If you're struggling with weight loss or your body, we have some tips for you to change that!

Nowadays, how we look is very important to a lot of us. We want to look our best - to have muscles, to be thin, healthy and energized. Yet, we all know that the most important part of losing weight, gaining weight, or an overall healthy lifestyle, is diet. After all, food largely causes how we look. Food, however, isn't the only thing that helps us achieve our "fitness" goals, there are plenty of other factors that will influence this process.

We've tried to put together a group of the most common issues and factors that negatively impact our quest for a better physique, a healthy lifestyle, diminish results and often cause us to never reach our goals..

Movement and its effect on weight loss

The first thing that comes to mind after a proper diet is definitely the inclusion of exercise. Movement is very important and not only when we want to change our figure, because movement makes our body more vital and our mind more satisfied.

Which movement to choose?

If you are expecting us to tell you exactly what activity to choose, we will have to disappoint you... It's not about what you do, but that you do something! Whether you hike, run, swim, play tennis, work out at home, or take a Zumba class, it doesn't matter. What is important, however, is regular movement! However, most of us would think that the only place we can change our appearance is the gym. You should realize that it's not just about the gym, but about movement, per se. It's about incorporating activity into your life, in whatever form it takes! Of course, you can burn more calories at the gym through strength training than you can when you do yoga at home, but what we should realize is that we are not just talking about losing weight or gaining muscle, we are also talking about a healthy lifestyle!

As we've mentioned in a lot of our articles, the main thing is not to overdo the start! Start slow, slowly add complexity and intensity to your workouts. Also, you should take into account how long you haven't exercised, your age, your health capabilities, don't push through the pain and don't do anything at the expense of your health.

Existing lifestyle

Many years of overeating, sticking to various nonsense diets, drinking alcohol, smoking, sleep deprivation, stressful jobs, various goodies, etc... If this is what your life looks like, you can't expect anything to change overnight ... Even if you want to be more yourself, your body will behave in a way that you probably don't want to.

Start slowly eliminating from your life all the vices that don 't belong to a healthy lifestyle. Why slowly, you ask ? If you decide to change your lifestyle from one day to the next, chances are that either your head or your body may not be able to handle it. Worse case scenario, both... how come both? It could be that because you've lived an "unhealthy" life for XY years, the change is a shock to your body, which can cause INSTANT weight gain, fatigue, headaches, waterlogging, etc → you yourself won't understand why these changes happened to you and will guess that you did something wrong. And what happens? You'll go back to what you knew before...

What you should definitely avoid in an arch way are different types of diets such aslow-carb diet, ketogenic diet, CKD, protein diet, carrot diet, apple diet, detox or some other CRAP..

You can read how to set your diet properly in the following series of articles!

Genetics

This point is perhaps the most outrageous of all, and is rehashed OVER and over again. "She's skinny, um it's the genes."

Yes, genetics definitely play a role in a healthy lifestyle, but not so much that we can't make our dreams come true. But beware, there have been enough excuses already, as we have a major insight that will change the way you perceive yourself!

What we eat every day affects our DNA in a certain way, not by changing it (DNA is immutable), but through a process called methylation - which significantly affects the epigenome, which we can change! And it is through lifestyle and all the points covered in this article!

Be careful, we are not saying that we can change our genetics, we are just suggesting that if someone tells you that they look this way or that way because of "genetics", it is possible, but as we have already seen several times in sport - it is not the most skilled and talented who wins, but the one who has sacrificed the most for the goal! Everyone has different genetics, but EVERYONE can fight with their genetics and change their body for the better!

Regeneration and regularity

Now everyone hand on heart and according to the truth. Do you put the same emphasis on recovery as you do on training and diet? Do you listen to your body when it asks for rest or do you just listen to your ego and stupidly go for it? You should put the same emphasis on recovery as you do on the aforementioned training and diet!

In the previous point we mentioned that everyone's genetics are different, so if you read in a magazine or a friend told you that they train so and so, it doesn't mean that you have to train that way too! There are athletes who train twice almost every day and get the same results as some who train 3 days a week!

Intrinsically linked to recovery is sleep. If you are sleep-deprived, you mess up your leptin levels (the hormone that regulates hunger), you decrease your cognitive function, you worsen your insulin resistance (by over 30% after just 4 days without enough sleep according to studies), your cortisol increases, and MOST importantly, your body's ability to reduce fat stores is significantly impaired !

If you're really serious about your recovery, check out the link below!

Stress and hormones

Balanced hormone levels, while not visible, are one of the most important for proper body function. It can probably mess with our bodies the most and prevent weight loss. For women, this includes menopause, menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding or puberty. In men, andropause, puberty and many others. Hormone imbalances are often self-inflicted by our unhealthy lifestyles, such as overeating, lack of sleep or starvation. Individual hormones such as cortisol, insulin, leptin, etc. play a very important role.

Cortisol, also known as the stress hormone, is released whenever you are in a stressful situation - it doesn't matter if you are stressed at work or if you are chased by a wild pig in the woods... Cortisol promotes fat storage, creates cravings for sweets and various other calorie bombs. It's a catabolic hormone.

How to combat elevated cortisol levels? You need to keep your body and mind calm. In the case of a wild boar in the woods, it's hard to say who can keep a cool head... Regular and sufficient sleep also contributes to the reduction of cortisol.

What we definitely want to mention is the problem during menstruation. You eat exemplary for a whole month, then D-day comes and BOOM... This situation is caused by an increase in PROGESTERONE and a decrease in ESTROGEN. There is probably no trick to counteract this... the only thing that helps is learning to distinguish between emotional and real hunger (cravings) and building healthy habits. It's definitely worth trying nutritional supplements, such as magnesium and vitamin B6.

Drinking regime

Drinking is another factor that, even if it doesn't seem like it at first glance, is part of the mosaic of a healthy lifestyle.. If you ask yourself now: "How much did I drink in a day?", more than half of you will only guess.. Then ask yourself: "How much water should I drink a day?", aha... And here comes the stumbling block. Only a minimum of you will really know how much fluid to take in per day.

An adult should drink about 30-40ml/1kg of weight per day, for obese people 1kg of active mass. During vigorous physical activity, the body's water intake is regulated by up to 1.5l/hour. Every 1% of sweat of your weight reduces performance by up to 30%!!

So what to drink? Of course, the most suitable is pure spring water..

Diseases and pills

Diseases are a very common problem during the process of achieving fitness goals or on the path of a healthy lifestyle... The most common diseases in this regard include hypothyroidism, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCO), sleep apnea syndrome and many others. If you suffer from any of these diseases, it would be a good idea to consult a specialist about what you can and cannot do.

Medications also affect our bodies, e.g. various antidepressants, high blood pressure medications, thyroid-related medications, contraceptives and many others. If you suspect that any of the medicines you are taking are having the opposite effect on your health, try asking your doctor about other types of medicines.

However, playing sports and living a healthy lifestyle has a great impact on your health. If you're fed up with the various medications from doctors, check out our article below!

An objective perspective

Looking the truth in the eye is a big, really big problem for most of us... We should take care of our bodies because how we look and how we like ourselves has a huge impact on our psyche and therefore our life! Some people don't even want to see the problems, so they run away from them. Therefore, even if reality seems worse, let's admit it, because if we hide from it, it will find us anyway.

We hope this article hasn't offended or angered anyone. We have tried to look into the most common issues that still occur in the world of fitness and healthy living. We hope that this article has been of benefit and that it has been useful to most!