Embrace a healthy lifestyle: OneUp fitness is your path to wellness

A balanced lifestyle is not only beneficial for physical health, but also plays a role in emotional and mental well-being and performance. At OneUp Fitness we understand the importance of this balance in conjunction with your regular strength training workouts, and in this article we’d like to offer some advice on how to enhance the benefits of your workouts in order to help you reach your fitness and health goals. We’ll also explore what a healthy lifestyle is and learn how to incorporate some healthy practices into your everyday routine.

Why a healthy lifestyle is important

A healthy lifestyle has a profound impact on your quality of life. These are the main benefits of a healthy lifestyle:

• Improvement in Physical Health: Exercise and nutrition can help you maintain a healthy body weight and reduce your risk for chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. They also improve fitness.
• Improved Mental Health: An improved lifestyle can help to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression; enhance mood and cognitive function.
• Increased energy levels: Good nutrition practices and regular exercise boost your energy levels and make you more alert and productive.
• Improved Sleep Quality: Good sleep habits are conducive to physical and mental well-being.

A healthy lifestyle has been shown to lead to longer and healthier lives.

The Key Aspects of a Healthier Lifestyle

Consider focusing your attention on these attributes to lead a healthier lifestyle:

Exercise

Weekly resistance exercise, or strength training, is essential for optimal health and fitness. We offer customized fitness programs at OneUp Fitness that are tailored to meet your specific needs. This ensures you will get the best out of your workouts. Exercise helps:

• Strengthen muscles and bones
• Improve cardiovascular health
• Boost immune system function
• Enhance flexibility and balance

Actionable Tip: We recommend at least one and ideally two challenging strength training workouts every 7 days. There are also benefits to adding in regulate moderate activity throughout the week such as walking at a brisk pace or engaging in sports or other activities that raise your heart rate.

Proper Diet

Balanced diets fuel your body, and support all of its functions. Include a wide variety of food to get essential nutrients. The key components are:

• Adequate Protein intake: Essential for healthy muscles / bone repair and maintenance
• Healthy Fats: Important for brain / neurological function and energy
• Adequate hydration: Water intake should be adequate based on body weight and activity levels and daily recommended intake ranges somewhere between 1500 - 2500 ml per day
• Proper Caloric intake: Eating the appropriate amount of calories for your body weight and energy expenditure. This is also related to your goals and will change depending on whether you are trying to decrease fat mass or increase muscle mass or maintain your current body weight.

Pro tip: schedule a body composition scan to find out your baseline body fat % and muscle tissue so you can track your changes over time. We offer InBody scans here at OneUp Fitness by appointment.

Stress Management

Chronic stress increases the ‘stress hormone’, cortisol and studies have shown that chronically elevated levels of Cortisol can be damaging to our immune system leaving us vulnerable to physical disease. Some stress management techniques include:

• Exercise helps reduce stress hormones.
• Yoga and Meditation can help calm your mind.
• Healthy sleep practices are arguably the most important dial to turn to keep stress at bay.

Actionable tip: Use deep breathing exercises and mindfulness meditation for stress management. You could also use an app like “Balance” which offers guided meditation practices, breathing techniques and calming soundtracks that are great for stress, sleep and productivity.

Positive Mindset

Positive outlook can improve your emotional and mental well-being. It is important to cultivate gratitude, set realistic goals and surround yourself with supportive individuals.

Actionable tip: Keep a gratitude journal where you write down things you’re thankful for each day. This practice can shift your focus to the positive aspects of your life.

What OneUp can do for you?

OneUp Fitness is committed to helping you achieve your goals in health and fitness. Our educated, expert personal trainers will create a personalized plan that suits your goals and lifestyle. We can help you in the following ways:

• Customized Fitness Programs: Our expert trainers will develop your workout routines that are tailored to your needs and preferences.
• One on One Coaching: Our team will set up your equipment, coach you through every exercise you ever perform while giving you immediate feedback and track your progress over time to ensure you are progressing towards your goals.
• Advice from experts on how to make simple changes to your nutrition and lifestyle that don’t require you to ‘diet’ or remove the things that you enjoy.
• Give you your time back: Our clients have seen incredible results in only two, 30 minute workouts per week. That’s because our approach hinges around quality over quantity. Research has shown that this is an incredibly effective and the most efficient way to exercise, especially for a busy professional.

You're well on the way to living a healthy lifestyle by incorporating even some of these habits into your everyday routine. We recommend you start with strength training and go from there. Small changes over time can have a big impact and we are excited at the potential to support and guide you through your journey.

Start your path to a happier, healthier life by joining us at OneUp Fitness. Call us to find out more about how we can help you achieve your goals or click here to request a FREE, one hour fitness consultation with one of our expert personal trainers.