In our last health tips day we talked about a few things you really need to consider before you get started on your health and fitness journey. Once you have the heavier stuff out of the way and you are on a good path and know where you are going start trying to implement one change a month is my suggestion. Remember slow and steady.....we are in in marathon mode. For me one of the EASIEST things to assess and gain control of is what I drink. You can address this without much cost if any (you may even see a savings).
I love sweet tea deeply. It is something that I just think would be torturous to give up forever. I also feel like I need a coke or coffee from time to time because if you are alive surely once in a while you need a mid afternoon or morning pick me up. So working off the theory that we do not want this whole experience to be the death of all your happy dreams let's just consider we are working on modifying not cutting ALL excess.
I like to limit myself to one thing a day like coffee, tea or coke and then keep with water for the rest of the day. You can jazz the water up any way you like. Fresh lemon slices, cucumber slices. Really anything you can think of. You can have the drink of your choice at any point during the day but FOR THE LOVE do not upsize the drinks. That is what will really sock you with a ton of extra sugar is sizing up. For the coffee I like to add skim or 1 % milk instead of creamer and I like to sweeten with half teaspoon raw sugar or honey.
If you are going to drink cokes, teas and add sugar to coffee all indicators are that real is best. All these manufactured 0 calorie sweeteners are wreaking havoc on our bodies. They also just leave me feeling like I had a diet so I should just go on and have another real coke. It's an ugly downward spiral. Just stick with the real thing and a moderate size of it once a day and really savor it.
Now if you are a person that drinks multiple "other drinks a day" my suggestion is to cut one extra out a day. So if you have 5 "other" drinks in a day go down to 4. The next week take down one more. You get the point.
As far as water intake goes it takes time to get used to it. The guideline is to divide your body weight in half and drink that much water daily. Depending on your weight that may be a lot. Its ok if you cannot start out drinking say 50 ounces of water a day but just shoot for half. Any strides in the right direction no matter how small are GOOD!!!
The main thing that I stress and feel like I cannot stress enough is that you can make all the drastic changes you want but you will feel deprived and deprived people generally don't stick with it. I want desperately for you to see the bigger picture. Even if it takes you a year to make all the changes you need to for a healthier lifestyle that is ONE year which in the grand scheme of things is not a lot. The number of years you just added to your health and well being outweigh the slow start.
I have been getting some feedback saying this is helpful and useful and I LOVE that. I hope the format is good and I would love to get some questions on things you are curious about! That would also help give some further direction.
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