5 Daily Habits that are sabotaging your wedding body goals | from White Dress Workout

Hello gorgeous brides and welcome to this month’s health and fitness feature!

This month, I want to let you into a few little secrets when it comes to reaching your wedding body goals and I’m sure as you’ve read the title of this post, you’re wondering if you might be doing anything that might be hindering your success when it comes to achieving your dream wedding bod so let’s get straight to it!

Underestimating your daily calorie intake

When a client hires me as their trainer, I take them through a detailed consultation to gain more insight into their past, and current, nutrition intake and exercise regime. One question that usually leaves people with a confused look on their face is ‘Do you know how many calories you consume on average per day?’

For the majority of people, they tell me they don’t have a clue and this isn’t uncommon for a lot of people out there on a health and fitness journey, but it is one of the most important aspects of reaching your goals effectively.

How do you know if you’re eating too much or too little food to reach your goal if you’re not tracking your food intake? It’s amazing how many people underestimate the calorie content of food but it can literally make or break your wedding body goal success!

Use an App like ‘My Fitness Pal’ to measure and track your food for a few days to see how many calories you’re consuming. If you want to get into the nitty gritty, also take a peek at the macronutrient amounts (protein, carbs and fats) as this will give a good indicator of the balance of your food intake.

Did you know that 1lb = 3500kcal? Eating just 500 kcal over your maintenance calories per day – for example a slice of cake and an extra coffee, adds up to, yes, you guessed it, 3500 kcals over the course of a week which, in turn can add to pounds over time. Fear not though, it works the same way in the reverse. If you focus on eating in a calorie deficit – i.e less calories than your current maintenance calories needed to maintain the same weight, then you will start to see the scale drop over time. This can also be accelerated by being more active which brings me onto my next topic…

Not being active enough

Some people think (my younger, desk job bound self included) that even by having a pretty sedentary lifestyle but going to the gym 3 times a week for an hour, the pounds would start to fall off after a couple of weeks. After all, you are spending an hour in the gym 3 days a week sweating your butt off right? It may seem like a lot when you’re not used to being this active but if you think about it – 3 hours a week of activity out of 84 hours in the week? Not really a big drop in the big active ocean is it. Granted, many of you have super busy jobs and it’s difficult to find the time to visit the gym 5 days a week but there are ways that you can increase your caloric expenditure without having to do this and it comes in the form of NEAT which I’ve mentioned in my previous blog posts. NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis and can be increased in many ways every day.

Let’s start with step count. For those of you with a smart watch or fitness tracker, check how many steps you’re currently averaging a day. Set a goal of a realistic number of steps you can try to increase your current steps by and make sure you try your best to stick to it. I’m sure you’ve heard of the infamous 10 thousand steps a day and although this is a number which has been used as a benchmark for people to hit, in my experience with clients who have desk jobs, they’re usually lucky to hit half of that number.

There are so many other ways you can increase your NEAT such as:

Walking to the shops instead of driving if they are within a reasonable distance.
Taking the dog out for a walk or extend the distance. No dog? Schedule a walk and talk with your partner. This is a great way to be active and spend quality time with your hubby to be.
Taking the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator.
Giving your home a spruce up by vacuuming, cleaning and tidying
Standing up and walking about for a couple of minutes if you’ve been seated for an hour
Park further away from the mall entrance, not as close as you can like most people do.

Sleepless nights

Sleep is such an important factor for overall health and also in reaching your bride body but it is something that is often overlooked. It is recommended that adults should sleep, on average, between 7 and 9 hours per night. Do you? If not, this could be having an impact on the rate of fat loss along with your mental clarity and overall health and wellbeing.

A good nights sleep is vital for the body and brain to perform vital processes as it helps the body to rest, proccess and recover from the days events. Heart rate and blood pressure decreases while we sleep and our body has chance to renew and repair cells, muscle tissue and the brain has chance to put the days events into order and build memories and perform other important functions.

Without an adequate amount of sleep, your body can’t perform the jobs it needs to in order to keep you on top form. Too little sleep can have an effect on hormones like cortisol (the stress hormone) which can be spiked and, in turn, can lead to the body conserving energy to fuel your waking hours. You may also feel more hungry and irritable during the day when you didn’t get enough sleep the night before and may turn to food as a comfort. The longer you stay up at night, the more time you have to potentially want to snack too – we’ve all been there with the midnight munchies.

Research has found that when dieters cut back on sleep over a 14 day period, the amount of weight they lost from fat dropped by 55% even though their calorie intake stayed equal. They felt hungrier and less satisfied after meals and their energy was zapped.

To ensure you get a great nights sleep, make sure your room is nice and dark, free from distractions such as the television and your phone and your bedroom is at the right temperature. It has been suggested that the ideal temperature of your bedroom should be between 15-21 degrees Celsius.

Water

When it comes to shifting the pounds, staying well-hydrated, especially with water, is key. Without water, the body cannot properly metabolize stored fat or carbohydrates so by guzzling down the h20, you’re increasing your body’s chance to efficiently and effectively blitz that unwanted fat. So how much should we aim to drink per day? Well, I’m sure you’re all familiar with the 8 glasses a day notion but how much is 8 glasses in real life? The eight glasses we’re told to drink are 8oz glasses which totals around 2 litres or half a gallon which does include other beverages such as tea and coffees etc. In reality, your individual need really depends on your current weight and activity level. If you live in a hot country like we do here in Dubai, if you’re on the larger side of life or if you’re a very active individual then this amount may differ. “In general, you should try to drink between half an ounce and an ounce of water for each pound you weigh, every day.”

Stress

Daily stresses of work and family life, along with planning such a big and special occasion like your wedding day can have a bigger negative impact on the rate of fat loss than we might think and even though sometimes we may not feel super stressed, our bodies think differently.

Going back to the stress hormone cortisol – this little chap likes to wreak havoc on our weight loss journey if he’s brought to life through stressful situations by signaling your body to temporarily suppress functions that are nonessential during a crisis. This includes your digestive, immune, and reproductive system responses.

To combat stress, particularly when it comes to work, family and wedding planning, it’s a good idea to plan ahead and prioritize tasks. Write down everything that needs to be done and try to tackle each thing at a time so that it doesn’t become overwhelming. Exercise is also a great way to de-stress as the feel-good hormones are released and it gives you chance to cut-off from the world for that hour and think about nothing but the task in hand. I always find walking outdoors helps me to get things in order in my head too and I use the time constructively to plan what I need to do for the day or week ahead.

Hopefully my top 5 daily habits above will help you to take charge of your health and fitness journey and that by implementing them, you will start to see some great results. If it all seems a bit overwhelming, focus on working on one a week.

For personal training, online coaching or any questions you may have related to exercise or nutrition, feel free to reach out to me via email @Thefoundation.pts@gmail.com or instagram at @jen_dubai_pt.