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Adjust Your Fitness Routine for the Oncoming Cold
Exercising is a very important part of staying healthy. Working out regularly is usually easier during the summer considering the nice, warm weather and having more hours of daylight. Changing your daily routine often isn’t ideal, and sometimes causes people to stray from a healthy diet. With the following nutritional and workout tips you should have no problem doing your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Join a Local Gym
Over the summer, and even the beginning of the fall, you may not have needed a gym since working out outside was the preferred method. But, with the cold months approaching signing up at a local gym can often be the most logical option to continue on your path to maximal fitness. Escaping the freezing weather and getting your daily workout in is better than turning into an icicle, or not working out at all- many gyms are very affordable as well.
Buy or Rent Exercise DVDs
If going to the gym isn’t your thing and you’d rather enjoy the privacy of your own home, using fitness videos can be of great benefit. Set up somewhere with sufficient open space such, pick a program suitable to your fitness level and goals, pull up the video, and get to work. This cuts out travel time and having to power through the cold morning winds to get to the gym.
Eat More Fresh, Local Produce
Before the weather gets too cold, utilize your local farmer’s market to the best of your ability. Eating healthy produce rather than the foods you buy from your supermarket tends to be better for you, and avoids unhealthy preservatives. Once the sun goes down and it’s frigid outside, comfort foods are an easy way to “fall off” the healthy food wagon. But, having all your newly bought fruits and vegetables in the house can inspire you to eat them instead. Further, they could even encourage you to discover some healthy new recipes!
Keep Your Sleep Schedule Steady
When the sun goes down, it’s easy to get tired earlier and not want to do anything physically. As we edge closer to winter, when the sun sets much earlier, we can become very sluggish and unproductive, and can also be prone to suffer from seasonal depression due to less hours of sunlight exposure. To help counter these effects, try as best you can to stay on a consistent sleep schedule. Not getting enough sleep, or getting too much sleep can negatively impact your physical, mental, and emotional health.
Purchase Warmer Workout Clothes
Going for a run or walk outside may seem intimidating due to the decrease in temperature, but getting the proper clothes and equipment should make the prospect of occasional outside exercise much less daunting. Grab yourself a new pair of gloves, and a warm yet thin workout jacket and you’re all set! Maybe throw a new pair of running shoes into the mix as well. Intermittent outside activity during the cold season, as long as it’s not exceedingly frigid, can help keep you more active and awake, add variety to your workout routine, and also do wonders for your mental health.
Try to Relax
Emotional stress leads to over-eating, and contributes to increased inflammation and stress hormone activation- all of which are detrimental to your physical and mental well-being. While regular exercise and healthy eating are important ways to counter these adverse effects of the winter “blahs”, getting some alone time to practice mindfulness and concentrate on your breathing and your surroundings is a very effective way of lowering your heart rate and blood pressure, and relieving stress.
Sometimes, the cold weather and winter months affect you in more ways than you initially appreciate and plan for. When your mood, sleep, workout routine, and eating habits are altered, you can often undo healthy progress you made in the warmer months, and even precipitate an adverse health event. With the above strategies you should be able to proactively maintain a healthy lifestyle. As part of this Preventive strategy, be sure to set up an appointment first with a doctor capable of identifying cardiovascular disease and disease risk 10-20 years before they actually become symptomatic, such as Cardiologist Dr. Lee Marcus, and Preventive Cardiology of New York.
