Читать книгу Clean Eating Alice Eat Well Every Day: Nutritious, healthy recipes for life on the go - Alice Liveing - Страница 11

I see our bodies as a pyramid. I know first hand that we cannot solely focus on changing one aspect of our bodies without stepping back and working on the bigger picture in order to establish the most lasting change.

Move

I am not a hardline personal trainer who is going to insist that you work out for hours on end or go to the gym every day. That isn’t always healthy, nor is it sustainable – and most of all, it isn’t a realistic approach to exercise. And I am a realist; I know how busy life can be and that fitting in exercise is something that can often fall to the bottom of the list when other things take over. My advice here would be not to panic about having to take exercise, but just get started by gradually increasing your daily activity levels – perhaps by walking to work a few days a week, going for a brisk walk in your lunch break or generally being more active throughout your day. All of this will mean you increase your energy expenditure without even stepping into a gym.

To make exercise a part of your routine, you need to find an activity that you enjoy. I began weight training and I found instantly that it was something I felt engaged in and so I was motivated to get stronger, but I know this doesn’t happen for everyone. Whether it's Zumba, aerobics, swimming or cycling, if you want to achieve long-term change it is important to find a way of getting moving that you love, then incorporate that into your week in a realistic timetable. I hope with my first book, The Body Bible, you will also see how simple it can be to do a good workout in the comfort of your own home.

If you are really struggling with motivation, try purchasing a step counter so that you can see how active you are throughout the day; seeing the numbers in front of you might inspire you to keep moving and increase your exercise level. Partnering up with a workout buddy is also an excellent way of motivating both parties to work out. And finally, setting goals – both short- and long-term – can help you to keep on track with your exercise regime.

Mind

It is my honest belief that no lasting changes can take place until you are in a positive place in which you can then establish your new lifestyle. It sounds a little clichéd, but I feel that, before physical changes can be seen, the biggest change needs to occur in the mind. You want to establish a good relationship with your body whereby you feel as though you are making changes not because you hate the shape you are in, but because you want to become the healthiest, happiest version of yourself possible. We are constantly encouraged to compare ourselves to others and to idolise celebrity bodies in glossy magazines and on social media, and this allows us to become disheartened with the package we are given, driving us to believe that we need to make drastic changes in order to achieve our desired physique. I hope that reading this book and following my Instagram encourages you to divert your mind to focusing on the fact that healthy looks different on every body, there is no one desired physique and your goal should ultimately be health and happiness: neither one should be sacrificed to achieve the other. I want this book to inspire a love of food and creating recipes that you enjoy cooking. A big motivator for me when I started on this path was to savour the excitement I felt watching the food I cooked take shape into a delicious-looking plate I knew was doing me good.

Food

This was the biggest change for me, and the third element of our pyramid. Food is such an integral part of us, and the thing we often find the most difficult to change for a lasting period of time. We develop habits from a young age that then carry us through our lives and are often quite difficult to undo, and I know first hand that by creating healthy habits that you incorporate into your day-to-day routine, eating well will slowly become second nature to you, resulting in a lasting and sustainable change. What must be understood here is that nutrition isn’t ‘one size fits all’. It’s incredibly complex and requires you to make decisions based on your own body and not because it worked for X or Y, so therefore it must work for you. That is why I haven’t created a ‘plan’ or ‘six weeks to fab’ book where I promise you rock-hard abs in a given period of time. That is not me. What I can deliver on is a book full of nutritionally dense recipes that you can incorporate into your own healthy balanced life. Your choices. Your goals. Your body. I’m just here to kick-start your motivation and inspiration, and be your pocket personal trainer and cheerleader along the way.