for keeping up with my healthy and active lifestyle. Before I go on, I wouldn’t be able to do this without the guidance by DebbyK. For the past 1.5 years, she’s the one what has been educating and helping me tweaking my diet and lifestyle in order to achieve my goal.

#1. Pick up a short term goal and stick with it.
A short term goal is more sustainable and more realistic approach than a big one.

Let’s say, if you have been sedentary for almost your entire life, rather than setting up a goal to join a 5K marathon, it’s more realistic to start off by doing at least 10 minute walk 3 times a week. Then the next following week, increase it to 4 times a week or increase it to 15 minutes and so on. By doing small change like this, you will most likely stick to it.

#2. Set a bigger and long term goal
“I want to lose 20 lbs by xxxx (insert time frame here).”
“I want to fit into XXX (insert size number) pants/dress etc.”

Typically those are some goals that people usually utter when they want to make changes in their life. There’s nothing wrong with those goal, don’t get me wrong. However, it might be more helpful if you think beyond those and try to figure out what exactly is your long term goal.

Here’s my example:
I want to be healthy enough that I could still be doing whatever I could do now when I am in my older age later on. So I set myself a long term goal in a bigger picture. Plus ever since I embarked in this active lifestyle, I noticed I do feel and perform better in managing my stress and activities. That’s another plus and it also empowers me to keep me accountable to my goal.

#3. Hire a reputable and knowledgable coach
I might sound biased but I won’t ever recommend anything that I don’t believe in. For the past 2 years, I have learned a lot from DebbyK on both fitness and nutrition. All her coaching are done online and I’ve been making a lot of progress. You can read my full testimonial on her page here.

Having a reputable and knowledgable coach will help you to get started and even will have you think deeper in terms of your goal. A good coach will have his or her way to make you find out what exactly is your true goal. Sometimes we can be so clouded by little things here and there and we might get “lost” in the middle of our journey. Just think of having a coach is like having an invisible guide that will lead you to reach closer to your goal.

#4. Be in control for most of the time
If you are really serious about your new healthy lifestyle, you will be better off when you are in control for most of the time.

You don’t have to think too hard about it. Just start from something very simple. For example, instead of buying or getting a take out order, why don’t you start making your own food? And NO, heating up a TV dinner in a microwave or opening a can of chili doesn’t count, I’m sorry.

When I’m talking about cooking your own food, I really mean that you actually go to a grocery store, pick up some veggies, meat, eggs, come home, cut them up, then cook them either on the stove, oven or a slow cooker. In fact, if you make a fried egg, that’s already a better start than microwaving a frozen box dinner.

When your food consist mostly from minimally processed foods, you already have a really good starting point.

The basic rule is, if your food are packaged in those fancy flashy marketing boxes, most likely they are not whole foods.

Don’t know how to start?

You can browse some of my recipes here.

#5. Do something that will be sustainable for you in the long term

There are so many eating style (I hate to use the word “diet”), be it low carb/high fat, high carb/low fat, balanced diet, paleo, primal, vegetarian/vegan and so on.

It can be confusing, which one of those eating style should you follow in order to meet your goal?

Let me tell you one thing. Nobody in this world will have the exact same eating style a we are all different individuals with our own unique metabolism and genetic hereditary. It’s really hard to pin point which eating style that is better than another.

To be honest, any eating styles are great, as long as the majority of the food comes from minimally processed food. So you need to find out which eating style that will fit your lifestyle the most and then go from there.

The same thing can be said to exercise as well. There are weight training, Zumba, yoga, pilates, CrossFit, trackfield etc. Which one do you enjoy the most and you know that you will always to look forward to do it?

Once you could figure out any activities that you could enjoy without feeling being dragged into it, then you are off at the good start.

As for me, I enjoy weight lifting, kettlebell and some HIIT sprinting and brisk walking. Every day I get up and I always look forward to any of these activities. And I eat to fuel myself so I could do better next time when I do my workout.

So those are my little tips that I have for keeping up with my healthy and active lifestyle.

Have a great day.

PS: I was inspired to write this post after someone from Oscar Health Insurance reached out to me to share my tips of keeping up with my healthy and active lifestyle. If you live in New Jersey and New York area and need a health insurance, go check them out!

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