Get it Right, Get it Tight – Toned Up

To take my body from soft to toned, I had to change everything in my life. Everything. It required a lot of work, planning, and mental determination. As I’ve insinuated in previous fitness motivational posts, getting fit is more than just working out; it requires a lifestyle change that needs to be sustainable.
When I decided that I wanted a toned body, I organized my new fitness lifestyle into 2 categories: meals and activities.

Meals
My eating habits fluctuate. I don’t enjoy eating portion sizes; I love carbs, meat and wine. On the flip side, I love vegetables, salads and water. I decided to choose the latter in order to tone up my body. I changed my meals to a pescatarian and vegetarian diet from Monday to Friday and often choose to eat meals containing beef or chicken on the weekends. I decreased my intake of starchy carbs and began eating complex carbs such as sweet potatoes. On some nights for dinner, I skipped carbs altogether and opted to only eat vegetables and a protein source. I reduced my portion sizes and drank a lot of liquids that encourage a healthy body and metabolism such as green tea and water.

Activities
Believe it or not, determining my activities for toning my body was an easy process for me. I am a fitness enthusiast so working out is not a problem. What was difficult was finding the time. I had to plan my fitness activities throughout the day; I could workout in the morning, during lunch or after work — whenever I could find time in my schedule! Another technique I did differently was listening to my body to determine what I needed to change to see the results I desired. I had to increase my cardio to lose a bit of weight, and then I had to add strength training to tighten up. Increasing my cardio meant that I focused on running for a minimum of 5k, 5 times a week. Strength training now included abdominal workouts (which I hate doing but love the results), on top of my usual strength training routine (which I switched up a little bit by periodically alternating between low, medium and high weights).

The combination of tweaks to my meals and activities yielded the results I wanted to see in my body. There will be times when I don’t follow this lifestyle to perfection but at least I know what it takes for me to look the way I want.

xo,
Eseeri