This is a seemingly odd ball topic to talk about and it might not be something you immediately relate to work or design but trust me I have a point here. Just to give you a complete inside on why I think I’m an authority on the subject, I’ve been vegan for about 10 years now. That doesn’t really mean anything because I know tons of people who’ve made the transition and still ate terribly so to further prove that I know what I’m talking about I read labels ON EVERYTHING I EAT, I log my nutrition and calorie intake via Lose It ( review to come soon), I exercise everyday, I even have a chronic condition in which there is no cure for and I’m confident that my diet and mental outlook are the keys to keeping it in remission.
All of that in mind, everyone is different and your needs are probably VASTLY different than my own. Also, disclaimer, this is not to turn you vegan or vegetarian either. You can lead a perfectly healthy life with heathy choices in any food category, veganism just happens to work for me and aligns to my moral ethos. So why then restrict your diet to only healthy choices and be miserable you might ask. Well the answer is quite simple for me. I’m 34 and completely tired of feeling tired, run down and just generally lethargic. I want to live my life to the fullest at any given point and that means that my body has to be agile enough to respond the way I want to. I don’t want to be out of breath, I don’t want to be fat and I don’t want to be restricted by my body’s limitations.
This is how I live and if it strikes you in a certain way to live healthier, great! If not thats fine, too. Low hanging fruit: Stop smoking, stop drinking in excess, stop eating processed foods and eat balanced portions. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I’ve heard all of this before you might say. Cool. Refer back to my last post about practice and and just do it. Challenging but certainly not impossible tasks: eat more of the following fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Limit the following: meat, dairy, eggs, alcohol, sugar, and simple carbohydrates. THEN MOVE! Exercising is a must as well. If you’re dieting you might as well complete the process. Plus you don’t need a gym. There’s this place called outside. You can run around there. I suggest you do it. Once you have a routine down (and this is the secret, are you ready?…) GOOGLE AT HOME WORKOUT PLANS. You can do pushups, sit-ups, etc… Then, and this is crucial, do not pay attention to the scale. If your a quantitative junkie like me who makes an spreadsheet on all of the days and numbers drive you to make better decisions then by all means step on the scale but DO NOT let it influence you to give up. That’s a loser mentality and if you’ve made it this far into this rant then guess what you’re not a loser.
OK, action items: Download a food tracking app (I suggest Lose It, but any one of them will do), USE IT, get a fitness tracker (I use Fitbit), set goals, and then through trial and tribulation figure out what works for you. I joined a gym and guess what, I don’t go to it… So I quit but I have a bike, elliptical machine, etc… at home so I use those. Eat healthy. Google it. Read above. There are a number of fad diets. DON’T DO THEM. For instance your body RUNS ON CARBS. Limiting your intake of carbohydrates is a good idea but cutting them out to eat more fat and protein is stupid because at a certain point, and trust me on this, you’ll go back to eating carbs and then BAM you gain a ton of weight because your body isn’t used to consuming that many calories. Stop smoking, drinking, drugs, or any other blatantly obvious self-destructive habit. But, yo, A-A-Ron, my weekend will suck if I don’t suck down a 30-pack of bud light. Cool. Hope you like missing your entire life because I never did ANYTHING of use when I did that. In fact, It might have inspired me to slam these keys to tell you that I wasted something stupid like 10 years when I could be LIGHTYEARS ahead of where I am now if I put the beer down way earlier. Thats a whole other topic… I promise to get into that soon.
Thats it, I hope you enjoyed my rant. Live healthy, stop destructive habits, exercise and live an amazing unlimited life! If there’s something I’ve missed, put it in the comments below. Any workout routines, recipes, mental health stuff you want to share, put those in the comments too. What works for you guys? Let me know. I’m trying to broaden my horizons. Good Luck and have a good weekend.
–Aa
