Today I’ve decided to talk about the dread F word: Yep, Fitness. It’s a word that’s thrown around so often these days that we’ve pretty much forgotten how essential it is. I’ll admit that up until a couple of years ago I really wasn’t into working out and taking care of my health and my fitness levels were shocking! I’d go to the gym with my friends and complete a half-hearted work out where I stayed in the gym over an hour and only actually exercised for a total of twenty minutes. I saw it as more of a social thing than something I needed to do, but as you get older it becomes completely necessary to get moving and sweaty on a regular basis. We need our workouts not only to carve out our physical fitness but also our mental wellness – the endorphins keep us sane.

I won’t bore you all with daily workouts but I thought it might be helpful to share my non-negotiable rules that I follow to help make keeping up with your exercise regime a little bit more achievable.

Try To Do Some Sort Of Exercise Every Day

I used to restrict my workouts to Monday, Wednesday and Friday to try and keep things sustainable. Working out three times a week isn’t bad right? The problem is on my days off I would get extremely lazy, and working in an office 9-5 did not help. I’d spend all day sitting down at my desk and then go home to then spend the whole evening on the couch or horizontal. Then the next day id’ find it really tough to motivate myself and by the time I got to the end of the week I realised I’d only made it to the gym once or twice. The whole ‘I’m going tomorrow’ thought just gave me an excuse to be twice as lazy on my days off because I felt it was somehow justified.

So I made the decision to get to the gym every, single, day during the week or if I couldn’t make it to the gym I’d go for a one hour walk along the prom, or around the park with the dog. They key is movement. I find it helpful to book yourself onto classes then – they only take half an hour and because you’ve booked a space you can kind of hold yourself accountable. You can mix it up with things like circuits, spinning, and swimming – whatever you enjoy!

Plan Your Workouts

We all know how easy it is to go to the gym and just kind of toddle your way through your workouts, not really pushing yourself. You don’t need to spend 2 hours in the gym to make it count, what matters is your intensity and effort. I always used to book classes and flake out on them half an hour before so I started booking them for 6pm so I had to go straight from work. It really worked for me because I didn’t have time to think to myself ‘I can’t be bothered’ or ‘I’ll do this instead’ – I just went to the class, 45 minutes and I was done!

Buy yourself a notebook and plan out what classes you’re going to go to each week, what exercise you’ll do on your away-days from the gym, plan a walk along the beach with friends. Writing things down will help you stay accountable and it will also make it easy to see what free time you have to get out and socialise with friends.

Incorporate Fresh Air

When the weather is great you really need to be making more of an effort to get outside, especially if you work indoors.  Fresh air is good for your health; it improves blood pressure and strengthens your immune system so you have no excuse! Even if it’s just going for a walk during your lunch break or taking your pup out for his daily stroll. When you work out outside it doesn’t even feel like a workout because you’re not surrounded by others pounding the treadmill and you don’t have a clock counting down every second in front of you.

I’m quite luck as I live near to many beaches and they have regular classes there, such as sunset yoga which I absolutely love! You get to watch the gorgeous sunset, meet like-minded people and you feel so peaceful and healthy afterwards. Get googling your local area – you’d be surprised what’s out there!

Invest In Some Outfits You Love

 I know that technically you could wear anything to the gym as long as it’s appropriate but for me, I don’t feel good working out if I’m not wearing the correct gear. I remember going to a PT session once and I was wearing these cheap half-leggings which looked good when I was just walking but he had me doing all of these jumps and HIIT exercises and the waistband wasn’t very tight so it kept slipping down. I just know he saw my underwear on a number of occasions that day. Ever since, I’ve made sure to pay a little extra for clothes that I feel comfortable in. It’s funny because when I think I look the part I actually tend to workout harder too. The saying stands: look good, feel good.

Wear A Fitness Tracker

This is probably one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given. I didn’t go out and buy an apple watch or anything like that, I actually bought a 320 Nuband one because all I wanted to do was track my movement during the day. It’s recommended that to keep fit and active you should try and hit 10,000 steps a day and I honestly believed that I was hitting above and beyond that with my gym sessions and general movement during the day. Wrong! I was mortified to learn that by 5pm on a working day I’d only hit 1,500. This meant that even with my workouts in the gym I wasn’t even hitting the recommended steps we should all be trying to hit.

It made me try to move more in my day to day life. I was going for little 10 minute walks during my lunch breaks and printing to the printer down stairs, making sure I took bathroom breaks every hour. It sounds silly but it’s true that the small movements we make during the day really add up and count towards the bigger picture.

So there we have it, my top 5 tips to keep you active and moving. I’m no health expert so don’t take anything what I say as bible but I promise they push me every day to keep moving. Do you have any tips you’d like to share? I’d love to hear them.