Hello everyone! I hope the new year is treating you well! The new year for me has gotten off to a brilliant start, I'm feeling very positive about many things in my life right now and the new year motivation is still going. Which leads me on to this post, my new fitness routine. I've only just begun, so it's sort of a bit rough and ready, but hopefully you'll get the idea, and it may motivate you to do the same :)
So i came across a website called My Fitness Pal, which is a website and app to help you keep track of how many calories you have in a day. You type in your weight and height and it gives you a goal calorie number, like mine is 1870 calories a day. You keep a diary of what you have eaten, and it adds up the calories for you and takes them off your daily allowance. If you exercise, it then gives you extra calories for how much you've burned off, which i don't see as very helpful as you're basically eating those calories you've just worked hard to burn off. It also helps you to keep on top of how many cups of water you've had, as it recommends 8 cups a day. I've recently started to drink more water, as i would only drink if i was really thirsty. I've seen many benefits to doing this, and i feel so much healthier.
Once you've completed your daily food diary, it tells you what you would weigh in 5 weeks if every day were like today. I find this useful as it gives you something to aim for, as if you didn't try that hard today, it would still pay off in a few weeks, and imagine what you could achieve if you tried even harder?
So far i haven't gone over my daily allowance of calories and hopefully i will see improvements in the next few weeks. I obviously have been starting to eat alot healthier, just because somethings not high in calories doesn't mean it's not bad for you. For example, i have stopped snacking on crisps and chocolate, and instead have been reaching for fruit (although a banana is a whole 200 calories, 200 calories?!).
I recommend My Fitness Pal to anyone, it's free to join and you can download it to iPhones, iPads, androids and windows phones.
What's a fitness routine without exercise? As many of you may know, I'm a dancer and during term time, i do several classes a week, and that's my exercise sorted. Whenever I'm not dancing, such as in the holidays and weekends, i stick on a workout DVD. These things are blooming brilliant, i could only do 10 minutes to start off with now I'm doing about 35 minutes of it, which is great progress and I'm obviously starting to get a bit fitter. I just use ones on YouTube as it's easier, and the one I'm loving doing at the moment is the Pump It Up workout, which is done by the same people as in the Call On Me video. It's such a fun workout to do, there are different sections like on all workout DVDs, and its really working so far. I find that if you love what you're doing, exercising doesn't seem like so much of a chore, i want to exercise now which is a real shocker, as i never used to feel like this. I love to dance, and obviously that's a workout in itself, so whilst I'm having fun exercising, before i noticed i got fitter and slightly more toned up, without even working too hard for it.
So there we have it, my new fitness routine for 2013. It may change as i go along, but i'm fairly happy with it, and i'm feeling very motivated. If anyone has any particular fitness, workout or diet tips then feel free to leave them below, all advice welcome! And if you've found a new routine, then do let me know
Laura x
