Lifestyle Change: 3 easy steps to improving our wellness with Josi

Super foodie Josi Trotter, voted Best Healthy Eating Blogger in our Health & Fitness Influencer Awards, shares easy-to-follow tips to achieve a healthy lifestyle change.

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By now, we’ve all heard people say “It’s not a diet... it’s a lifestyle change”, or “make small changes”, but what does this mean? For a newbie, it can be really hard to know. The key to any change, especially fitness and health related, is consistency. We all know eating one salad does not equate to super model status, but there is so much conflicting advice it is difficult to know where to start. Even the smallest of changes can seem pretty big when you’ve been set in your ways for so long. So how can you make the highly coveted lifestyle change without feeling like you’re having to overhaul your entire life?

Here are a few easy tips to achieve real lifestyle change in three key wellness areas.

1. How to drink more water

We’re always being told to drink more water. This is so important for so many reasons - especially if you’re working out. Still, guzzling more than 2 litres a day can be a struggle. Whether we feel that the taste is bland or we just forget about it, it does take time and effort to get into the habit of drinking enough! Here’s what you could do:

• Buy a large water bottle so you take the hassle out of refilling it constantly so you will always have water even if you’re on the go. I have a 1 litre bottle which you can easily get online. (Have you tried the Motion Shaker yet?)
• If you like your H2O nice and chilled you can also get an insulated bottle. It'll keep your water at the right temperature for much longer making it way more appetising.
• Struggle with the bland taste? Get yourself one of the fruit infuser bottles. Fill the middle with berries, lemon, ginger, herbs or any other goodies you have at home to infuse it with flavour. It'll make a really delicious drink! This also avoids adding all the sugars that come when you buy a premade flavoured water.

2. How to prepare your meals in advance

My mum recently started a new fitness plan. She was really put off at the thought of having to prepare meals for the week. I quote: “No-one has time to do that!”… well that’s where she’s wrong! With a few simple tweaks you can end up with lunches for the week without losing any of your valuable time:

• Buy a larger size pack of meat or additional tins of beans and pulses to make a meal at the weekend which you can easily make into batches. Things like Chilli are easy to double up as it’s all cooked in one pan. Your Sunday night dinner can quickly become Sunday night dinner AND lunch for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
• Make use of your freezer. Chop up fruits, veggies, herbs and portion them into sandwich bags ready to make smoothies and juices for breakfast. This is a small time investment but you can make weeks’ worth of smoothie mixes at a time in a variety of flavours. So many smoothie makers nowadays have lids for the blender cup so that you save on washing up too!

3. How to get a bit more active

Another major factor in this lifestyle change is getting moving. So many people now work in offices for long hours. We sit down all day with very little in the way of exercise or fresh air! Working in an office myself, I can only sympathise. There are days where I literally only walk 2000 steps. This not only has a physical effect but it can impact you mentally as well. I always feel so much better when I’ve been able to get active so here are a couple things you can do:

• HIIT workouts are amazing when you have very little time. They’re not for the faint hearted and you are likely to feel battered and bruised afterwards. BUT they are so speedy which makes them easy to factor into your busy life. Even 15 minutes with a skipping rope jumping for intervals of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off will give you a great workout.
• There are also many ways to get a bit more creative with the number of steps you’re getting in each day. Try to incorporate any small tweaks you can think of. Parking your car at the back of the car park at work every day might seem negligible but those steps soon add up, and the extra fresh air will give you a boost. You could even try talking your colleagues into going for quick walks in your lunch break. Any little things you can do to up the number of steps you do each day will make all the difference!

Lifestyle change? Take it easy on yourself.

I hope these easy-to-follow steps add a little clarity to the term ‘lifestyle change’ and what it means for someone trying to create new healthy habits. Especially at first, any small changes make a huge difference - so don’t feel like you need a total overhaul in order to see and feel changes!

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