Tag Archives: resolutions

Dec23

Small Things You Can Do To Be Healthier In The New Year

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It’s not long until the New Year now. That usually means thinking about all of the things that we’d like to change and improve. The problem is, is that if we always choose massive goals, then they can become overwhelming to complete. Instead, it’s a much better idea to choose small achievable things like the ones below:

Eat More Fruit and Veggies: Most people’s diets take a bit of a bashing over Christmas. There is so much delicious party food and nibbles around that it can take a will of iron to resist. That is often countered with the start of a strict diet come the first of January. Unfortunately, strict diets are hard to keep up and can cause you to fall back into your old ways defeated and sad by January 14th.

Instead of setting yourself up for failure in this way, focus on the types of foods that you are eating. Increasing fibrous food and fruits and vegetables in our diets provide more nutrients and are more filling. This, then squeezes out the opportunity to eat too much junk food. If you are struggling to get more fruit and veggies into your diet, then you might want to consider getting a kitchen gadget or two like a spiralizer or a juicer. If you are unsure about the type of juicer to get, you can check out the ones selected by Juicer Cruiser to help you make your decision.

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 SO. ORANGE.

Exercise Daily: Exercising daily might not sound like a small activity, but we are not talking about running marathons or spending hours at the gym here. Instead, we are talking 5-10 minutes sessions. The idea here is to get used to building movement into your daily routine until it becomes normal.

It can be any sort of movement you like – you can dance, jog, or lift weights. You can clean the house or run around the garden with the kids. It’s not really what you are doing that matters, it’s that you’re doing it daily. This will help you lay the foundation for a healthy habit to be built into your everyday life.

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Practice Being Mindful: Mindfulness is a very popular concept at the moment. It is about being aware of where you are internally at any given moment. It is about being present in your own body and mind and observing what is going on in there. This might sound like an activity that entails hours and hours of silent meditation. But it can be broken down into small periods throughout the day, repeatedly.

In fact, it suits intermittent periods of practice throughout the day best. Our minds have a tendency to wander off into the past or future, and you have to practice bringing you focus back to the here and now. That means the aim is to not have a streak of being mindful, but to rapidly bring your presence back to now again and again. To do this, you can set a timer on your watch, or you can get smartphone and watch apps that remind you throughout the day.

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 Mind your mindfulness!

Dec21

How To Enter Into The New Year With A Fresh Perspective

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How To Enter Into The New Year With A Fresh Perspective

Each time a brand new year comes around, we can often go into a panic about how the next twelve months are going to be. The idea of resolutions start to be thrown around and we instantly think about all of the crazy things we need to do to better ourselves. But, a lot of the time, they can be far too crazy, indeed. After the parties wind down, it is likely that you’ll think about the future. But, instead of thinking up tough resolutions that you just can’t stick to, why not realistically decide what you want to do with the rest of the year?

Decide What You Want: The first job on the list will be to decide what you want to get out of the next twelve months. This can be entirely personal to you but it has to be achievable. You don’t want to set yourself insane targets of looking like a Victoria’s Secret model and becoming the boss of your own fashion empire, all within a year. Instead, you need to prioritize what really matters to you.

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Focus On You: When you’ve figured it out, it’s time to turn your time and attention on to yourself. You might be used to focusing on others, but that’s all about to change. From now on, you’re going to work on you. Start by setting some personal goals and coming up with an action plan with steps on how to tick each goal off. It might sound complicated, but a concrete plan will help you to see it through.

Rest More: It might sound like you’re going to be working harder in the New Year with your personal goals and action plan, but that’s not the overall idea. Instead, you want to walk into the new year with an open mind and a better perspective on life. And that includes taking a time out. You need to be able to rest more, relax, and recover. Nobody can take on the world if they’re tired and overworked.

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Head In The Right Direction: Then, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re heading in the right direction. It will depend entirely on what goals you’ve set, but you should be able to measure how well you’re doing, no matter what they are. If it’s relationship related, maybe you need to socialize more or work on being a kinder person? If it’s career focuses, then maybe you need to get in touch with Recruitment Services and look into getting a new job? Whatever the action is, make sure you take it.

Enjoy More: And finally, what would gaining a fresher perspective on life be without a little fun? As well as driven and focused, you also need to be happy. Try and make sure that you leave enough time for fun in your life. Whatever your hobby may be, make sure that you stick to it. Make plans with friends, see family, and never feel bad for enjoying your life. You only get the one, so make it count.

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Oct31

Get The Body You’ve Always Wanted in 2017

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Get The Body You’ve Always Wanted in 2017

With 2017 just around the corner, it’s almost time for the annual outpouring of “new year, new me” Facebook posts. Most of these resolutions will be ancient history for most within a week but if you are serious about making some real changes in your health, keep on reading!

Get The Body You’ve Always Wanted in 2017:

As the year comes to an end, it’s a great chance to start reflecting and evaluating how things are going in our lives. Are you on track to achieving your goals? Are you happy? While any day is a good day to make a positive change, the promise of a new year can really give you the motivation you need.

So if things have gone a little off track, you’ve fallen into a rut, or things aren’t progressing the way you want- plan to start fresh in January. Weight and fitness are common resolutions and for good reason; there are few things more important than health. After an indulgent festive season, there’s no better time than to buckle down and do what you need to do. Here are some tips to scoring the body you’ve always wanted in 2017.

Start by Detoxing: After too much alcohol, sugar, saturated fat, and all round unhealthy indulgence over Christmas, starting off your healthy lifestyle with a detox is an excellent way to go. A few days of just fruits and vegetables can help to cleanse and replenish your system. It can ‘reset’ your appetite if you’ve been eating too much and generally provide your body with a massive boost of nutrients. Stock up on fresh produce (organic if possible) and consume it as juices, smoothies, or just as it is. After a few days, gradually introduce different foods back into your diet such as healthy whole grains, lean meat, and low-fat dairy.

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YUM!

Adopt a Healthy, Well Balanced Eating Plan: Once you have finished your detox, start eating a regular healthy diet. We all know what we should and shouldn’t be eating- avoid fried, fatty, and processed foods and incorporate plenty of fresh and natural produce. Include a broad range of fruits and vegetables in your diet and drink plenty of water. Try kicking your caffeine habit or at least reduce it, using healthy foods to boost your energy levels instead.

Take Some Supplements: Supplements shouldn’t be used as a substitute for a healthy diet but they’re a great way to boost it. Even with a healthy diet it can be difficult to get every vitamin and mineral you need every day so good multivitamin can make sure you’re all covered. A probiotic yogurt drink can improve gut health by increasing the levels of ‘good bacteria.’

Used properly, a supplement such as Garcinia Cambogia can help to boost your weight loss if you are overweight. This is completely safe and natural and made from a tropical fruit. It can help to reduce appetite, block your body’s ability to make fat, and even keep in check your cholesterol and blood sugar levels, too. There are lots of herbal supplements available in health food shops these days which help to target and improve different areas of the body. So it could be worth going in and having a look. For example, milk thistle is good for the liver, which is useful if you have been drinking a lot of alcohol over Christmas.

Get Serious About Exercise: The key to really improving your fitness is to find an exercise that you enjoy doing. If you know that you really hate sweating it out at the gym, your motivation is only going to last for so long. Before long you’ll be looking for reasons to skip it and might eventually stop going altogether. If you find something you enjoy and look forward to, you’re so much more likely to keep it up.

It could be a sport, an exercise class, or even working out from home. You could go swimming, to yoga, or to something more unusual like a circus skills exercise group. Try some new things and go on the search for something you love doing. Finding a reliable training partner is also beneficial. If you’re a bit self-conscious joining groups alone, you will have someone there for support. You can also motivate each other when things start getting a little harder later down the line.

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Dec30

Lil Red’s New Years Resolutions

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Lil Red’s New Years Resolutions

Hello everyone and happy Tuesday! It’s almost the start of 2015, therefore I feel obligated to jump on the bandwagon and make a New Year’s resolution post. I’m not going to try to do things in the new year that I know I’m not going to follow through with, such as working out or not eating at Taco Bell every week. These resolutions are going to be more mental, so I can work on myself for a change. Before I get started, here’s some New Years tune-age for your enjoyment! 😉

^^^^^ I had to, guys. I just HAD TO!

ANYWHO, here’s my New Years resolutions for 2015:

Stop being so hard on myself: I’ve always been my toughest critic and this needs to stop. I’ve been especially hard on myself since I quit my stupid job, but really I should be proud of myself. I was getting sexually harassed there to no end and I finally said enough is enough…that shouldn’t be something that I’m shaming myself with. I’ve been so worried about money since I quit a little less than two weeks ago, but I need to keep reminding myself of how lucky I am. I’m still living at home and I’m pretty sure that my parents don’t plan on throwing me out on the street….yet 😉 I need to embrace everything about myself, including some of the things that I’m not so thrilled with. Once you acknowledge your shortcomings, you can change them.

Stop comparing myself to other people: This kind of goes hand in hand with beating myself up constantly in my mind. For example, when I was at a get together about a week ago with some people who I absolutely despised from high school, I felt like such a failure. I felt like a loser for not having a job or for not being at a classic university setting for college. Instead of comparing my situation to the other people in the room, I should have just confidently told them all that I was rocking life when asked what I’ve been up to instead of muttering that I’m at a community college. (Which there is NOTHING wrong with! TRI-C REPRESENT!!!!!!!) When I start getting into the comparing and contrasting game in my head, I need to start giving myself a friendly reminder of where I was at a few years ago. A few years ago I was suicidal, depressed, a bulimic, and a cutter….I was in absolutely no state to attend college. Instead of comparing myself to people who probably didn’t have issues similar to mine, I need to be grateful that I’m finally in a place to start thinking about my future instead of dreading it. I need to give myself more credit, because I’ve come a very long way.

Strive for no instances of self harm: In 2014 I can count the amount of times I’ve cut or made myself throw up on five fingers. For this new year I want to strive for ZERO instances of self harm. One of my problems is that I genuinely hate asking for help, but when it comes to my personal well being I need to start doing so. When I feel the urge to cut or the god awful rhyme “urge to purge” I need to call up the friends who have been telling me to call them when I feel that way for years. I need to start writing in my journal again, which always calmed me down when I got the sensation of needing to self harm before. I also think it would be a wise decision to possibly find a therapist that I could start going to a few times a month so when I need a good venting session, I have a safe and confidential environment to do so.

Be my own best friend: Would a best friend beat yourself up verbally enough to make you want to cry? Would a best friend constantly compare you to people who are living their life differently than yours? Would a best friend be okay with you cutting yourself or making yourself vomit? The answer is a big fat NO to all of these questions. Therefore, I need to become BFF’s with Sarah. I need to treat myself like my best friends treat me, with respect, kindness, and a whole lot of love. And if being my own BFF means taking myself out for a beautiful dining experience at the local Taco Bell, THEN SO BE IT……oh wait….I already do that. -____- Maybe treating myself to a manicure every so often is a better idea! 😉

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So there you have it, Lil Red’s New Years resolutions! I hope all of you have an amazing time celebrating on New Year’s Eve and the best of luck sticking to your resolutions in 2015. It’s been a pleasure writing on lifewithlilred these past few months in 2014 and I am so thrilled to come back even stronger in the new year! What are your New Years resolutions? What was one resolution you made that you didn’t stick to? Leave me a comment and let’s chat! Much love -Sarah

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