The Health Continuum

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We hope you are enjoying the Evolve Plan and you’re feeling the benefits of the challenging, varied and fun(!) workouts.  Whether you are doing this programme to supplement other areas of your fitness regime, or as a standalone schedule to keep yourself fit, we have endeavoured to target the whole body with our sessions, balancing strength and cardio with a mixture of workout formats to keep the body guessing.  Cross-training challenges different areas of the body and helps towards injury prevention.

With just a couple of weeks of the plan remaining, we wanted to remind you of our philosophy that “fitness is a journey, not a destination”.  We are all at different stages of our journey, so whether you have stormed through the sessions over the past few weeks or had a few bumps in the road, it’s all part of our personal journey. 

The thing about fitness is that it is a continuum; an ongoing process.  When we keep trying, we keep improving.  We hope this programme has encouraged you to make positive changes to both your nutritional choices and the exercise you do in your week.  Both of which, we feel, are non-negotiable to live a healthy, happier life.

As a company, our Mission is to empower people to achieve their fitness potential, because we truly believe that good health & fitness enhances quality of life.  We want to make health & fitness more achievable in a world where the necessity to move is diminishing and the power of movement is easy to overlook.  We thought we’d recap on some of the aspects of good health that we feel are important.

Regular exercise

On a physical level, we need to move regularly to maintain our mobility and strength.  The old adage ‘move it or lose it’ rings true.  The human body is incredible and if we are lucky to have good health, we’re probably all guilty of taking it for granted, but our body is our most important possession and we have to take care of it every day.  On a functional level, exercise energises us and improves our attention.  So whilst taking a little time out of our day for exercise might sound like a luxury, it’s a necessity and can make us more productive in our day-to-day tasks.  On a psychological level, the endorphins released during exercise help improve our mood: win, win, win. 

Ultimately, find an activity you love and works with your schedule, then exercise becomes a treat as opposed to a chore.

Eat well

Within this programme we have highlighted what macronutrients we need to be eating every day (ideally at every mealtime) and what proportions should make up each meal.  All too often people focus on what foods have to be cut out in order to achieve a healthy diet, thereby changing your diet feels like a punishment.  Instead, we like to think of it as what foods we can add to our diet to make them more flavoursome, more satisfying, more varied and help us feel more energised.  By focussing on the right protein, vegetable and good fats intake, we start to shape much healthier meals which make us function optimally whilst keeping our weight under control.  Paying more attention to what we eat is a key factor in improving our health, and making choices towards more whole, minimally processed foods, which often have their nutrients intact.

Healthy eating shouldn’t be thought of as a life sentence.  We all love to treat ourselves with a few glasses of wine or a take-away now and again.  We like to live by the 90/10 rule: eat healthily 90% of the time and cut yourself some slack the other 10%. 

Drink enough water

It is important to take on enough water every day.  The NHS recommended intake is 2 litres (8 glasses) of water every day. Drinking the right amount of water improves mood, relieves fatigue, helps digestion and promotes healthy skin. Hunger is often mistaken for thirst so if we ensure we are drinking enough it is likely to reduce the calories that we take in too.

Get enough sleep

Sleep and recovery is hugely important to good health.  We should be aiming for 7-9 hours’ sleep each night, with 7 being the minimum required to keep health in check, according to The National Sleep Foundation.  Adequate sleep aids muscle growth, tissue repair, protein synthesis, and growth hormone release. In short, sleep is a necessity for our bodies to function at their best.

You have been making all of these changes over the past few weeks during our plan.  Keep it up.  Are there any additional positive changes you could make today? Good health is about feeling better, and we hope you do.