The Very Best Fitness Tips That Will Actually Work

Whatever your fitness goals you are and however you choose to pursue them I am here to help. I have collated my Fitness Tips Of The day from my Facebook page given you this awesome post of The Very Best Fitness Tips That Will Actually Work for you. Happy reading and remember you do not have to do them all at once.

1. Squirt some freshly squeezed lemon into a cold glass of water first thing in the morning. It's a great way to start the day off right by stimulating bile and removing toxins from your body. It also helps with fat loss by breaking down adipose tissue.
2. ​Avoid Comparing Yourself To Others - Instead, Compare yourself to you of last week. If you make every week better in some way than the preceding week, you're moving forward and making progress. Improve your fitness goals one day at a time.
3. Embrace Physical Challenges Outside Your Comfort Zone - Workouts produce the best results when they make a you feel little or even more than a little uncomfortable. Your body adapts to changes when you ask more of it than it's used to giving. To make improvements, you must push just outside your comfort zone. Adjust your mindset to seek greater challenges over time, and you'll see your body respond.
4. Rise, Then Shine - Work out in the morning, before the rest of the day gets in your way. Bonus: Nailing a morning workout boosts your confidence for the rest of day.
5. Get Off Your Arse At Work - Sedentary jobs are associated with greater risk for cardiovascular disease. Incorporate some kind of movement every 30 minutes or so at work. Find ways to break up long periods of sitting at your desk, even if it's just delivering a message to a coworker in person rather than by email. Keep moving!
6. Focus On Form First. If you're working out with weights, the single-most important factor early on is learning how to use proper form, not lifting as much weight as possible!
   Good form ensures the proper muscle groups are targeted and reduces the risk of an injury. Just watching how somebody else does a movement in the gym is like Russian roulette: sooner or later, you're going to pick up bad form. 
7. Do Your Monday Workout On Sunday - Besides not having to fight the after-work crowds or suffer from the Monday blues. We know that can be a real headache, you'll have the whole gym to yourself, guaranteed. Plus, you'll be one day ahead on your workout schedule.
8. Learn The Basic Compound Movements - Compound Movements are great to build strength and mass, which you should be focusing on during your training. For example, when bench pressing, your shoulder and elbow joints are involved, which recruits your chest, delts, and triceps. These types of exercises have been shown to be superior for developing muscle mass by increasing the muscle-building hormonal response. Here's a copy of my handy guide 
9. Find your best fitness friend. A workout buddy is hugely helpful for keeping motivated, but it's important to find someone who will inspire, not discourage.
10. Celebrate small wins! Choose a way to celebrate that doesn’t involve food. Buy a new workout outfit or pair of gym/running shoes. Go to a spa for the day Or share your success with friends.
11. Don’t DIET. Reverse the letters in the word and EDIT what you eat. Make it a lifestyle change toward healthier foods, not a deprivation plan
12. A GOOD relationship requires you to be loyal and committed. Same with the gym. Results require your commitment.
13. Track Triggers - When do you stress eat? Keep a log of what triggers you. Eventually you can predict when you might stress eat and you can avoid those triggers.Choose healthy foods to start with, look at having a snack bowl of strawberries or grapes ready to go in the fridge.
14. Be prepared for the morning frenzy. Freeze a few fruit smoothies to grab on my way out the door in the
    early mornings.
15. Same habits equal same results. If you always do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always
    got. If you aren’t getting results, change what you are doing.
16. Learn the difference between hungry and bored.
17. Follow the 80/20 rule. Eat healthy 80 percent of the time. Indulge occasionally, but make sure most of your choices are healthy.
18. Get an accountability partner for exercise and weight loss support. Exercise together, share tips and swap encouragement.
19. Schedule exercise like an appointment. Write down exactly when you are going to workout in your calendar or planner. You are the boss of you. And you wouldn’t cancel and appointment with the boss, would you?
20. Think two pounds at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself with your ideal goal weight, just think in two pound weight loss increments. When you are down two, feel proud and then think about the next two pound loss.
21. There’s no such thing as cheating. Don’t beat yourself up. What you decide to eat is a choice you make, it’s not cheating. Feeling guilty won’t help you to live a healthy lifestyle. Empower yourself to make a better choice next time. 
22. Put yourself first. If you neglect yourself for the sake of external problems, you will be creating more problems than you are solving. Do something—however small—for yourself each day. Even if you only devote 30 minutes to your health each day it's better than nothing.
23. Never go more than two days in a row without exercise. This applies to your holidays too!
24. Make sure you have goals. Give yourself a fresh start with new goals. If it helps you, start with the end in mind and think about how you want to feel this time next year? Now work your way backwards with a plan!
25. Don’t start and stop, just keep going. One great way to kill your confidence is to constantly start and stop your fitness regimen. It’s common for people to get psyched up and dive in to working out only to drop it altogether when the craziness of life intervenes. If you start overly ambitious, you are less likely to stick with your routine. If exercise is new to you, start off slow and aim for a few workouts per week and then increase as you go. If you don't know where to start, get help from a personal trainer. It's their job to help you feel confident about working out.
26. Buy a journal. Often people get down in the dumps because they are on autopilot, going through their days just doing what they have to do. Writing in a journal or a notebook allows you to connect … with you. It may surprise you what comes off the tip of your pen and your thinking on paper may lead to some new insights for you.
27. It doesn't have to be in the gym. Exercise is defined as an activity requiring physical effort. Get yourself outside for a walk and try and hit 10,000 steps in a day. Cycle, Climb, Surf, Ski, Jog, Run, Yoga, Pilates, Roller Skate, Here are a few suggestions and take a friend to share your experience with.
28. Set rules that work for you. Many people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off have set rules for themselves.
29. Change your limits and surprise yourself. You will feel exhilarated from the discovery that you can do more than you thought you could. So push yourself. When you surprise yourself, it will motivate you to keep going—or set your sights higher.
30. Ramp up the intensity on your workouts to rev up your metabolism and break through a plateau. Tabata workouts are an effective way to up the intensity while cutting time spent at the gym. Check out this amazing programme
31. Keep in mind that people have a tendency to underestimate the calories they consume and overestimate the calories they burn. Don’t think running a half marathon (or any form of exercise) means you can now eat whatever you want the rest of the day.
32. View each day as a clean slate. To practice self compassion means ditching beating yourself up at the slightest transgression.
33. Active and Busy are not synonymous. Just because you are busy doesn’t mean you are active. Be in constant motion. To maximise calorie burn, you can’t just hit a gym class or go for a jog and then retire on your butt the rest of the day. Be active all day.
34. Curb cravings. The best way to create a craving is to tell yourself you can’t have it! If you are dying for a chocolate chip cookie and you end up eating a whole bag of fat free cookies to squelch the craving–you are doubling your calories. Instead of eating what you should, try eating what you are hungry for in smaller portions. 
35. Zip it up. A more accurate gauge of how you are managing your weight than your scale is to put on and zip up those jeans in you've been been to scared to try. Remember your weight can vary depending on the time of the month, hormones, sodium intake and other factors. Your jeans could suddenly be baggy (score!); fit as they always have (terrific!); suddenly be snug (red flag!); or you can’t even get them on (alarm bell is ringing) time for behaviour change.
36. Consistency is the key in achieving your goals. If you think it's going to happen over night you are mistaken. It's takes hard work, commitment, honesty and consistency to get where you want to be. This goes for fitness goals and life goals. Be the best you can possibly be.
37. Follow these four simple rules to feel better, move better and be better at life.
    1.  Never go 3 days without exercise.
    2. Workout at least 3 days a week. 
    3. Never miss a Monday.
    4. Never give up!
38. Hippocrates once said - "let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."Maybe he was on to something. You wouldn't put £1 of fuel in your car and expect it to run for 100 miles. We are no different.
    Food is our fuel, put the right amount of good quality food into your body. Not only will feel and look better, you will have energy to do what ever you want and stay healthy. If you put crappy takeaway food, microwave meals and high sugar drinks into your body then all you are doing is the equivalent of putting £1 of fuel into your car.
39. Get enough sleep. How much you sleep and quite possibly the quality of your sleep may silently orchestrate a symphony of hormonal activity tied to your appetite. Bottom line: A lack of sleep can make you hungry. Aim for seven to eight hours each night. If you need help monitoring your sleep patterns try the app Sleep Cycle. Try downloading a few of these suggested apps to help you throughout the day.
40. Take before and after photos of yourself. Nothing can be more inspiring than to see how far you have come.
41. Eat more greens. Kale, Spinach, Broccoli. Greens are full of fibre, vitamins and minerals to protect you against disease. Not a fan? Throw greens into smoothies with tropical fruit like pineapple and you won’t even taste them. Struggling for smoothie ideas - have a look at here.
42. Use consistency to compound your results. It’s not what you do once in a while that counts, it’s what you do each day. Approach each day as an opportunity to be consistent with healthy habits. You will be amazed at your results.
43. Follow me on Twitter for motivation and inspiration, great articles, weekly tips, and free recipes! A “healthy” Twitter feed can lead to healthy lifestyle changes.
44. Plan ahead. Use Sundays as prep days to eat healthy all week. Get enough produce and staple needed for the week. Make double or triple of your meal, and freeze the extra for future use. Grill up extra chicken breasts and use them in salads and one-pot dishes for the rest of the week. Make a batch of brown rice and keep it in the fridge for easy lunches, burritos, and stir fry.
45. Have healthy snacks on-hand solution for the munchies. How about baby carrots and dip, apple slices with peanut butter or a handful almonds. Put your snacks in portioned bags and carry them with you to avoid grabbing junk food.
46. Ramp it up slowly. If you hate exercise or have a challenge with time - getting it on your schedule - make incremental changes each week. Aim for 20 minute workouts at first. Or start with walking. Build upon your healthy habits each week - adding more time to your workouts or working out more frequently. You can ramp up your healthy eating habits in the same way - one small improvement at a time. Still unsure have a look at these three simple steps in how to lose weight fast.
47. Don't ever compare your version of real life to someone else's controlled online Content.
48. Don’t try fads and gimmicks. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Losing weight takes time and hard work, but you can do it.
49. Ditch excuses. I have heard them all—from lack of time to lack of motivation and everything in between. Excuses won’t lead to results. Excuses leave you stuck. For every problem there’s a solution. If time is your challenge, put exercise on your schedule like any other appointment. If it’s motivation you lack, just start.
50. Don’t expect the weight to come off fast. Be realistic! You aren’t going to become a gym rat overnight if you hated going to the gym before. You also shouldn’t set a goal to drop 20 pounds in one month. Setting unrealistic goals sets people up for failure and then they give up. Start smaller. Resolve to go to the gym two times a week if you never used to go before. Remember: It takes time to gain weight; it takes time to lose it. 
51. Same habits equal same results. If you always do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always got. If you aren’t getting results, change what you are doing. Why not spice your routine up and get the results you deserve.
52. Realise exercise and your diet are married … forever.You can’t lose weight with one and not the other. There’s no getting around it. Consistently burn more than you consume and you will be on your way to weight loss.
53. Watch your portions. A portion is the amount of food you choose to eat. How many servings are in your portion? Often what we are eating isn’t a bad choice, but we are eating too much of it.
54. Interval train. Twice a week, instead of going at a steady pace for 30 minutes, go easy for 3 minutes and hard for 1 minute. Repeat this pattern 5-6 times and you have a new workout and a calorie burning machine!
55. Develop a positive attitude. Your thoughts determine how you feel and often determine what you can accomplish. As Napoleon Hill once said,“What your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve.” Believe in yourself and your ability to accomplish your goals.
56. Eat healthy, not perfect. It doesn’t mean you will never consume another bag of crisps or another chocolate brownie. It means you are aware that some food choices are more ideal than others. Don’t attach guilt to your choices, accept them. Enjoy that brownie while you are eating it and develop confidence that you will return right back to your healthy eating habits.
57. Empower yourself with exercise. You have probably heard it a zillion times, but exercise is one of the best ways to elevate your mood and alleviate stress. Plus, you often will feel so good after you finish a workout that you won’t want to ruin your calories burned with overindulging.
58. Track triggers. When do you stress eat? Keep a log of what triggers you. Eventually you can predict when you might stress eat and you can avoid those triggers. Choose healthy foods first by having them accessible—have a big bowl of veggies to fill you up, or snack on some strawberries ready to go in your fridge.
59. Go for a walk
60. Only rest *just* long enough to get your breath back between sets.
61. Up your protein intake 25%
62. Cut out liquid calories.
63. Unless said liquid calories are cappuccinos.
64. Or rum old fashioneds ;)
65. Eat AT LEAST 5 portions of veggies every day.
66. And 1 or 2 of fruit
67. Park your car further away than you would usually a couple of times per week.
68. Make a list before you go shopping.
69. Do some kind of cardio.
70. Hit muscles 2 or 3 times a week.
71. Squat
72. Deadlift
73. Bench press
74. And overhead press, chin-up, row and lunge.
75. Drink plenty water.
76. Figure out exactly WHY you want to lose fat.
77. Write down when you're going to train in your diary.
78. Stick to mostly compound moves.
79. Get to bed by 10pm.
80. Follow a training program, don't just wing it.
81. Don't beat yourself up if you slip - you're only human.​​​

Pro Tip: You could incorporate any of the above into a daily routine.  These tips are here to help you make small changes to your daily life. Please do not try and make any more than 2 changes a week otherwise you may get overwhelmed and put yourself 2 steps back. Like always if you have any questions regarding what the best way to implement this into your life please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Here's to a very healthy and happy New Year.

Much love,

Calumn - Personal Training In Edinburgh