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10 Tips for Beginners to Fitness and Nutrition

Writer's picture: Jenna RubinJenna Rubin

10 Tips for Beginners to fitness and nutrition 



  1. Determine a meaningful reason. 


I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to accomplish anything in life I didn’t give a shit about. There’s hundreds of reasons to eat healthy, and exercise but you have to pick one that's important to you personally. Perhaps you want to be active with your kids, improve sport performance, improve blood results, improve your confidence, do your first pull up, improve energy levels, lose weight, age better. Find your why, and remind yourself of it everyday to the point that you can’t stand the thought of a life in which you don’t take action. In a way that's another tip - don’t think, just do! 


2. Don’t overcomplicate it.


  • Learn the difference between a core, upper body and lower body exercise

  • Start off using machines and work your way into free weights

  • Learn proper technique for some of the most effective free weight exercises such as chest press,lat pull downs, rows and overhead press for the upper body and squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts and lunges for lower body. Most exercises are just spin offs of these movements.

  • Begin with core stability exercises where you hold the core in a stable position against resistance (planks, dead bugs, side planks, pavlov press) 

  • Use accessory exercises to target specific areas you want to work on. Triceps, biceps, rotator cuff, glutes, quads, back hamstrings, shoulders etc. 

  • Put more emphasis on strength exercises such as the previously mentioned than cardio or hiit exercises such as burpees and ball slams. However, if you want to include those just throw in a couple rounds for time at the end of a workout. 

  • Search exercises on youtube if you don’t know proper technique or what something is all together. 

  • Start off doing every exercise for 3 sets of 10, and worry about rep schemes later

  • Choose weights you can lift with proper technique until the last couple repetitions…if the last couple reps are easy up that shit!

  • All of these bullet points are what I consider the basics of strength training. The more you show up, the more you will learn. 


3. Consistency should be your first goal. 


Nobody gets anywhere starting something, doing it for a short period of time and then quitting. Examples of consistency goals are working out 3 days a week every week, alway’s grocery shopping on sundays, meal prepping every monday, going to bed at a specific time, and committing to a change in behavior for a certain period of time. Your first goal should always be to just show up. 


4. Sign up for the cheapest gym possible 


Every gym is exactly the same and has enough equipment to make you stronger. Some gyms cost 200 dollars a month, and some cost 15 dollars a month. The price is no indicator of you showing up and kicking ass…that's on you. 


5. Choose how many days a week you are going to workout, what time you will be working out at and which exercises you will be doing during those workouts in advance.   


When beginning something new you need a plan, otherwise you will never do it. We are all creatures of habit. We are all busy. Determine gaps in your schedule and add workouts  to the calendar! Choose 6-9 exercises to perform every workout and stick to the plan even if you are tired or not in the mood. If you workout 2-3 days a week you can do a full body workout on all days. If you are working out 4-5 days a week you can split your workouts up into lower body and upper body days. 


6. Learn basic cooking skills It's a lot easier to eat well when you are the one determining what enters your body. You don’t need anything more than a stovetop and oven to make hundreds of healthy recipes. Youtube, and instagram are teaming with recipe ideas and many of them are under 30 minutes. Here are two of my favorite recipe pages @realfoodrd, @skinnytaste


7. Learn the difference between processed and unprocessed foods

As the name suggests, processed food is just something that's undergone a process to alter it from its natural state. The problem with this is most alterations include adding sugar, chemicals, preservatives and god knows what to the point that you are eating a ton of calories with no nutritional value. On the other hand, unprocessed food such as minimally processed meats, whole grains, and veggies have tons of nutrients and are lower in calories. 

  

8. Understand which foods fall in which macronutrient category. 

Do you know which foods are fats? Proteins? Carbohydrates? If not, check out this article…


9. Learn portion control…

When beginning this process you will probably be unaware of your hunger and fullness cues so it's important to have a standardized representation of how much to eat at each meal. I am a huge fan of using hand sizes to determine portions. At every meal eat a palm of protein, a fist of veggies, a cupped handful of carbohydrate and a thumb sized portion of fat. Once you have been eating this way with consistency, start to check in with your own fullness and hunger cues. Notice when you have eaten too much or too little, notice what feelings in your body indicate fullness, and hunger. Here is a great article on portions: https://assets.precisionnutrition.com/2019/09/Hand-portion-guide-FF.pdf


10. Create a list of all the things which have made it difficult for you to workout or eat well in the past, and contemplate solutions to these problems preemptively.  


Plan for success and failure. If you know what has thrown you off previously, you can make a plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again. 


Hit me up if you need some accountability to get started kicking ass today! I would love nothing more than to be your cheerleader. 



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