An ounce of prevention is worth several kilos of cure. Rather than waiting until after the usual festive season challenges, we’re helping you get onto the front foot — clad in your favourite walking/fitness shoe, of course !
Most of us know the basics: exercise, supportive nutrition and moderation. Yet still, it’s a struggle for many to maintain optimal weight, be it a sporadic issue or a perennial one. Today, let’s take a closer look and see what we can do to help make this easier for you.
Exercise
Know yourself and find something that works for you. There are countless forms of exercise out there and while some have more fat-burning power, finding something you love and sticking to it is more valuable than going all out with a new fad and losing interest because it simply doesn’t appeal.
If you’re the social type, find an exercise buddy or join a class (there are plenty of free ones out there, so it need not be costly). If you’d rather catch up on scarce “me time” while staying fit, something you can do on your own is going to be more suited to you.
Do you thrive on adventure? Or do you prefer something you feel safe doing. Honour your own nature by choosing fitness activities that suit you. This doesn’t mean avoiding challenges but find what you love first, then look at ways to increase the intensity of your workout from there. Bored easily? Find a bunch of things you love and put them on rotation.
And let’s not underestimate the value of incidental exercise. Seize such opportunities throughout your day. Take the stairs instead of the lift. Walk the escalator instead of being a passenger. Park further away from your destination — turn the Christmas car-park insanity from lemons to lemonade and avoid the frayed tempers.
Supportive nutrition
How often have we heard something is a guaranteed fat magnet only to duly shun it for ages — then be told it’s actually great for weight loss! So I’m staying out of dietary waters aside from giving you a pep talk on the obvious things:
- Processed food is a great source of sneaky sugar in all its guises, and often even more so when the label touts the product as low fat. Hmm, maybe a good idea to avoid it
- Oodles of fresh cleanly-grown veges and adequate fresh fruit with your meals will bring not just the obvious benefits, but it’s also thought to lower your risk of heart disease and stroke. A 14 year study of almost 110,000 men and women found that “compared with those in the lowest category of fruit and vegetable intake (less than 1.5 servings a day), those who averaged 8 or more servings a day were 30 percent less likely to have had a heart attack or stroke”
- Alcohol? It seems this is a controversial one, too. Click here for interesting food for thought on whether alcohol really does help stack on weight
Common sense eating aside, when it comes to enhancing your body’s fat-burning abilities and supporting healthy blood sugar levels, there are some foods that can help.
Green tea’s catechins are potent antioxidants thought to help during high metabolic activity by reducing free radicals and oxidative stress while promoting normal fat cell function.
Green (unroasted) coffee beans standardised to contain chlorogenic acids (CGA) have been tested trialled for reducing body weight, BMI and body fat percentage, and can slow fat and glucose absorption. These chlorogenic acids can also support healthy blood sugar levels.
Cinnamon has traditionally been used for this, too, along with being a general digestive aid. So much so that it’s a key ingredient in Young Living Slique Tea™, which combines its power with cacao, ground nutmeg, natural vanilla essential oil and jade oolong tea leaves for an antioxidant-rich beverage. Along with drinking Slique Tea™, you can boost your cinnamon even further by rubbing a drop or two of authentic cinnamon essential oil onto the soles of your feet regularly.
This will also connect you up with The Good Oil Team for our personal support and coaching. We'd love to help you on your journey to vibrant well-being the natural way!
Any questions? Please get in touch via our Contact page.
Moderation
Sure, this one sounds easy but therein lies one of the biggest battles. If we all found it easy to be moderate, the weight loss industry would go belly up.
Here’s where essential oils come into play in a huge way.
Moderation boils down to a couple of key factors: willpower and appetite.
The beauty of essential oils is their well-known ability to influence our feelings. It’s easy to reach for them for obvious things, like relaxation or energising. But how about fortifying your resolve? Giving you Man of Steel determination to stick to what your head knows instead of giving in to the devil on your shoulder telling you, “Go on, you deserve it?”
Young Living’s essential oil blends like Motivation™, Magnify Your Purpose™ and Transformation™ are sweet-smelling ways to strengthen your willpower. (And quick and easy to use !)
As for curbing appetite, cinnamon is also highly regarded for this. (It seems Slique Tea™ does double duty, and I’m guessing it’s no mistake). And Young Living makes a specialised essential oil blend called Slique™ Essence to support healthy weight management goals in general, from food cravings to bolstering blood sugar balance to helping you feel like you’ve had enough to eat. It also includes some of our favourite ‘feel good’ citrus oils, notorious for uplifting, calming and chasing away the doldrums. If you sometimes feel frustrated or crabby when watching what you eat, you’ll appreciate that. Inhale it often.
If you have any natural solutions you swear by for looking after your weight, we’d love to hear about it.
