Top 5 All Time Best Health and Fitness Decisions !!

5 years ago when I was overweight, I had no idea what healthy eating and exercising to taking care of yourself means. Eating fried food and soda was my world and i did not know anything beyond that. It was when I had series of failures and rejections in life, that i started walking as a stress buster. Little did i know that a small walk would help bring so much changes in my lifestyle. I stepped into a gym for the first time then and had never known how to operate a treadmill. That was the best day so far and nothing is going to make me go back. 

Today i would like to list top 5 decisions that has made me love myself and take care of myself and why I truly love this journey.

1) Walking

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In August of 2010, i made the decision to enter the gym and step on the treadmill for the first time. I had no idea how to operate the treadmill then. But since then there has been no coming back. Over the years, walking moved on to running (sometimes), maybe on the treadmill or outside. But this is something that I still love doing and continue to do.

2) Pedometer for Walking

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I am the type of person who tends to get bored easily. So obviously when i started walking, I started getting bored of it after some days. That is when i decided to get myself a pedometer to track my walking and challenge myself a distance everyday. This has been a source of motivation for me. Till date, i still use my pedometer and on days when unwell or on vacation, i make it a point to definitely include 10000 steps.

3) Clean Eating

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Primary factor contributing towards your weight loss is your diet which is 80%. You may put 120% energy in your workouts but if your diet is not good, there is no use of workouts. So you will not see any changes in your body and may tend to lose motivation slowly. I was also a victim of this. Its amazing to see how i have progressed from eating outside food 6 days a week to planning and cooking my food at home.

4) Drinking water

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As easy as it sounds, drinking water is one of the hardest thing i have ever done. I can easily go drinking sodas and canned juices. But i would not drink water as i found it tasteless. Little did i know then the importance of hydration and water. Ever since i make sure to drinking 2-3 litres of water everyday. 

5) Discipline

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Eating healthy and exercising require more than just plain action. It requires a lot of discipline and consistency to actually follow doing that. It creates a positive shift in your mindset to actually transform to be the person you want to be. I learnt the true meaning of being disciplined by following this lifestyle change.

Linking with Jill and Jessica for the awesome theme !!

Dream Board !!

A vision board or as I like to call it a dream board is a useful tool to help you visualize your goals and serve s as a source of motivation as you work towards achieving your dreams. It helps clarify, concentrate and maintain focus on a specific life goal.  The purpose of your vision board is to bring everything on it to life.

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Making use of vision boards serves several purposes, some of which include helping you to:

1) Identify your vision and give it clarity-

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We all have goals and write them down (mostly). But if we can have images which say our specific goals, then that helps us give more clarity. For eg: To say "I want to lose weight" is a good goal, but have you realized that this is a very generic goal. In order to get clear outcomes from our goals, they need to be as specific as possible. Instead if we have a goal of "I want to lose 10Kg by May before wedding anniversary" - this is a more specific goal as it gives you the number that you have to lose and by when. So in your dream board you can set a picture of you wearing that dress that you had always wished to wear for your wedding anniversary. This will definitely give a motivation to workout and eat well so that you can lose those pounds by May and fit into that awesome dress for your wedding anniversary.

2) Reinforce your daily affirmations -

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Once you dream it, the next step is to believe it. In addition to images, vision boards can include words, phrases or sentences that affirm your intentions.These are positive statements that describe a desired situation, which are often repeated, until they get impressed on the subconscious mind.
Repeated positive statements help you focus your mind on your aim. They also create corresponding mental images in the conscious mind, which affect the subconscious mind accordingly.


3) Keep your attention on your intentions.

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What is the use if we take all the efforts to prepare the board and leave it in a corner. We slowly start to forget about it. Remember the famous saying - Out of sight is out of mind. In the chaos of life, if we are not constantly reminded about our goals, we would forget about them. We would lose our focus on them.

Instead it is a good idea to place the vision board right next to your bed when you get up so that you have a look at your intentions. You can also put them on your wall or in a book that you carry with you so that you have your intentions with you that keep you focused and motivated to achieve those dreams !!

Linking with Jill and Jessica for the awesome theme !!

Push Yourself !!

About a year since i have started exercising regularly and seeing the results, there has been many times when people ask me what I am doing to lose the pounds. Many a times it has happened that on sharing the details, they would just hear it and ignore. But real results happen when you action on it. When you push yourself with the tools you have, you get the results you want !!

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I somehow find myself constantly pushing my friends to achieve their best potential either in their workouts or with other areas of my life. But when it comes to me, I really wish having a personal trainer who would really kick me up when I am low and be constantly pushing me to do things i never thought i could do.

My weakness is upper body. I completely dread doing push-ups and half ass doing them. If i had a personal trainer, i know whenever she saw me avoiding doing push-ups, she would motivate me and inspire me through the entire workout. She would keep me involved and push me to give my 100%. I believe that i can hear my trainer yelling these in my mind -

You own it.
You are worth it.

This is it. Come on. Don't give up.

This is the time you have to go to your head and tell I can do this.

Push Yourself. Common girl.

You will do the best you can do.

Keep telling yourself - I can do this.

Do the best you can do.

You can do this. Keep pushing !!

You fight for it. You get it !!

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Finally the ultimate push by Jillian Michaels -

“Unless You Puke, Faint or Die, Keep Going!” 

With such motivating words ringing around, who would not give their best. This is what makes all the difference !!!

Remember that at the end, its mind over body. You have to tell your mind to keep going and not stop !!

Linking with Jill and Jessica for the awesome theme !!