What are health and fitness goals?
You wouldn’t embark on a new career without the expectation you’d have performance reviews along the way, so why should we treat our health and fitness progress any differently?
Like all goals we set in life, our goals relating to health and fitness are going to be a very personal thing. The most important thing to keep in mind is setting goals in the first place. This is where many of us will fail.
We embark on a new fitness routine, or healthy eating plan, with the vague idea that we want to improve. We want to become happier, healthier, more energetic versions of ourselves. But before we know it a couple of months has gone by and we’re not really sure what difference we’re seeing.
Sound like you?
The key is to be clear about what we want to achieve from the outset. Even just the process of sitting down and thinking about what is important to you can be a great motivator to come back to every time you enter the gym or start a workout.
Is it having more energy to play with your children? It might be training for an event or even just fitting in to your old pair of skinny jeans. Maybe you’ve been wearing a blue bib BMF for a while now and it’s time to reach for Red?
When it comes to goal-setting, there’s no right or wrong.
What are the guidelines?
According to the NHS, adults aged 19 – 64 should be completing either 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a week or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise.
Additionally, we should be aiming to do strength training twice a week.
If you’re a total beginner these guidelines can be a helpful starting point for goal-setting. And the great news is that British Military Fitness classes are based on high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and fall firmly into the “vigorous activity” category, meaning you’ll cut down your workout time by half!
The important thing is to be really clear in your mind:
Many of us might already be familiar with the SMART system of goal-setting in our jobs and this can be a helpful tool when setting your own health and fitness goals.
A helpful way to bring your goals to life and keep them front of mind is to write them down. Preferably somewhere at home where you’ll see them all the time. This will make them part of your everyday routine and make it that much easier to resist that glass of wine or get you off the couch and off to your next workout.
If your goals are weight-loss or body composition related, it’s worth getting the advice of a trainer or nutritionist to help get you started.
Our British Military Fitness instructors are all military trained PT’s who are always happy to talk to you about your individual goals and help you find something to work towards that realistic and achievable for you. If you’re at a loss for where to start, they’ll be able to point you in the right direction (if you can stop them chatting long enough!)
Find an instructor and check out a free session near you now.
How to maintain good health and fitness
So, you’ve been sticking with your new health and fitness plan and seeing great results. But how do you keep it going?
Like any relationship, achieving your health and fitness goals takes long-term commitment.
The beginning is like the honeymoon period. We’re full of energy, enthusiasm and motivation. Things are still fresh and if you’re starting out as a beginner, chances are you’ll see some results fairly quickly.
But eventually the excitement wears off. We get tired, slip back into old habits, and the results we were seeing start to taper off. There are a couple of reasons this can happen:
The Plateau Effect
In fact, it’s proven that as our bodies adjust to the new exercise demands we’re placing on them, we can reach a fitness plateau.
Here are some signs you might be hitting a plateau, and how to avoid it and keep the results coming!
Falling off the wagon
If your original goal was weight loss and you’ve hit your target weight for example (if this is you, congrats!), the temptation can be to lapse back into our old habits.
We feel elated and full of self-confidence, our friends are congratulating us and our clothes are fitting better.
So we hit that celebratory meal or drinks with friends, take a few rest days from training, get busy or side-tracked, and before you know it you’re back to where you started.
When this happens, having a support system such as a workout buddy or team are great ways to stay motivated.
British Military Fitness member Jane says being part of the BMF community is what’s helped her stay on track. Check out her story.
Diet
When looking at maintaining your good results over a long period, diet is something you can’t afford to ignore.
If you’re training as hard as ever but your results are slowing down, looking at your diet is probably the solution.
Check out our essential guide to get started with making some changes to your nutrition.
The key to maintaining your health and fitness over a long period comes down to perspective. If you’re hoping for a silver bullet to that will erase all your troubles and get you dream results in the space of a week, you’re going to end up disappointed, defeated and probably worse off than when you started.
Make the decision to shift your mindset and start seeing your health and fitness as a life-long investment, that you’re committed to through thick and thin.
Why are health and fitness important?
Let’s talk statistics for a moment and discuss something that is pretty scary.
A recent study by the NHS showed that one in four adults in the UK is obese. That is one quarter of our population – officially making us the unofficial “fat man of Europe”.
The problem with obesity doesn’t just come down to size and being “fat”. But there is a whole raft of serious health risks that along with being classified as obese, including higher risk of diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and strokes.
Improving our fitness is one of the best ways to address our health as it can have an impact on not only weight loss and our body shape but our mental health too.
It’s been proven that getting regular exercise helps with depression, anxiety, helps with mood, memory, stress and sleep.
Want to try a British Military Fitness workout for free? Click here.
What’s the difference between health and fitness? And how do I improve mine?
Having the desire to improve our health and fitness is a great first step, but what do each of those terms actually mean? And how can we improve them both at the same time?
These days, the term “health and fitness” seems to be everywhere.
Our social media feeds and television screens are invaded constantly by health and fitness “experts”, each claiming to have a unique perspective or “life-changing” piece of research.
With all this varied, and often contradictory, research about health and fitness at our fingertips, it can be hard to know where to turn and what to believe.
Let’s take a look at some of the basics when it comes to our health and our fitness.
Health
To be in great health. To be healthy. They’re things we all want. But what do they actually mean?
Most simply, health can be defined as: “The state of being free from illness or injury.”
But if we take it one step further and look at what it actually means to be healthy, we could say that it is a state of complete mental, physical and social wellbeing.
There is a huge number of ways we can choose to improve our overall health. But two of the most obvious and important ways are by addressing our fitness and our diet.
Fitness
Simply put, fitness is one very important component when it comes to thinking about your overall health.
If we look at a simple definition again:
“Fitness is attributed to a person who possesses significant aerobic or anaerobic ability, i.e. Strength or endurance.”
If you improve your fitness, it stands to reason that those components of our health mentioned earlier; mental, physical and social health, will all be improved. Let’s look at some of the key health benefits of leading a fit and active lifestyle:
Mental health benefits:
Physical health benefits:
Social health benefits:
Of course, there are going to be health-related issues that are unavoidable – these might be allergies, diseases, genetic conditions or disabilities. And we’re not saying that being fit means you’ll never have health issues.
But having a great level of fitness can help prevent a huge number of lifestyle-related health issues, improving not only the quality of your life but the length too.
How can health and fitness be measured?
Ever heard the saying “That which gets measured, gets improved”? Here are some of the top ways to measure your health and fitness results.
There are hundreds of ways you can choose to track your progress when setting out on a new fitter and healthier lifestyle.
What you choose to track and measure is going to be determined by your individual goals.
For example, if you’re training for a marathon, you’ll measure your progress with distance and time progressions each week.
If your health is a concern and your priority is to lower your blood pressure or manage your diabetes risk, you’ll be taking a medical approach, tracking your progress through doctors’ check-ups and tests.
On the other hand, if your aim is to get in the best shape of your life for that looming beach holiday, your focus will be more on aesthetics and you’ll want to be measuring things like body fat percentage and waist circumference.
Beware of the scales!
Although it may seem like the most obvious way to tell if you’re losing weight, relying on the scales can give a pretty inaccurate picture of your progress if done in isolation.
One reason is that if you’re putting on muscle as you train harder and build strength, you may actually see increases in your weight even if you’re losing fat.
While it’s helpful to know your starting weight when starting a new fitness plan, there are a few other easy techniques for measuring your progress that will give you a much clearer picture of how you’re doing.
BMI
Your BMI, or Body Mass Index, is often a great starting point when embarking on a new fitness plan. Your BMI is easy to measure and gives you a good indication of whether your weight is healthy in relation to your height.
Knowing your BMI gives you a good estimate of your body fat and is also a good gauge of your risk for diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Generally speaking, the normal “healthy” range for your BMI is between 18.5 – 24.9. If your BMI is higher or lower than normal, focusing on getting it into healthy range is a good starting point.
Calculate your BMI using the NHS calculator tool.
BMF member Jessica had some pretty life-changing results when she decided to get serious about reducing her BMI, check out her story here.
Progress photos
Ok. We get it. The prospect of stripping off and taking untouched, unfiltered full body photos of yourself isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time.
But taking progress photos is one of the best ways to track whether you’re seeing the results you want. You live with yourself (duh!) and you see yourself in the mirror every day, so taking a snapshot that you can look back on in a few weeks’ time is the only way you’re going to be able to see the changes in your body.
Stand in front of a full-length mirror in your underwear or a bathing suit and take one front-on shot and one side profile shot. Then repeat every couple of weeks.
You might not love what you see, and you sure don’t have to show it to anyone else! But trust us, it’s great motivation.
Measurements
It might sound self-explanatory, but one of the best ways to measure your progress is well… by measuring! Whether you want to lose size or gain size, you’re never going to know what’s really happening unless you’ve got numbers to work with.
And you don’t need to pay for the privilege of a personal trainer poking and prodding you with a tape measure – buy a cheap one and do it yourself.
Check out this guide to where to measure and how, write down your numbers and check back weekly.
Make it personal
Choosing how you’re going to track your own progress should be part of your original goal-setting process.
Something important to note is that you nothing should be measure on a day-by-day basis. Our bodies are complex pieces of machinery that can fluctuate massively overnight depending on things like fluid intake, hormones, and what we had for dinner last night.
So, take a long-term view of measuring yourself and aim to take measurements or progress photos once a week or once a fortnight.
Choose a system that works for you – if you’re visual, pick a place to display your results. If you’re a tech-nut, there are plenty of apps that can be a great way to track your progress.
Where’s your fitness at?
Our British Military Fitness assessment* includes a fitness test, a strength test and a run, and is a great way of marking where you’re at and giving yourself something to aim for. Complete the test on your own or at a dedicated BMF assessment session. Find out more.
*check when your park is next running an assessment by contacting the park manager via your local parks facebook page
How can diet/alcohol/exercise/age/drugs/environment affect health and fitness?
Even if you’re pouring your heart and soul into your new training routine, there are a few things to be mindful of that could sabotage even the best laid plans.
Diet
Your diet has a HUGE impact on your health and fitness results. The two go hand in hand, and as much as we don’t want to hear it, the saying that you can’t out-train a bad diet really is true.
What you’re eating will impact not only the way your body is fuelled for exercise but the way it recovers afterwards and the way it processes all the calories you eat.
And remember it’s not just calories that count – the breakdown of macro-nutrients in each meal (the percentage of protein, carbohydrates and fats) is just as crucial. It’s especially important to make sure that you’re getting enough protein as your strength improves and you start to build lean muscle.
Portion size is one of the most common culprits when it comes to managing your diet.
If you want to improve your overall health and get the best results from your training, making sure your diet is on point is essential.
Click here to see our essential getting started guide to nutrition.
Alcohol
Reaching for a refreshing glass of wine or beer after a hard workout can be a tempting way of rewarding ourselves but there are a few things you should know about the effect of alcohol on your fitness before you grab that next bevvy:
If enjoying a drink with friends is one of the ways you relax then don’t feel you have to cut it out completely but educate yourself so you can enjoy a few drinks in moderation without erasing all the great progress you’ve made!
Age
As if grey hair hairs and wrinkles weren’t bad enough, the ageing process also creeps into affecting our fitness gains.
Studies show that physically, we peak between the ages of 20 – 35. After this our metabolisms and energy levels slow down, and it gets harder to maintain lean muscle mass.
The catch is – that as we get older, it becomes more important than ever to exercise, to maintain good muscle mass, bone, heart and lung health.
Find out more about the way your age can affect your exercise results.
Drugs
We all know that drugs are detrimental to our short and long-term health and can lead to addiction. But what specific impact do they have on fitness?
Here is just a small list of the major ways recreational drug-taking could affect your fitness:
Overall drugs can play havoc with your brain and behaviour, affecting your body, mind and mood. If your focus is on getting great results from your training - our advice? Don’t mess with drugs that could not only inhibit your results but be potentially dangerous or even fatal.
Health and fitness quiz
Want to see how your health and fitness knowledge stacks up. Test yourself with this five minute quiz to see if you’re clued up or clueless!
See you in the park!