There is a new normal upon us and it’s time to adjust accordingly. What’s that new normal? It’s learning how to effectively care for ourselves in the comfort of our own homes.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge advocate for exercising, getting healthy and fit in the comfort of your own home. I’m not necessarily against going to the gym, or using any other useful resources, I just have a much more positive experience coupled with longer lasting results with the at-home method.
That’s not to say that this will work positively for everyone, but if you’re someone who is not motivated by the gym this may be an option you may want to consider. Before we dive into the many different ways you can get fit while practicing wellness at home lets first discuss the importance of both.
What is meant by getting fit? For me this isn’t about having a slim waist, flat tummy, or weighing a specific weight. Getting fit is all about building your endurance, strengthening your muscles, tightening your core, and building your confidence, all while becoming disciplined in knowing how to effectively take care of yourself physically.
Practicing wellness is how we balance it all. Wellness is very much like self-care and they go hand in hand perfectly. With all the exercising you may or may not be doing, self-care is going to help your mind and body reset, as well as prepare you for all the work you will be putting in physically to achieve your goals.
This essentially means that you can find the energy and motivation to live your life the way you want with no limitations of any kind.
Before we move any further, I want to make an important note that being physically active and consistently practicing wellness is not about how you look on the outside. It’s all about how you feel on the inside, how you perceive yourself and appreciate your natural beauty, that you want to be reflected on the outside.
This is why it’s important to care for yourself through exercise and wellness. When you feel great, you’ll look great and vice versa. So here are a few ways you can accomplish both in the comfort of your own home.
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Getting Fit at Home
Understand water is your best friend
I preach this all the time because it’s so true. Water is so good for the body and our health so we need to be drinking plenty of it throughout the day. I personally drink anyway from half a gallon to a gallon of water a day and I’ve noticed so many positive changes in my health since doing so.
Drinking plenty of water can assist you with weight loss, toning of the body, clearing of the skin, joint pain/movement, sleeping at night, curbing your appetite, keeps you from getting sick and so much more.
Drinking water is not everyone’s first choice and let’s be honest, it can get boring from time to time. Trust me I get it and I’d be lying if I said I’ve never experienced this every so often. However, there are some tricks you can implement to help you remain disciplined with drinking plenty of water.
One of my favorite tricks is to spice my water up my daily water routine a little bit by getting creative with the way I drink water. Sometimes this means to switch the water bottle I’m using, to change my daily water goals, or even to add a little something extra to may water, like cucumbers.
Once you’ve been drinking it for a while it becomes a natural habit that you engage in daily. However, there will be moments when you just don’t want to drink any water, and that’s when you have to find new fun and creative ways to remain disciplined.
This is just one way to ensure that you are doing all that you can to be your healthiest while at home. I know water doesn’t seem like a big deal but trust me it’s a big deal! A little bit goes such a long way and your health will be thanking you tremendously for some of Earth’s greatest medicine.
Experiment with various exercises outside of the gym
This I can honestly say has been my greatest achievement with successfully becoming disciplined with exercising at home.
I’ve tried the gym plenty of times. My problem was that I just could never commit to going every day, every weekend, or even once a week. Also, at the time I was super insecure about exercising in front of other people.
Needless to say, a lot of money was going down the drain. Then one day I discovered Blogilates and my life forever changed.
I started to engage in more workouts at home and found that I could remain consistent in doing them because I never had to get somewhere in order to exercise. Instead I could literally crawl out of bed and immediately get in a killer workout while still wearing my pajamas.
What really helped me stick to working out consistently was investing the PIIT28 program. This program had various workout routines targeting all areas of the body to not only challenge me in my workouts, but to also keep it fun and interesting every time I exercised.
What I love the most about this program is the warm-up session that happens before every workout, and a cool-down session after every workout. Who would have thought that this was the key to getting through a workout?
Before the PITT28 program I would just dive right into a workout and try to push through it. The results? I was physically exhausted and my body took forever to recover. Once I started following along to the videos in the PIIT28 program, including the warm-up and cool-down sessions, I noticed an immediate change in the way I exercised.
I was never too exhausted to do anything else after my workout, my body healed over the course of a day or two rather than a whole week, I was more consistent with my workouts, and I actually looked forward to exercising.
The best part? I saved tons of money because I was no longer going to the gym.
This is something that you may be interested in you want to have a workout routine to follow along to, as well as know what a warm-up and cool-down session before and after a workout looks like. You can click right here to learn more about the PIIT28 program.
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Adopt better eating habits
This is something that I struggle with all the time. A lot of our health and the longevity of those positive results comes from the foods that we eat. Now, I’m a huge advocate for eating what you want, when you want, but doing it all in moderation.
However, I also understand that sometimes what we want isn’t always the best choice, and there will eventually come a time when we need to ask ourselves if it’s worth it.
What I love the most about having the opportunity to get fit and healthy at home is that I get to test drive all the good things I want to incorporate into my diet and routine before trying my hand at it in the real world.
This means I get to try many different healthy food recipes to see what’s going to stick and what’s not, before trying to eat out at a restaurant with my family, and challenging myself to make the healthier choice.
This also means that I get to challenge myself with replacing bad eating habits with positive ones before trying completely eliminating the bad ones from my diet altogether. For example, one of my biggest goals for the past year has been to eliminate fast food from my diet altogether.
I’ll admit, it didn’t happen overnight and I still eat fast food from time to time. But since making this goal I’ve been snacking on more fruits and vegetables, eating more homecooked meals, and drinking so much more water. Due to this I’m not tempted to eat fast food when I’m hungry.
Instead, I’m curbing my appetite long enough for me to cook a healthier meal for myself so that I’m feeding my body foods that are actually good for me.
Again, this doesn’t happen overnight but with enough discipline within your household it’s something that you can very quickly, and realistically, make a consistent part of your diet.
Practicing Wellness at Home
Schedule it daily
I’ve talked about this before and I’ll mention it again because I believe it’s that important. Wellness is a form of self-care, and self-care is how we care for our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. In order to be our best we need to feel our best.
This means we need to practice self-care daily. The easiest way to do so is to schedule a time for you to do so daily. My wellness routine is always changing due to boredom or shifts and changes in my weekly schedule.
However, I always try to practice wellness in the morning when I wake-up, and at night before going to bed. Doing so helps to reset my mind, center my soul, and give my body time to relax and heal.
Ways to practice wellness
There are so many ways that you can practice wellness. You can:
- Meditate
- Do yoga
- Stretch
- Journal
- Go for walk
- Repeat positive affirmations out loud
- Practice mindfulness
- Engage in a deep breathing technique
- Spend some time reading
- Treat yourself to an at home spa
- Participate in your favorite hobby and so much more
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Reward yourself through wellness practices
Remember wellness is how we care for ourselves. Going hard with your workouts and disciplining yourself to make better food choices means nothing if it’s not being balanced with a reward of some sort.
I like to reward myself for reaching a health-related goal by ensuring that however I choose to reward myself is going to benefit my hard work in some way.
For example, rewards that I have given myself over the past year has included:
- yoga mats for exercising on
- new workout clothes to exercise in
- investing in an online meal plan to help with my eating habits
These types of invest have helped me continue my health and wellness journey in some way shape or form. I take this approach because it motivates me even more to continue on the path that I’m on.
This may or may not be a practice that is realistic or effective for you and that’s ok. A big part of practicing wellness consistently is understanding what works for you and why it works, and filtering out everything that doesn’t.
Conclusion
As the world changes so does the way we’ve learned to live in it. Getting fit use to mean going to the gym a couple of times a week, following a strict diet plan, and engaging in a combination of cardio and strength training exercises.
While this may still be very true for most people, times are changing.
This means that getting fit is no longer just the above-mentioned things, but rather it’s so much more. It’s changing your eating habits in a realistic manner, finding workout routines that work best for you, and essentially shifting your current way of life to be more reflective of your desired lifestyle.
Going through a trial and error process of the lifestyle you want for yourself in the comfort of your own home takes away and pressure you may feel in doing so. You don’t have to worry about judgment, unnecessary comments, the constant comparing of yourself to others, or any other ridiculous bullshit that comes along with getting healthy.
Instead, you can invest your energy in the areas that really matter. The way you care for your body through fitness and wellness. That way you can be more focused and motivated to achieve the results that you desire.
I this because I’m able to have my wins and failures followed by some more wins, test my weaknesses against my desired strengths, and experiment with exercises that work best for me. All while loving myself on a deeper level through it all.
I’ve been living by this motto for a couple of years now and honestly, I’m the happiest and healthiest I have ever been. I get to work towards all my fitness goals while practicing wellness on my own time, in the comfort of my own home, with no limitations or potential roadblocks to stop me.
All this to say that if I can do it so can you. So how about we do it together!?!
Stay healthy love bugs and make wellness/self-care a priority!
-Xo
Kimora