Brisbane Natural Health

Lifestyle and health are interlinked

Aside from exercise, a proper diet and an active lifestyle are important factors in achieving optimal health.

Every day we are bombarded with ads on television promoting a ‘quick fix’.

“Want to lose weight? Take this pill or use this machine for 3 minutes a day and lose 5 kilos in 2 weeks!”

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately there is no magic pill. There is no ‘quick fix’. If you want to lose weight, and keep that weight off – guess what? You need to make some lifestyle changes.

Out of all the people that lose weight – only about 2% of the weight loss group keep that weight off.

Why is this?

For many, the focus is on getting to their goal weight for the short term. For a wedding, or a birthday party, or to get into a bikini for summer – but as soon as that event is over, the bad habits come creeping back in again. The chocolate, the booze, the cheese and the breads all come back into play.

The only way to get to your goal weight and to maintain it – is by making permanent daily good lifestyle choices.

6 ways to keep your body at optimal health

1. Choose ‘real’ food first: Try to choose organic and biodynamic foods whenever possible. If you can’t afford to buy everything organic, choose your animal products – chicken, beef, eggs and dairy as organic. After that, look for high quality fresh veggies and fruit. Eat well, live better.

2. Drink purified water: To calculate the amount of water you need to be drinking daily, multiply your bodyweight in kilos x 0.033 .

3. Avoid processed foods: Always read the ingredients on labels – if you can’t pronounce it or don’t understand it then don’t buy it! If you must buy packaged foods, avoid chemical flavourings, colourings and preservatives.

All of these make your immune system work harder and some of them have nasty side effects – like headaches and breathing difficulties (ie preservative 220).

4. Get enough sleep: Most health practitioners agree that your body does most of its healing between the hours of 11pm to 2am. That means if you are getting to bed at midnight every night, then you are missing out on those essential hours of healing and repair. Aim to get to bed by 10.30pm every night.

5. Exercise: Exercise can stop or even reverse the signs of ageing. What more reasons do you need than those alone?

6. Eat Less Meat: Cutting your meat consumption is good for both your health and the environment, to say nothing about concerns for animal welfare. See here to read more about how to Eat Less Meat. And if this feels like something you could get behind, perhaps you should consider becoming flexitarian?

Exercise such as strength training improves your bone density, increases metabolism, helps with depression and strengthens your tendons and ligaments.

Cardiovascular training strengthens the heart, also helps with depression by releasing endorphins, improves glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity and increases your energy.

The value of one-on-one consultations

When looking for a personal wellness mentor, fitness coach or natural health consultant, you should always look to begin with a one-to-one consultation.

Your initial consultation is a time where to sit down without distraction and discuss your goals, go through your lifestyle, nutritional and exercise history and find out what types of food, exercise and treatmets you do and don’t like. It’s also important to find out whether you have any injuries, allergies or any concerns with starting your new wellness program.

Whether you want to lose fat, put on muscle, have more energy or blow away the cobwebs, you need to feed your body what it needs – and when it needs it.

And please don’t believe in the ‘quick fix’.

Getting to your ideal body shape or getting to the peak of your fitness is all about consistency. There is no such thing as a ‘quick fix’. This method is short term and will not give you long term results.

Losing weight, pulsing with energy, sculpting your body and getting to peak fitness and natural health involves a lot of hard work, commitment and dedication – and the good news is – it can be fun too!

Choose the right partner and they will provide you with all the tools to get to your ideal body shape, but they will ask from you 100% effort and a commitment to listening and learning.

There is never one diet, one treatment or one product that works for everyone. Therefore every new client should be individually assessed to discover which foods, supplements, treatments and exercise work best for them.

And there is never one personal trainer, naturopath, wellness consultant or natural health practitioner who is perfect for every client. You are unique and your needs, requirements and personality style will work better with a particular consultant over another.

Until you make the time to book in that first crucial one-to-one consultation, you’ll never know if this is the conversation that will change your life for the better, permanently. Make the commitment to yourself now and make that appointment.