Fitness for Normal People | E17

Follow me on instagram:
@coachabbiethomas

For more about 1:1 support:
- More Info
- Enquiry Form

Transcript

Copy

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello team and welcome back to Train Like a Girl. My name is Abby. I am an online health and fitness coach, and I am going to be speaking today to those that don't really see themselves as a gym person, but maybe just want to improve their health and their fitness and their strength potentially, but not, you know, doesn't have to be like any solid, there doesn't have to be any solid thinking around this about like, I want to get X, Y, and Z, I want to get shredded, none of that. This is for the everyday person that just wants to be healthier. Because honestly, I've been chatting with friends and family recently and about all about this podcast. And the general consensus I get is that when they go online, they think that fitness looks so extreme that they just decide to look in another direction completely, or maybe just don't, they just disregard and stop thinking about health and fitness because it just looks incredibly extreme. And maybe I'm partly the problem. Maybe I'm one of those voices too, because you know, often we'll follow some fitness accounts that look really inspiring, but they're so intimidating because they are talking to the people that are already in the gym. They're talking to the people that do the 5 a.m. gym sessions, the people that track every gram of food. You know, it looks like 10k steps minimum, ice baths, supplements, perfectly healthy meals, and workouts every day. And for the average person, looking at all of that, it can feel like, well, if I can't do all of that, then why do why even bother? Or like they look at it and they think, bloody eck, there's so much information here. Like, where do I start? But that is why I'm doing this episode for you. Because the truth is, your health improves long before any of that like perfection stuff comes in. And I'd argue actually that trying to be that perfect is really not where we want to go because we can get into so many other issues with that, but that's not what we're talking about today. We're not talking about perfection. I actually did an episode a couple weeks ago about all or nothing thinking, which was more along that line, if you're interested. But yeah, your health, an everyday person's health, improves long before we start talking about ice baths and the perfect workout split and all of that. Because you don't need to become a fitness influencer or a gym person to become a healthier person. All you need is a few basic habits done consistently, consistently, consistently, consistently is the key. So honestly, that is what most healthy people are actually doing. So when we look outside of Instagram, we realize actually the healthy people are doing nowhere near the extremes that we see online. So if you're somebody that wants to feel better, have more energy, improve your health, maybe you want to lose a bit of weight, maybe you want to feel a bit stronger, maybe you want to age better, but you don't want fitness to become your whole personality, then this episode is for you. Because today I want to strip it right back and talk about the things that actually matter the most. And the first one is movement. I think I'm probably guilty of this as well, but I think people massively overcomplicate exercise. And you know, talking about social media, like it's no wonder, right? But the reality is that your body just wants to move more. So my top tip for you would be walking is honestly one of the most underrated things that you can do for your health. It helps cardiovascular health, energy expenditure, insulin sensitivity, digestion, it helps stress, mental health, general fitness and well-being. And the best part about it is that it is accessible for almost everybody. And now, where I think people might go wrong with setting with this is setting ridiculous targets overnight. So somebody goes from averaging, say, 3k steps a day to saying, oh my god, I saw this fitness influencer online that says XYZ, so from tomorrow, I'm gonna do 15,000 steps a day. And they last for a day or two or four days and then they quit. But the crucial thing here is not in the dose, it's in the consistency. So what I would advise is it's it's not about doing the most. The goal is to do what you can do and repeat it consistently over a long period of time. So honestly, wherever your step count is now, and if you don't know what that is, maybe my first piece of advice would be let's get a step track tracker. There's so many out there now, and then I think you can get them really, really cheap. Maybe start with that. Look at your average across a week or two, and then from that point, if you want to improve your health, honestly, I would simply aim to increase that number by maybe, I mean, it depends where you currently land, but maybe by 2,000 steps a day and lock that in first. You will be amazed at the difference that that makes to you. Because as I said, consistently beat consistency beats intensity all day long. Fitness social media often shows very high standards because fitness is literally that those people's hobbies, career, lifestyle. But for most of us, sustainability matters way more. Alongside movement and like daily, you know, that daily kind of movement, I would I would, and I don't want this to scare you off if you're not a gym person, so stay with me here, but I would, I can't not mention and highly encourage some form of strength training, especially for women. Especially for women over 30. I cannot stress this enough. It's honestly kind of a non-negotiable because it's not about aesthetics or getting toned. If you are somebody that is seriously looking at your health long term, strength training is one of the best things you can do for muscle mass, bone density, metabolism, mobility, insulin sensitivity, injury risk, healthy aging, reduced disease risk as we get older. Like there are so many good benefits. I cannot, I cannot tell you the benefits. I would reel off for ages. But a lot of women, and through no fault of their own, I think it's because of the world we live in and again, social media, they think that strength training has to mean living in the gym, but honestly, it doesn't. Especially if you're new to it, it could you could get incredible health benefits from two to three sessions a week from home at just half an hour, 45 minutes a time. And most people would benefit from just body weight when starting out. That is more than enough to begin. And again, I come back to it. It's not about the dose, it's about the consistency. So it's about it, maybe it's even starting with one 40-minute session from home each week. And I think this is really important because people think if I can't train perfectly, there's no point, especially when we go online and look at fitness education or fitness advice, it's so overwhelming. And so we can get caught in this like paralysis analysis because we're like, well, I can't do all of that, so I just won't do any of it. Meanwhile, their body or your body would massively benefit from just doing something. So, as I said, could be two 20-minute sessions a week. That is gonna benefit you, and that you don't realize the amount of benefit you're gonna get from that. It's it's crazy. And, you know, I'm saying all of this, and you might be thinking, I haven't got a clue where to start with strength training. But don't stress, because I I'm actually thinking I'm gonna do another episode more specifically on maybe beginner-friendly strength training from home or from the gym. Because honestly, I can't not mention strength training. And I think beginner fitness online is often terrible because people throw beginners into these crazy complicated routines when honestly, realistically, people just need simple movement patterns, consistency, and a plan that they don't hate. So that's really all I have to say on training. I know that's not delving into specifics, but I really hope that helps you see that actually it can just be let me increase my step count. That is gonna do so much more for you than trying to perfect any gym routine, by the way. But if you then want to layer in some exercise, strength training would be the thing that I would suggest. And it can be as simple as body weight workouts from home. Moving on, let's talk about food. Because again, nutrition online has become so overcomplicated because there are so many, because there's so much good stuff out there, and so it can just it can just be so overwhelming. Like, where do I begin? So if your goal is general health, you absolutely don't need to obsessively track every calorie or weigh every gram of food or anything like that. And what I actually am leaning more into in recent weeks is because you know, I do think there is a place for calorie tracking, and you've no doubt heard me talk about that if you've listened to this podcast, but I think for people that are maybe a bit overwhelmed by all of that and just they actually just want to improve their health, what I really love is something called the plate method. And this is and this is basically just a really simple way to build a balanced meal visually. So just to give you a bit of an idea of this, what this looks like is at each meal we're looking at half the plate being vegetables or fruit, around a quarter of the plate protein, a quarter of the plate carbs, and then maybe like a thumb of fats alongside that, just as a visual. So it's not about perfection, it's about learning what balance looks like. Because genuinely, a lot of people have never have never been taught how to create a balanced meal. If you want to go one step further than that, I would say that I do think it's helpful for people to learn the basics of protein intake, even if just briefly. And it's not because you need to obsess over numbers forever, but it's because people sometimes, in the experience I've had with clients, is they they underestimate how important protein is for fullness, for muscle mass, recovery, and health and body composition. And so if you are increasing your activity, it could be a good idea to have a a protein target. And this usually looks like about 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. So if, for example, you weigh 80 kilos, we would be aiming for around 128 grams of protein a day. Now, I know when people hear numbers like that, they they panic and they might think, oh my God, how do I even know what that looks like? Do I have to track forever? No. Honestly, I see tracking as more of an educational tool. So it could be that you start looking at protein on packets and just gently like referencing it or making a note of it or writing it down and being like, oh, okay, so if I have a hundred grams of this, I'm gonna get X amount of protein. Write that down and just like stack it up over the day and and just have a keep an eye on am I actually eating enough protein? Just so you can like have a gauge of it because your carbs and fats, they can sort of fall into place. But if we know what a good portion of protein looks like, we can then build that balance plate around it, right? It can bring awareness to what foods contain protein for a starters, but also what a protein, what a good portion of that looks like. And when you start to build your meals from that point, you'll start to see like, oh, I can actually stay really full off this. I can this feels really balanced. And then eventually you'll stop needing like exact numbers because you can mostly eyeball it. So that's the goal here. It's about education, it's not about obsession. And you can you could also apply this to your carbs as well. I often find that people that struggle to lose weight, for instance, if you've got a weight loss goal but don't want to track calories, don't want to get obsessed, sometimes carbs can be the thing that people overeat on because they're so delicious, they're highly palatable. Pasta, for example, it doesn't go a long way. And so actually, maybe it's about looking at the packet and being like, what is actually a portion here? Just a couple of times so that you can educate yourself around what actually one portion looks like. And once you've got that basic education, you can then apply that to that balance plate method that I talked about earlier. So we've talked about training, we've talked about nutrition. I just want to bring up a couple more things that play a huge part in people's health that often they forget about. Because sometimes when we think about health, we think, oh, I need to go to the gym. Actually, some of the bigger pillars in life that will really move the needle forward with your health are sleep, hydration, and general movement throughout the day. So I wanted to bolt those on to the end of this chat because they matter so much with how your body, how healthy your body is. Sleep is so massive. I would highly recommend reading Why We Sleep. Absolutely fantastic book. If you've not read it, please get on it. When you read that, you will realize just how impactful our sleep is on us. Um, and so something that I try to implement as like a goal for lots of my clients is getting a regular sleep pattern. So I think the research is increasingly telling us that whilst the the amount of hours we sleep does matter, what matters almost more is the time and wake the sleep, the time you get to bed and the wake-up time, consist the consistency of that matters. So if you are like getting up and going to sleep at erratic hours, that is not going to be as beneficial as having the same bedtime and say the same wake-up time each day. So that's gonna be hugely beneficial for your health. Then obviously, hydration goes without saying we need to be hydrated, guys. And then general movement throughout the day. So especially if you work in an office job or sit for long periods, daily you your general movement is gonna really, really matter. And you don't need to become obsessive with this, but your body does massively benefit from just like standing up more, moving more frequently, you know, those kind of things. Maybe it's about like on your lunch hour, you dedicate half an hour of that to walking around the block and reducing the amount of time you spend completely sedentary. And honestly, I think one of the biggest mindset mindset shifts people need is understanding that all of this stuff isn't built through extreme efforts for two weeks. It's actually built through these basic habits that we've talked about today, repeated for years. Like honestly, the people that crash diet, the people that do extreme fitness challenges and then burn out from it and then just like go on a bender, that is not conducive to a healthy life. And actually, there's so much in, there's so much health to be earned in and so much to be said about these basic habits being repeated over years. It doesn't need to be extreme, quite the opposite. And boringly enough, the people who are healthiest long term usually are not the people doing the extreme things. It's about doing the basics consistently. So to recap, it's about walking regularly, moving your body in the in a way that feels good for you. And I know I talked a lot today about, well, not a lot, but I the the training element here I talked about with strength training. But you know, maybe it's about finding a movement that you enjoy, dancing, swimming. Because again, it comes back to the although I'm like a big advocate for strength training, it comes back to the consistency of that training, right? So find a movement that you love and do it consistently because that is going to benefit you more than doing something extreme for a shorter period. So walking red regularly, moving your body, eating balanced meals, sleeping reasonably well, training maybe a couple times a week, drinking enough water, that's it. They're the biggest pillars. So rather than get caught up online in like, oh, what supplements and what's the best training protocols and what's like, you know, the best methods and stuff, it's actually just those basics. And I think that's actually really freeing because it means you don't need to wait until you become this hyper-motivated fitness person before you start improving your health. You can actually just start where you are and meet yourself where you're at, and you can improve your health dramatically without your entire life revolving around the gym and fitness. And honestly, that's probably how it should be for most people. So I hope that helped you. And if you ever want some assistance with that, and you want some help with planning out these tasks and having a clearer vision about how can I improve my health and how can I create a balanced plate. And, you know, you need a hand in that for a bit of motivation or support, that is what I do. So if you want help, please reach out, ask me any questions you've got off the back of this, or better yet, inquire about working with me. I would love to have you because this is the shit that I love to do. But anyway, that is everything for today. I hope that helped. Please send it to a friend that you think could benefit from this. And until next week, have a good one.