The condition of your body is a relatively accurate reflection of your habits and lifestyle. Excluding the lucky few with the genetics that allow almost ritual bodily abuse, we are a product of the stimulus we expose ourselves to. There is no hiding place from the figures that define us – our physical abilities, size and body composition measurements.

If you look in the mirror the reflection that greets you will more or less tell you everything you need to know about your lifestyle. How happy that makes you is another matter – I am not suggesting we all need to look a certain way, and if you are happy fat, thin or athletic, then fine. If you aren’t, then this article aims to gently guide you on the right path, helping you develop the kind of habits that will lead to an altogether healthier existence.

Fundamentally it comes down to how much importance you put on your health and wellbeing. How far up or down on your list of priorities does looking after yourself lie? If taking 3-4 hours out of your week to exercise is too much, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate your lifestyle if you want to achieve excellent, rather than ‘acceptable’ health.

I recently joined a new GP practice and was praised for my health and wellbeing by the nurse who took my measurements. I felt a slight smugness, but then I know it isn’t an accident that I am in decent nick. I am working hard in the gym most nights of the week, and my diet is generally good. My girlfriend and I always, virtually without exception cook from scratch using fresh produce. We don’t drink much alcohol, and most weekends we are off doing something active. I know I am coming across preachy and holier than thou, but the point I am trying to make it that we all have the tools to allow us to lead a healthy lifestyle, should we wish to. I hold down a busy full time job and manage to keep myself in shape.

In the fitness industry, Personal Trainers and health professionals are regularly told they need to be a ‘product of their product’ – in lay terms we have to practice what we preach. Fundamentally speaking, it means in order to be successful in the industry we are almost duty bound to exercise and to eat well – who wants to take fat loss advice from a person with 30% body fat?

Perhaps it could be argued that those working in the fitness industry have it easy with regards to a healthy lifestyle – they have access to the equipment and facilities that make exercise easier to do. To a point this is true, but remember the gym to a Personal Trainer is where they work, and who wants to stay in work longer than usual?! It takes a different kind of dedication stay at a place where you work in your leisure time!

So how do we bring about lasting change to our lifestyles? My advice to beginners is not to focus too early on numbers and figures – to a complete beginner with a massive mountain to climb, the size of the task can seem daunting. If your exercise regime currently consists only of walking to the kitchen and back, then perhaps a 3 hour marathon, a bodyweight bench press or achieving 10% body fat is jumping the gun somewhat. Look to see where you can introduce gradual changes.

Try introducing the following into your daily and weekly routine, and see how you feel. Remember these are the first tentative steps on what can be a long and life-changing road, so persevere – it may not be easy, but it certainly will be worth it!

• Do something you enjoy – with the best will in the world, if you don’t enjoy something, you won’t do it. Certainly not for long, anyway! Be clear about your goal, and don’t use the wrong vehicle to help you achieve it. If ‘being more active’ is your initial goal, make sure the activity is something you like. If you hate running, don’t run – you are aiming to be more active, not do more running!

• Make it easy to exercise – If you can’t motivate yourself to exercise once you sit on the sofa after work, go straight to the gym – remove the temptation to be lazy by not going home in the first place. It is not a difficult thing to do for most of us.

• Exercise with a friend – I train better with a partner for two reasons – motivation, as you always have appointment to make, and you don’t want to let a friend down. The second one is it allows you to do more; when weight training having someone to spot you means you can push yourself to a literal failure – something that is much more dangerous if done alone, as many YouTube videos will testify!

• Surround yourself with fit, active people – Self help gurus often recommend you surrounding yourself with wealthy people if you want to get rich – the idea being you learn from them and pick up their habits. The same can be said about improving your health. If your peer group consists of lazy people, then guess what you will be? This is not to say you have to remove yourself from your current circle of friends, it just gives you an excuse to reach out to people who live the lifestyle you want to.

• Exercise in a way that suits your schedule – I struggle to train well first thing in the morning. I wish I could be the early bird type, up at 5am and had done a days training by 6am, but at this stage of my life, I am not. I train best in the late afternoon/early evening, so I fit my workouts around that time. Find out when suits you – if you train best early in the mornings, get yourself out of bed to make it happen.

• Don’t be afraid of failure – There are lots of gym members that I know who have joined a gym, only to discover they hate training in a gym environment. It doesn’t matter though – most gyms now have a comprehensive group exercise class timetable, so those people have simply found what they do like on the timetable and do that instead. A very high percentage of gym members actually combine traditional gym work with group exercise classes. The idea is to seek what you can do – don’t feel useless if you don’t enjoy training in the gym – you have plenty of other exercise options available to you.

• Commit to change – Introducing a major lifestyle change by bringing exercise into your life is a big deal. Don’t expect it to be easy, and make your peace early on with the fact that you will have days when you ache, when you can’t be bothered and that you will not perform as well as the session before. That is life, so don’t dwell on the bad times. Look to improve going forward and accept there are going to be blips on the way.

• Cook from scratch – This one should really be a given. In a world full of mass-produced, factory-produced crap, we should all be looking to eat fresh. We all have to eat, you why not eat well? Cooking is a life skill we should all have, so if you can’t cook, do yourself a favour and invest in a cookery course or a good healthy cook book.

• Eat at least 2 vegetables with your evening meal – I can’t believe some people regard 5 a day as a difficult target. A couple of pieces of fruit or two vegetables with each of the three main meals in the western diet and you would EXCEED the target! No excuses, start eating better. And no, chips don’t count.
These are a handful of tips that really aren’t hard to introduce into your life, but will pay you back with interest in the long term. Making an active lifestyle easy to achieve is the aim – nobody is expecting miracles overnight, but progressive small steps are important.

Keep at it and set yourself small individual goals – use the goal setting article on www.hoylesfitness.com for help with setting appropriate goals for yourself. The sooner you start taking more time to benefit your health, the sooner you will see the benefits!