Your food and lifestyle have a huge impact on your digestive health. What you eat and the lifestyle you live plays an important role in determining your digestive health. This is because foods and lifestyle habits have a direct impact on your digestion.
Digestive health is determined by the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract. It transports food from your mouth to stomach, breaks it down into nutrients and stored energy. If the gastrointestinal tract does not function properly, it will affect your digestive health. Your body will not be able to absorb the essential nutrients.
Besides, improper functioning of gastrointestinal tract can also lead to low immunity, emotional stress and even chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes.
It is therefore important to take care of your digestive health because when the digestive system functions efficiently it improves your overall health and sense of well-being.
What affects your digestive health?
- Food you eat
- Emotional stress
- OTC drugs
How to determine your digestive health?
Some of the signs of improper digestive health include:
- Bloating
- Gas
- Diarrhea
- Nausea
- Stomach ache
How to maintain a healthy gut?
Not sure how to take care of your digestive health? Incorporate the tips given below to keep your gut feeling healthy:
Eat a fibre-rich diet
Eating foods which are high in fibre can improve your digestive health. Fibre helps to move the food through your digestive tract, which in turns avoid you getting constipated.
A fibre-rich diet also helps in preventing or treating various digestive conditions like diverticulosis, haemorrhoids, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) while helping you maintain a healthy weight.
Consume soluble and insoluble fibre both
Both soluble and insoluble fibre helps the digestive system in different ways. Therefore it is important to consume both types of fibre.
Roughage is an insoluble fibre which cannot be digested by the body. This roughage, therefore, helps clean the gut. Whereas soluble fibre dissolves in water to form a gel-like material. It can help lower blood cholesterol and glucose levels.
Avoid foods that are high in fat
Fatty foods slow down the digestive process, making the gut prone to constipation. While it is important to consume some healthy fat, you can try pairing fatty foods with high-fibre foods. It will help things move along more smoothly.
Take help of probiotics and prebiotics
Probiotics are the healthy bacteria and yeasts which are naturally present in the digestive tract. They combat the effects of a poor diet, stress and help keep the body healthy. They also enhance the absorption of nutrients in the body, help break down lactose, strengthen your immune system and treat IBS.
Similarly, prebiotics help in maintaining good digestive health. They help probiotics in supporting healthy bacteria in the gut.
Eat on schedule
Apart from what you eat, your time to eat also plays an equally important role in keeping your digestive system in top shape. Try to have your meals at the same time every day. And also, do not keep yourself starved for a long time.
Stay hydrated
Drink lots of water sing water is good for your digestive health. Fibre pulls water into the colon thereby helping to keep your gut clean.
Exercise regularly
Exercise helps in keeping the movement of food smooth throughout your digestive system while also treating constipation. Staying active also helps in maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy body means the healthy digestive system and vice-versa.
Manage stress
Stress or anxiety is as harmful to your body as any other junk. These can cause your digestive system to go into overdrive. Indulge yourself in some stress-reducing activities which you can enjoy and practise regularly.
Article at a Glance:
Setting a transformation challenge is a great way to overcome your inactive lifestyle or breathe new life into your fitness regime.
They motivate you to set commitment for yourself by giving a definitive purpose. They help you focus your efforts on your achievable goal.
Body Transformation Challenge is a fantastic way to develop healthy habits which is the most basic requirement for building a stronger and healthier body.
What is Body Transformation Challenge?
Body Transformation Challenge is a commitment you do to yourself to achieve a certain fitness or health goal by tweaking your lifestyle over a set period. You need to set small-term and long-term goals and keep measuring your progress to ensure you are on the right track throughout your journey.
Let’s take an example:
Your goal is to lose excess weight and become fitter.
This is how your Body Transformation Challenge will look like:
I intend to shed 5 kg of my body fat over the next 30 days to achieve the target weight of 50 kg.
For this, I will take in 1200 calories per day and do 3 interval training workouts per week.
To measure my progress, I will record my body fat percentage and body weight every three days.
Tips for Transformation Challenge
When setting up your challenge, there are some key things that you need to consider.
Keep it Achievable
A too difficult challenge can leave you frustrated and you may feel like giving up. Similarly, too easy will not be a real challenge at all.
Here is what 8 Fitness Tips’ experts recommend to help you set realistic goals for weight loss and muscle building challenge.
- Weight loss goal of 0.5 – 1 kg of fat per week
- Muscle building goal of 0.5 lbs muscle per week
Make it Measurable
Transformation Challenges remove uncertainty and keep you focused. Therefore these challenges are so effective. Avoid unclear challenges and keep tracking your progress to stay motivated.
Here are some metrics suggested that you can keep a record of:
- Body Weight
- Body Fat Percentage
- Lean Body Mass
- Body Measurements such as chest, waist, thigh etc.
These metrics are easily measurable and excellent progress indicators. For better motivation, you can combine these metrics with progress pictures for comprehensive and insightful records.
Give Yourself Some Time
The “time” factor is determined by the challenge that you give to yourself. Aim for a longer duration to measure effective progress and shorter duration to stay motivated without getting bored.
As per our expert recommendation, 30 days is a good length of time to see results for most challenges.
Make a planner
Plan your activities on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and don’t leave anything to chance. Create a fitness planner that marks your workouts and records other milestones. Set reminders to record these milestones so that you don’t miss your track.
Review your progress
Set-up regular review points where you look at progress and reflect on any changes in your body. We recommend you to review every 5 days for a better reflection of your progress. This will ensure that you don’t find any surprises at the end of your challenge.
This also helps in finding out what is working for you and what’s not! And you can tweak your plan and steer your activity during the challenge.
Stay Social with your Challenge
Your Body Transformation Challenge should not be your solo mission.
8 Fitness Tips’ Body Transformation experts can help you with setting up your goal, track your progress and win your challenge!
If you are convinced that body transformation challenges are powerful drivers for change. We will make it easy to set up, help to keep you focused and accountable and achieve it stipulated time.
Why not try one over the next 30 days and let help you to get on!
Article at a Glance:
- Benefits of Virtual Workout Sessions
- Flexibility for Time and Place
- Provides a wide variety of formats
- Professional At-home Guidance
- The Fun of Working Out Together
- Connect with Yourself
- Adds to your Confidence
With so much turbulence happening everywhere, everyone’s life has flipped upside down over the past few weeks. People are gradually adopting the “new normal” routine. And in this, the healthy-going lifestyle of many people has taken a set back. Working up a sweat to stay fit while stuck at home can be difficult — but, it is not impossible.
Since regular physical activity helps not only with fitness but it also boosts immunity and builds a healthy mental being. A little home workout or Yoga seems to be the best bet right now for holding some sanity while cooped up.
Besides, working out at home for a few minutes not only keeps you fit, but it gives you that much-needed break from the monotony of staying indoors in closed spaces.
And it is way easy to start!!!
All you need is a yoga mat and a stable Wi-Fi connection and you are all set to go from anywhere. It is as good as having a trainer with you at the comfort of your home.
Benefits of Virtual Workout Sessions
Here are a few reasons why working out while you are home should be a priority.
Flexibility for Time and Place
Virtual exercising sessions gives you the flexibility to join in the session from the comfort of yours. The fitness freaks can exercise at anytime time of the day and as per their convenience.
Exercising or working out in the gym does not give you this much flexibility of time.
Provides a wide variety of formats
From high energy exercises like aerobics to the gentle core strengthening exercises like yoga – there is something for everyone.
Viewers get the flexibility to choose the format that suits them perfectly and work their health out with a specialized instructor.
Professional At-home Guidance
In virtual workout sessions, you can get the most qualified instructors conducting the sessions in the most appropriate way to time exercise and follow the right flow. You get detailed instructions on the exercises so that you get the most out of the workout while sitting comfortably at your home.
The Fun of Working Out Together
Even though your gang is not physically around you sweating its fitness out, but you can enjoy the fun of working out together even with your long-distance buddies. By virtually working out with others, you will experience the advantages of real-time workout sessions.
You get a sense of accountability, increased endorphins and eternal motivation. Isn’t it super fun!!!
Connect with Yourself
With stressful situations hovering from all over, workout sessions can be a bit of relief. Workout sessions allow you to disconnect your mind from all the drama happening around and be more mindful. These virtual exercise classes will help you connect with others and also with your inner self.
It lets you reset your mind, body, and soul for better.
Adds to your Confidence
Virtual Exercise classes are an excellent option for those who do not get excited about the idea of exercising in large groups. Alternately, virtual workout sessions also give you confidence if you are a newcomer to the fitness regime. These classes are an excellent way of building confidence in a more private environment, at a suitable pace.
To make it all a little more interesting, play some energetic music and start an effective workout session within the confines of your home.
If you are looking for an effective virtual workout or exercise session, 8 Fitness Tips’ Virtual Morning Session are your best bets. Our live streaming sessions are always fresh and new, and being around with other people with similar levels of enthusiasm provides vital group energy and socialisation.
You will not think of these as exercise — so we like to call them ‘social fitness session’, not workouts!