June 10, 2022
A healthy flat belly doesn’t come from just exercising or dieting or following the latest trends – it is the result of a carefully-cultivated lifestyle that is optimized for your individual body and its needs.
We are all different, and we all experience different physical outcomes from different ways of life, including our diets, movement patterns, habits, and daily activities. Therefore, the key to achieving the body you want while still taking care of your overall health is to begin to understand the holistic lifestyle changes that will best benefit your body.
Chew, taste & enjoy your food
The first step to digestion is thinking. The largest nerve in your body connects from your brain to your stomach. So it makes sense that how we think about our eating habits will affect our relationship to food and its effect on us.
This is not an insular concept, either – you can see various rituals across the world that are related to thinking about food. Some people have a moment of prayer, or a saying, but they all stem from the same idea: a mental or spiritual connection of some kind that people do right before eating. So don’t just run and eat when meal time comes around – instead, take a moment, get yourself ready, breathe, and then begin to eat.
Stay well hydrated
Water helps with so many things – your skin, your hair, your energy, and it gives your skin the hydration it needs to stay young. So hydrate well, and hydrate often – your skin and body will thank you for it, both in the long- and short-term.
An important note here is that if you’re thirsty, it means you’re dehydrated. The human body won’t feel thirst if it doesn’t need water, so it’s incredibly important to listen to this signal.
Ideally, we want to stay hydrated enough that we don’t get this signal at all, but it can be difficult to remember to drink a lot of water.
One easy way to remember to drink water at consistent intervals throughout the day is to have one cup in the morning, one an hour before a meal, and one with each meal.
Take movement breaks each hour
Exercise is a form of stress – in fact, any type of movement is a form of stress that your body ensures. Now, I don’t mean endure in a bad way; our body needs stress. It actually responds to it – this is what helps us build muscle and improve our cardiac capacity. It stands to reason, then, that just as with strength training, if you want to make any kind of change to your body then you need to put it under stress.
This being said, there is a balance to be struck here. If you subject your body to too much stress, it will age you, breaking your joints down and even leading to potential injury. As much as we need stress, it can make us older, too. Therefore, we need to find the perfect amount of movement that gives us energy, doesn’t deplete us, and at the same time is challenging enough to make a change in our bodies. And that amount is different for everyone, depending both on their individual bodies and the changes they are trying to make.
Beginning to stick to a more consistent exercise routine requires a give-and-take, an exploration during which you find out what works best for your body. Sometimes it’s hard, and sometimes you overdo it, but the key each day is to listen to what your body is telling you and adjust accordingly.
Get a good night’s sleep
You’ve probably heard all of the basics of getting a good night’s sleep, but they’re worth noting: are your sheets clean? Is your bed made nicely? Is your room dark and at a good temperature? When focusing on improved sleep, the environment matters more than you may think, and in different ways than you may think. For example, when you sleep is just as important as where or how long you sleep for. If you’ve been struggling to get yourself on a good sleep schedule, try going to bed around 10:30/11pm and wake up before sunrise. This helps you rest and restore based on your body’s natural cycle.
One important aspect of your body’s natural rhythms is that your cortisol levels rise at a certain time each day. If you miss this time to go to sleep, it has a large impact on your overall sleep. There’s also an energetic shift in your environment when you’re sleeping – your body is restoring all the different organ systems. So if you’re awake when that is supposed to happen, you’re going to be out of balance until it can be remedied another night.
How you hold yourself and move your body matters.
Our bodies will inevitably take the shape they spend the most time in.
Watch how you carry yourself throughout the day. Everytime you bend down, every time you pick something up, pay attention to how you perform that action. Is your core engaged? Are you lifting with your knees or your back? How is your posture once you stand again?
Think about where your body may be compensating for, or even enabling weakness. For example, some people may have very strong legs, which means their core doesn’t have to work as hard on a daily basis. Over time, their core actually weakens from disuse.
The key here is that we have to think about how energy flows through our bodies. Rather than harnessing energy from the movement of your limbs, concentrate on branching your energy outward from your core. To do this, each time you move, try to think of moving from your center. This may be difficult, especially if you have a hard time mentally connecting to your core. To help improve this connection, try doing just five minutes of belly breathing every night. This will not only bring your stress levels down, but it will also teach you how to connect to–and therefore, move from–your core.
If you’re not moving from your center, you’re eventually going to create a habitual, dysfunctional movement pattern. And the longer you allow yourself to follow this habit, the deeper it becomes, making it harder to correct later.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into your body’s unique health and fitness needs, or if you’re not sure how to determine what those needs are, feel free to book a free, 30-minute wellness mapping session with us here: https://calendly.com/tyzenfit/discovery-call-tysan-clone
We specialize in finding the perfect fitness balance for your body.
