How To Enjoy Life While Being In Great Shape
Most people associate fitness with positive connotations. Not only is fitness the alleged solution for obesity and stress, it gives you energy, boosts brain power, and wards off disease. Additionally, eating fresh, local, healthy foods is the age old secret to living a healthier, longer life. But, for some people, striving to live a healthy lifestyle can have some negative consequences if it’s not approached wisely.
Eating healthy and working out regularly is important, but the moment fitness takes over your life, you’ve already lost.
Here are some signs that you’ve sacrificed your life to be healthy
Exercising and eating healthy is meant to complement your life, not take it over. Structuring your entire life around workouts and eating at exact times is a fast way to set yourself up to crash. If you find yourself taking the perfectionist approach to fitness, you’ve sacrificed your life to be healthy. What we mean by the ‘perfectionist approach’ is feeling angry, upset, or even like a failure if you skipped a workout or ate something that isn’t up to your standards. Taking the “all-or-nothing” approach to health and fitness leads you to neglecting other, important, aspects in your life.
If you find yourself compensating the extra food you ate with more exercise, weighing yourself every hour, or getting angry if you missed a workout, you might be taking fitness too far. Working out and eating right are tools that help us live happier, more fulfilling lives. They are meant to make the things you enjoy doing even more enjoyable.
With that, let's look at how to enjoy life while being in the best shape.
Sure, everyone wants to look good, but with striving for the “perfect body”, we sometimes fail to understand the true meaning of life and what is really important. Everyone has a different meaning of life, but I’m sure we can agree on one thing: life is meant to be enjoyed. After all, if you aren’t enjoying your life, what’s the point? If all you think about is what you eat and how it will affect your life, it leaves little room for you to enjoy the things that truly make you happy.
So, to enjoy life while still being in great shape, let go of the guilt for trying new foods or skipping your workout. There is so much more to life than an impeccable fitness and diet plan. When your life and fitness plans are working together in harmony, you will enjoy everything you do so much more.
When it comes to exercising and eating healthy, it is important to do things you actually enjoy. If you have running but force yourself to hit the treadmill every morning for your cardio workout, you will become bored, unhappy, and burned out. If you love dancing or playing tennis, do that for your cardio! Give yourself options that you enjoy. If you enjoy what you are doing, you are more likely to stay successful. The same goes for your diet -- give yourself several healthy options. If you are giving yourself choices, you are less likely to feel stuck and uninspired.
Overall, life is meant to be enjoyed. And yes, fitness and a healthy diet are important, but they shouldn’t be the most important thing. If you are looking for more inspiration on how to enjoy life while being in the best shape, read this interview with ReaShape founder, Chris Rea. You can also keep up with him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and shop his portable speed bag platform, EZspeedbag, here.