The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated a wide assortment of lifestyle changes. Many officer workers are now telecommuters, many students are now remote learners and many fitness buffs are wondering how they’re going to meet their exercise goals. If your primary fitness activities involve leaving the house or going to gyms, being stuck at home for the foreseeable is liable to seem like a setback. However, while adjusting to a house-bound fitness routine may strike you as challenging, becoming acclimated to at-home exercise is far from impossible. If your plan to meet your fitness goals during COVID-19 has thus far proven difficult, put the following pointers to good use.
Invest in Home Fitness Equipment
With the threat of COVID-19 becoming greater by the day, going to gyms is far from safe. Needless to say, for those of us who do most of our exercising at gyms, this can be a hard pill to swallow. Fortunately, by investing in home fitness equipment, we can essentially bring the gym to us.
If you don’t have the free space or financial resources to purchase every piece of gym equipment you enjoy using, limit yourself to one or two favorites. For example, if you’re passionate about walking or running, invest in a high-quality treadmill. Alternatively, if strength training is more your thing, order yourself a good weight set. Even a couple of pieces of gym equipment can help you meet your fitness goals.
Incorporate More Protein into Your Diet
Healthy eating habits can be a boon to your physical fitness efforts. There’s nothing wrong with indulging in the occasional cheat day or satisfying a junk food craving every now and then, but when planning meals, calories and fat content should be taken into account. If being stuck at home has provided you with a newfound abundance of free time, this may be the perfect opportunity to expand your culinary repertoire and try your hand at an assortment of health-conscious recipes.
When looking for healthy foods to incorporate into your regular diet, keep an eye out for options that are rich in protein. There are many different protein packed diets that could help you meet your fitness goals, such as the hard boiled egg diet. The benefits of eating a protein-rich diet are many-fold. For starters, protein helps build muscle and increase strength. Additionally, habitual overeaters are sure to appreciate protein’s ability to sate hunger. Replacing carbs and fat with protein can effectively reduce the hunger hormone, so if you’ve been looking to lose weight, consider including more protein-rich foods in your diet.
“Evidence suggests that high-protein diets promote greater weight loss. In this sense, Soenen et al. showed that normal and high-protein diets were able to reduce adiposity. Additionally, protein intakes higher than the current RDA (∼1.2–1.6 g/(kg·day) can be effective to improve appetite control and weight management compared with standard protein diets.”
Giglio, B. M., Duarte, V., Galvão, A. F., Marini, A., Schincaglia, R. M., Mota, J. F., Souza, L. B., & Pimentel, G. D. (2019). High-Protein Diet Containing Dairy Products is Associated with Low Body Mass Index and Glucose Concentrations: A Cross-Sectional Study. Nutrients, 11(6), 1384.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11061384
Vegetarians and vegans who are interested in increasing their protein intake should look into vegan protein powder.
Set a Workout Schedule and Stick to it
For those of us who are unaccustomed to at-home exercise, sticking to a self-imposed workout schedule can be a challenge. While this is liable to prove difficult at first, a little bit of dedication and consistency can go a long way. The longer you stick to an exercise schedule, the easier it becomes. Within a few weeks, engaging in at-home exercise will come as second nature, and your fitness regimen will seem like an organic part of your day.
Keep in mind that most workout schedules require a little bit of tweaking, and if the one you commit to is too demanding – or not demanding enough – there’s nothing wrong with making some adjustments.
Get Your Partner Involved
Some fitness routines are easier to stick to if you have a dependable workout buddy. With this in mind, why not enlist the aid of your partner? Even if they haven’t previously expressed an interest in physical fitness, they may be excited and intrigued by this proposal. Getting fit together will enable you to compare results in real time and ensure that you both have a solid support system in place. Having an enthusiastic partner can also make exercise feel like less of a chore and more like a leisure activity.
The threat presented by the novel coronavirus has caused many of us to reexamine and restructure our daily routines. For people who are used to going to gyms and engaging in other forms of outside-the-house exercise, being stuck at home may seem like an excuse to place fitness goals on the backburner. Although getting used to at-home workouts may be a bit of an adjustment, staying indoors needn’t entail abandoning physical fitness. Adopting the measures discussed above can help ensure that house-bound fitness buffs are able to meet their exercise goals from the safety and comfort of home.