Health Blog

Living Well With Allison health and wellness blog:

I’ve always been passionate about pursuing a career in health and wellness. Within this blog I intend to share all of my favorite health tips and advice I’ve acquired through research and personal experience.

Each and every person encounters different paths toward a healthful journey.

I’m here to help you navigate through all the confusing social media to provide you with research backed healthy recipes, tips, and advice to the best of my knowledge and expertise.

What I provide in my blog are things that I practice and believe in. I’m sharing it here for you all to show that you can also live a healthy and happy lifestyle too!

Some posts may be targeted toward my personal journey. This will help guide you and keep you informed on what YOU can do to become healthier as well. With self care, body positivity, goal setting, and helpful exercise/stretching – I hope that you will all learn something new and be able to adapt this to your new daily living habits.

Please read on and feel free to reach out to me at info@livingwellwithallison.com if you have any questions or need any advice. I’m here for you!

How to Exercise Mindfully

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How do you incorporate healthy and mindful exercise into your daily routine? It’s really important that we find ways to move! Too many of us get stuck in a rut of sitting around at work all day (me included!!) and not going out to go on a walk or incorporating a bit of strength training. Healthy exercise is vital to take care of our bodies. So what will you do to make it happen in your life? Here are some important things to keep in mind when you choose to get your exercise on.

1. Do you enjoy it?

Or more specifically, does it make you happy even after you’ve sweated your ass off and ache the next day? I’m not saying it won’t be easy, but does it provide you gratification in the long run? 

For some people this could be CrossFit, whereas others it may mean a session of hot yoga. Each and everyone of us have unique bodies. For me it changes on a day to day basis. Some days I really want to run 4+ miles or do CrossFit, and other days a 20 minute yoga session is all I can muster up. 

Adding additional stress to your body also WILL NOT help. So if you’ve been completely stressed at work, pounding the gym hard for 3 hours straight will add to additional spirality of stress and make it harder for you to recover. I’m talking  emotionally and  physically. Your body knows when it’s under stress and will release more cortisol which will make you retain more body fat and in turn have the opposite effect of what you were expecting. Healthy exercise can be challenging, but it shouldn’t deplete you everyday.

TRY THEM OUT

Try out some new exercises you've never done before to spice up your routine. I definitely crave variety. Attend a new barre class, try hot yoga, sign up for a 5k or half marathon, do CrossFit. If you're an at home exerciser buy some resistance bands, 10lb dumbells and search for WOD workouts on Pinterest (check out the ones I pinned!). Get out of your comfort zone. You won't know if you hate it unless you try!

2. Do you do it to manipulate your body size? 

I was this person in the past. I used to think that the more I exercised, the better I’d look and feel.  I’d even go so far to be that person that thought they had to “punish” their bodies for eating something so that meant I HAD to workout extra the next day. Now, I try to listen to my body. If and when (because it does still happen) I overeat I just rest it out. 

Due to social media and diet culture a lot of us are petrified of gaining weight and trying to look our “best”. We are told to do “insert fad diet here” or try out this 20 minute ab workout every day for 1 month to see results. These aren’t lifestyle changes. They will not last and in my opinion they aren’t a very fun way to live life. What if we exercised FOR our bodies rather than to MANIPULATE our bodies to be something they aren’t? Your body has a healthy set point, trying to make it any smaller than this can cause a lot of wear and tear on it and your body won’t perform the way you want it to in the long run.

3. How do you make it a habit? 

I’m a big big advocator of changing your attitude from “I have to do this” to “I want to do this”. So how do you do it? Consistency. If you are a routine person this means doing it the same time each day and scheduling it into the calendar on your phone. If you enjoy the community aspect or being motivated by others this may mean joining CrossFit or getting a personal trainer to hold you accountable. It may mean doing things you LOVE to do like planning hiking trips biweekly with your significant other or going on walks after dinner.

Exercise doesn’t have to be hateful, it just needs to be tailored to your needs. Yeah, you may not feel like doing it every day and thats ok. Especially in the beginning, but overtime it becomes routine that you’ll want to do. As long as you make REALISTIC goals you will be able to achieve a healthy lifestyle. 

FITNESS APPS

Habit Tracker, Down Dog, and Nike Run are my favorite health apps to use, I recommend trying them out! 

I LOVE THESE RESISTANCE BANDS

Check them out on amazon. I’ve had them for quite some time now and they work so well! I take them everywhere with me when I travel. They are perfect for pilates workouts.
Buy Them Here!

If you want to learn more about how to incorporate healthy into your daily routine or have any additional questions contact me at info@livingwellwithallison.com.

What kind of healthy exercise do you love doing? What have you wanted to try before? Do something out of the box and give it a try!