I didn’t really consider all the benefits of cycling until this year. That’s because up until quite recently, I was a total running snob. At my peak in 2013, I was running over 40 km a week. I remember one warm May day that year, I ran a half-marathon in the morning and then spent all afternoon gardening. I wasn’t even sore the next day. But those glorious days are long gone. A couple months later, a nagging pain in my hip cropped up that wouldn’t quit with stretching or rest. It’s a chronic issue I’m still dealing with today and has limited how much high impact exercise I can…
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Why I Don’t Follow a Strict Diet (And What I Do Instead)
You’re not going to see a lot of posts from me about diet and healthy food. Don’t get me wrong, I think a healthy diet is really important. But here’s the problem: my healthy diet might not look like your healthy diet. I truly don’t believe there is an ultimate, one-size-fits-all diet. That’s because we all have our unique likes, dislikes, and body chemistry. If avocados make you ralph, then your diet shouldn’t include avocados. Not to mention you can drive yourself crazy debating what healthy foods actually are. You can Google “is [any food] healthy” and “is [same food] unhealthy” and get any number of articles supporting both sides. …
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The Ultimate List of Home Fitness Gear
A few weeks ago, we talked about how you don’t need a gym membership or a paid fitness program to get fit – you achieve fitness entirely on your own, in the comfort of your home. Aside from the cost savings, working out at home has other benefits. There’s more privacy, less commuting time, and you can blast whatever music you want without needing to channel it through headphones. The beauty of a home fitness space is that you can design it any way you want. It can have all the bells and whistles, or just the basics. I’ve tried a ton of products over the years and have compiled…
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Why Fitness is More About Mindset than Exercise or Diet
I had been blessed with a relatively high metabolism in my younger years, so it was something a shock when the weight started to creep on in my mid-twenties. It started innocently enough. A couple of pounds gained over the holidays. A size up in pants each time I went shopping. But then I started to feel sluggish, unmotivated, and struggled with long stretches of low mood that bordered on depression. I attributed it all to the normal stresses of life. Then one day I got on the scale one day in my early thirties and realized that a decade of working a desk job and living a mostly sedentary…
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How to Create a Free Workout Plan (That’s Insanely Effective!)
A free workout plan sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? That’s because there’s a ton of gyms and paid fitness programs out there that want you to think you need them to get in shape. Don’t get me wrong, I love a well-structured paid program as much as the next person! I’ve had fantastic success with some of them. They are great if you have no idea where to start and need something that holds your hand each step of the way. They are also ideal for finding communities of like-minded people and learning new strategies. But if you’re on a budget, you can 100% DIY your own…
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7 Tips for Working a Fitness Routine into Your Busy Week
Before I had a solid fitness routine in place, I was a textbook “weekend warrior”. On Saturday and Sunday, I’d go for really long runs, or hit the gym hard. But then Monday through Friday, my only exercise consisted of walking from my car to my desk at 8 am, and from my desk to my car at 5 pm. Needless to say, it wasn’t ideal. Not only that, it wasn’t sustainable. I’d end up injuring myself during one of my warrior weekends and be out of commission for weeks. The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) says we should be clocking 2.5 hours a week of moderate to vigorous…
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Get Smarter While You Get Fitter by Multitasking
Multitasking gets a bad rap sometimes. After all, some studies have concluded that too much multitasking results in higher levels of stress and lower levels of productivity. But is there a time and a place for multitasking? What about multitasking while you exercise? The surprising outcome from one small study published on science journal, PLOS ONE, suggests that performing cognitive tasks while exercising may actually enhance physical performance. And we already know that exercise boosts mental performance, so training your brain while you’re working out is a win-win situation. I believe there are some forms of exercise that require full concentration, like lifting weights and HIIT. But I love to add…
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Why HIIT is the Holy Grail of Exercise for the Busy Nine-to-Fiver
For many of us, Monday to Friday is a carefully-scheduled, often hectically-executed rotation between work and familial responsibilities. And let’s be honest: some of us are downright time-poor. Attempting to interject exercise into this routine chaos can seem completely impossible. After all, even if you are able to find 20 minutes here and there to hit the treadmill, is it really going to make a difference? This was my thought process for a long time. I tried to incorporate exercise whenever I could, whether it be a bit of light yoga after dinner, or a long run on the weekend. And you know what? That exercise did make a difference.…
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5 Reasons Exercise and Career Success Go Hand-in-Hand
For some people, staying fit for work is common sense. For example, being a personal trainer or construction worker requires a certain level of fitness to perform duties well. But for those of us who work behind a desk, exercise is seldom considered a career-enhancing endeavour. After all, you don’t need to bench press your desk to get the job done, right? So does investing your time to exercise really make a difference in how successful you are in your career? The science is in, and the answer is an emphatic YES. If you have high aspirations for your career, consider adding exercise to your daily routine. There are five…
