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I have a challenge for you this week.
Pay attention to your inputs and outputs.
What are you putting in your body?
What moving (output) are you doing?
A tricky thing – they’re not equal.
Broccoli isn’t equal to potato chips
Bursts of used energy aren’t equal to frequent quality, low impact movement.
The body prefers quality.
Quality food means:
- under 25g of sugar per day – to control blood sugar
- vegetables/greens – for fiber and vitamins
- meat/eggs – for being strong
- rice/potatoes/oats, essential whole carbs – for energy
- fats from foods not oils – for hormones
Does your body know how to get what it needs from wine, chips, cheese? Sort of. You can survive, but you won’t be thriving. You certainly won’t be optimal.
Track your inputs for this week – how much of it is processed food? Something ground up and then repurposed? How much cheese are you eating?
You can use the above list as a way to prioritize your plate.
Quality movement means:
- low stress activity – get 10,000 steps in a day
- breath through your nose as much as you can – so great for regulating your parasympathetic nervous system (especially when going to bed)
- be intentional when you’re working out – pay attention to your body
The body actually prefers you increasing your NEAT – Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. It doesn’t want to get stressed out.
The real reason why you procrastinate working out is because the body is resisting the increased stress that’s about to happen. It isn’t willpower. When you’re getting ready to exercise, the brain knows that all these physiological changes are going to happen – increased heart rate, energy expenditure, cortisol (stress) raising, inflammatory markers going up, so it’s going to try and talk you out of it.
We know the effort of exercise is worth going through all that from an overall health and longevity standpoint, so we do it anyway and then afterward, we can bask in the endorphins, increased energy and using our muscles (so we don’t lose them!).
BUT this week, I want you to focus less on “I GOTTA WORKOUT!!!” – I want you to pay attention to total daily movement. We’ve heard this before: take the stairs, park farther away in the parking lot, get a walk in, dance while you’re cooking dinner.
This little bit of added movement will make your body happy!! You’ll increase the natural amount of calories your body burns every day (your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR), help your joints stay lubricated and move oxygen around your body – all without increasing stress.
As little as 100 calories each day translates to approximately 10½ lbs. lost in a year; 200 calories equals the loss of 21 lbs. – from NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine).
Read more about NEAT here; it has a really great breakdown of how that works:
https://blog.nasm.org/exercise-programming/neat-approach-weight-loss
I recommend writing all of this down. We can’t change what we don’t track. I have my clients do this with a spreadsheet, so they can see the data. It’s eye opening to realize how our inputs and outputs can be different than what we think they are.
But start with jotting down how many hours you’re sitting versus walking/moving. And keeping note of how much processed food and sugar you’re eating compared to veggies, meat and carbs. Then you can adjust so that there is more focus on quality food and low stress quality movement.
If you have any questions, let me know! I love talking about nutrition and exercise.
May you give yourself the gift of movement. May you nourish yourself with real food. May you find joy in quality.
Many hugs,
Coach Laura
P.S. If you want a guided program to help you with exercising in a safe and progressive way, then check out my virtual program – Stronger Everywhere Training! SET is for people who want to workout, but don’t want to figure it all out on their own. Stop doing random workouts and getting random results. This program helps you get stronger everywhere.
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