Every once in a while, I calculate how all of that is going. I decided to do that for the month of May. Examining my eating habits was rather easy. I asked myself how often I eat healthy versus unhealthy. Most days of may, I had a very nutritious smoothie for breakfast. My smoothie includes the following: plain whole milk yogurt, goat milk, spinach, carrots, blueberries, eggs, banana, turmeric, and now nearly daily--chia seeds. Often I include, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, or some other veggies. That's a very healthy smoothie and I have it for breakfast nearly every day. I would say I skip it once a week and on those days I have something else healthy, like oatmeal with blueberries, yogurt, turmeric, and real maple syrup for sweetening.
I take a few supplements as well, mostly to help with blood pressure control. L-Argenine, CoQ10, some super Resveratrol combination thing, and a multi-vitamin. I drink a cup of green tea at least five days per week.
For in between meals, I have Clif Bars, which are packed with nutrition. Sometimes I break down and get some street tacos or other fun stuff for meals. Sometimes even cheesecake or pie. I don't believe that anyone should forego everything tasty and wonderful.
So I think I'm doing far better than the average person on eating well. I am meeting my goals there.
As far as exercise goes, I do a variety of things to try and maintain a healthy body weight and good fitness levels. I make it to the gym, usually around four times per week. I take a walk on Sundays. I go hiking when I can.
My gym routine includes exercises for cardiovascular fitness, that is, aerobic exercise, and also strength training. My main aerobic exercise right now is stair climbing, but sometimes I am too exhausted and finish up with treadmill walking. Every so often, I start on the stair climbing machine and within 1-2 minutes realize that it's just not my day and head over to the treadmill to complete the allotted time. I generally exercise from 30 to 45 minutes on the stairclimber/treadmill, depending on the day. Each piece of equipment has the capability to estimate how many calories are burned depending upon a person's age and body weight.
When I finish the aerobics I will go and do about 15-20 minutes of strength-training on a particular part of the body--chest and shoulders, legs, arms and back, abdominal/core. I rotate through one of these strength areas each time I go to the gym. Except when I don't. Sometimes it's all I can do to get through the aerobic workout. It is exhausting. I find though, that if I go more than a week without tackling a particular body area, the next time I do it, I am hurting much worse the next day. It never used to be like that in my youth. Sometimes I skip the strength-training part because I have worked late and I need to get home, either to make dinner, or to pick it up along the way.
That being said, I manage to kill it at the gym
Here's what I found out about my exercise results in May.
On the stair climber when I averaged both the days when I go to the gym and my days off, I do 67 floors per day, or 1139 steps. When I add in the calories spent on the stair climbing, the days of walking both on the treadmill and outside, and hiking (the one 6.8 mile hike I went on in May consumed 2750 calories alone) I burned off 13,722 calories during the month, an average of 443 per day, not counting the calories burned in the strength training.
I think I'm doing about as well as I can. And if I can do it, you can too. It takes very little time to eat better. You can improve your fitness by walking a little each day, but if you have access to an apparatus, like a stair climber, you can burn more calories in a shorter period of time. You can even do some great workouts in under five minutes with no equipment. Check this out: I've tried it and it's killer!
So, no excuses! You'll feel better by doing something about your health. Go for it!
