Developing a Healthy Morning Routine

I have been try a new morning routine lately, namely having a morning routine. I've always been a morning person, but I have been staying up later and later at night, over the years. When you get to bed at midnight or 1am, it's tough to be a morning person, because you're just not getting enough sleep! I had been waking up later and later in the morning, and thus having less and less time to prepare before heading out to work; that feels stressful!! In an effort to get back to being that chipper morning person, I've been cultivating a few healthy AM habits:

Greet the Dawn
For the month of February, I am waking up when the sun does! Through Social Workout, I am doing the #DawnPatrol challenge. Here's the scoop,  "Wake up, sleepy head! For the entire month of February, join us in rising with the sun. It's the shortest month of the year, so that's just 28 days of virtue. Few things are better than being awake at dawn, rising with nature, and being in synch with the stars..What you do with that extra time is entirely up to you". I've been pretty good so far- I've only missed one morning. Since I usually head to work between 8:30-9:00am, waking up at 7:30ish is giving me a nice hour to make breakfast, stretch, relax, and wake with a bit more intention. It's also allowed me to work on my other morning habits...

Drink some Tea

Tea is my morning beverage of choice; I'm not a coffee person. Hubs and I have been capping off each evening for the last several months with a pot of tea, and since my DawnPatrol challenge, I've been making a small pot of tea in the morning as well. There's a soothingness about the ritual of tea making, and a hot bevvie before I go to work gives me that extra little push out the door that I need.

"Me time"

Having an extra hour when I wake up has been almost a luxury! Maybe I'll read a bit of a new book lent from a friend; maybe I'll curl up with a kitty; maybe I'll plug away on a new blog entry; maybe I'll just sit and enjoy my tea. This little cute one on the right is Athena. :) She keeps my chair warm!

Breakfast at Home

Ever since I began my first Whole30 (and now that I've finished), I've been making most of my meals at home. Lunch is pretty easy to grab and bring to work, dinner is usually a salad or a crockpot dish that has been cooking away, but breakfast is sometimes a challenge for me to eat at home. When I wake up early, I have an extra 15-20 minutes to hard-boil some eggs, add fruit and granola to some greek yogurt, or cook up bacon & eggs! If I'm REALLY prepared (this is not usual), I'll use my morning time to make a breakfast casserole or some fritatta muffins for the rest of the week!

Share: What are your favorite healthy morning habits? 

Part 4 of Design your Perfect Fitness Routine- Create Action Steps, & Get Started!

We've come so far together in this series, Design your Perfect Fitness Routine! We covered components of a successful workout plan in Part 1 of the series, figuring out your starting stats in Part 2, and SMART Goal Setting in Part 3! Hopefully by now you've established 2-4 specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound goals for yourself. You still with me? :) 

Our next steps will be to take the goals we've set for ourselves, and assign a game plan for achieving them- this will be your Fitness Routine! 

For weight loss goals, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• 3500 calories = 1 lb!
• A Healthy Weight Loss Expectation is 1-2 lbs per Week

If you want to loose 1 pound, you need to get rid of 3500 calories; through exercise, through eating less, or a combination of both. As the figure to the right illustrate, decide how you're going to reduce or get rid of those 3500 calories!

Healthy methods only, please- no starvation or crazed exercise is needed!
An example of this in practice:
My BMR: 1,520
320 Calorie reduction x 7 days/week = 2400/week
183 Calories burned x 7 days/week through exercise = 1100/week

Based on this calculation, I was able to design my Fitness Routine. This is where you get to fit your favorite fitness activities into your routine: you can even make a list! A nice way to truly plan this based on how many calories you want to burn is to look up each activity.

Know Calories Burned by Activity
I personally use MyFitnessPal- once you create a profile it will give you a guideline on how much you'll burn. This list is based off of my estimated calories burned, for my height, age and weight (a 5' 0" female, 27 years old, 122 lbs):

Cardio
Spinning 60 mins =390 calories
Running (tread) 30 min s= 277 calories
Elliptical 30 mins = 249 calories
Zumba class 50 mins = 323 calories
Kickbox class 50 mins = 466 calories
Stationary bike 30 mins = 194 calories
Walking 45 mins = 127 calories
Stairmaster 30 mins = 249 calories

Strength Training
Free Weights 60 mins = 166 calories
Weight machines 30 mins = 83 calories
Calesthenics 30 mins = 221 calories
Total Body/Bootcamp class 50 mins = 369 calories


Make your Workout Schedule for the Week
Each week I look at this list (in my head), at the class schedule at my gym, and at my work schedule. Then I figure out when I can fit in a workout, how to get a good balance of cardio, strength training, and balancing/flexibility work for that week.

I want to say as a sidenote that I am not a crazed calorie counter. The reason I made that table on calories burned and used per day was to illustrate that weight loss is definitely a game of numbers.  I also want to be clear that these methods I'm outlined have been working REALLY well for me, but that doesn't mean a) they will be guaranteed fix for you and b) that there are not other ways to be healthy and get fit!

Hopefully this series has been a helpful illustration of how to assess your current fitness level, decide what your fitness priorities, choose your favorite fitness activities, and then create your Fitness Routine based on your fitness goals! Let me know if this works for you, and good luck!

Design your Perfect Fitness Routine- Part 1

If you're looking to get serious about fitness and weight loss/weight maintenance, a reliable Fitness Routine is essential. Think of it as your Road Map- this routine or plan will not only tell you your destination, but how to get there!

Map Analogy- For those that are as direction-challenged as I am, you know that without a road map, GPS, Google Maps, etc., it's easy to get lost. I've experienced the same lost feeling when trying to decipher the world of fitness information:

What's the right plan for me? 
What will work for my "body type"?  
Is there a magic workout combination for weight loss? 
What am I doing wrong?

Without a Fitness Routine, it's easy to get stuck exercise-hopping. What is exercise-hopping? It's what I define as trying one type of workout routine for several weeks, only to become discouraged by lack of results and to try another "plan", etc. etc. I did a lot of this for years without actually stepping back and looking at what was working and what was not working.

More recently, as I have stepped back to look at patterns and trends in my health and weight loss, I began to connect some dots. Here are some helpful steps to take when it comes to developing a workout routine that will be perfect for you:

Click here for Design your Perfect Fitness Routine- Part 2: Get your Starting Stats!