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Stay Fit, Healthy and Happy

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FITAPP Fitness trainer Isabella explains how she manages to integrate sport and healthy eating in her daily life

For me, fitness and healthy eating are key to leading a happy life, but I didn’t always think like this. 

 

 

From office to active

Before I moved over to a sporty lifestyle, I spent years as an employee in an office. Those who know me can no longer imagine me doing that. I love being active and working at a desk was absolutely not for me. Working at a desk curbed my desire to be active and creative. I therefore made an effort to do more sport in my free time, to restore some balance to my days. I didn’t follow any specific sporting path but undertook hiking and gymnastics, jogging and yoga and plenty of other sports too. I was certain of one thing; I needed variety. I did not want to sign up to courses that ran at specific times, or join a gym. And I certainly did not want to follow a single sport and become a runner or a cyclist. To remain motivated, I studied a wide variety of topics covering fitness and nutrition in my own time.

 

Turning a hobby into a profession

After a while, the role of fitness in my life became more than simply a question of finding a work/life balance. I tried to encourage my friends and family to join me. The support and help that these people gave me encouraged me to make my hobby my job. I decided to study to become a fitness trainer in order to learn the latest about fitness and health and to be able to motivate others to be more active and healthy.

 

My everyday life

As a result, for the last 3 years I have continuously been involved in sport. I specialised in stamina training, outdoor activities and strength training in a gym. Not a day goes past now without activity of some kind, albeit sometimes simply a walk with the dog or my family. It doesn’t matter where, how or how long – every day I find a window of sporting opportunity.


In the meantime, I have built up an agenda which looks like this:

  • 3x per week, strength training
  • 1x per week, core stability
  • 1x per week, stamina training


It is also vital to build stretching exercises into a training schedule. And when I fancy doing other activities, such as going for a stroll with the dog, jogging, hiking or yoga, then I do these too.

The right nutrition is supremely important in a healthy lifestyle. I have a balanced diet and use mostly natural produce, though I do allow myself some leeway.  

 

Tips

Just 30 minutes of activity per day is enough to lead a healthy lifestyle. You don’t need to become an elite runner. You can simply make small decisions which make a big difference – such as cycling or walking instead of taking the car or bus to work. For those of you who don’t have that possibility, you could always get up half an hour earlier and do a 30 minute workout (or perhaps you can do this during the course of the day or in the evening). Take the stairs instead of the lift or escalator and bring additional activity into your everyday life. You may take a while to get used to the changes, and feel more tired, but soon more fitness every day will give you more energy and lust for life.   

Likewise with healthy eating; don’t change your diet wholesale from one day to the next, starting a strict diet. Make smaller changes and reach your goals slowly. Swap breakfast or your evening meal with a fruit and vegetable smoothie once in a while. Avoid drinking sugar-filled drinks and replace them with water with citrus fruit or berries. Dried fruit with no added sugar are a great alternative to chocolate and fruit sweets. But as I mentioned above, it is better not to rule anything out entirely and allow yourself to ‘sin’ once in a while. 

Some need the variety of using a gym, doing sport at home and outdoors. Some prefer sticking with one particular type of sport or a specific weekly plan. Everyone is different and every one should make their own sporting choices.


I, Isabella, am very excited at the prospect of working with you FITAPP users as a fitness trainer, giving you hints and tips to get all of us to reach our goals. 

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