Health and Fitness Tips for Women

Whether your goal is to lose weight, feel better or look better taking care of yourself and looking after your health is important. Sometimes, though it can be hard to figure out the best way to go about taking care of your health. Here are a few simple tips that you may find helpful in your healthy living and fitness journey. 

Exercise:

• Exercise every day. 

It can be hard to get to the gym or get outside every day. In these moments it is important to remember that even a few minutes every day is better than nothing. Even a 10-15 minute session can create benefits for you. So if it gets hard to get your workout in, just set a timer for 10 minutes and do something. This brings us to another note, doing something is better than doing nothing. Find something that interests you and you'll be more likely to do it. This will help you be more consistent in the long run. If you want to make changes you need to be consistent. Changes won't happen if you don't stick to your goals. 

•  Use Resistance Training.

Resistance training is most commonly referred to as "strength" training. Resistance training is any exercise done with weights of any kind, resistance bands, or anything you can pick up and lift. It can even be using your body-weight as resistance. This kind of training supports and builds the muscles. Muscles burn more energy than fat, so you naturally burn more calories with more muscle tissue. Women often find it difficult to build and maintain good muscle mass, so it is an important part of her workout plan. Another benefit of resistance training is that it helps bone density and helps reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Even light resistance training can benefit the bones. 

•  Be Sure to Add Cardio.

Variety is the spice of life. This is also true in a workout schedule. You don't want to do only one type of exercise. Cardio is also an important form of exercise to be sure to add to help support your cardiovascular system. Cardio is anything that gets your heart rate up. This can be running, jogging, biking, swimming, walking or anything like that. These are also fairly simple exercises and most of them require little guidance.

•  Don't Forget Mobility

Stiffness is not fun. But, it can happen to anyone. A great way to avoid stiffness is to work in a little bit of mobility and stretching. This can be things like arm rotations, trunk twists, deep squats. It can also be things like the yoga-like cobra and downward dog stretches and the pike and pancake stretches. These kinds of exercises will help maintain your range of motion and flexibility. 

  Eat Right

•  Cut down on sugars

Having too many simple carbohydrates in your diet is not good for anyone. There is some evidence that saturated fat might lead to cardiovascular disease, however, there may also be evidence that too much sugar may be an even bigger cardiovascular disease risk factor. Look at the sugar content of your favorite foods and snacks and you may be surprised at how much is in them. If you drink multiple sodas a day a simple way to cut down on sugar could be to cut out just one soda a day.

•  Fruits and Veggies

Fruits and veggies are full of vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. They are an important part of a daily balanced diet. There is one word of warning. Fruits are higher in sugars and calories than most vegetables, so you may want to lean more on the vegetable side most of the time.

•  Fiber and Whole Grains

Fiber is good for colon health. It gives your colon something to work on and push through your body. If you don't have enough fiber your colon will not work quite as well at moving things through. Fiber also cleans your colon by latching on to waste and pulling it through to be excreted. Making sure that most of your grains are whole is a good way to get more fiber. Whole grains also have the outer sheath of the grain, providing more fiber.    

•  Healthy Fats

Not all fats are bad. Fats in things like avocados as well as olive and coconut oils can be good for you. The main thing is to make sure you aren't getting too much fat. This is because fat is easily stored as body fat because the body does not have to process it near as much to do so as it does for carbohydrates and proteins. Women do need a higher amount of body fat than men, so don't be too afraid of fats.