Confession

Ok – confession time. I haven’t simply been looking at easy ways to get healthy since September. I’ve been looking for easy diet solutions for many years, and I’ve come to consider myself somewhat of an expert on the subject.

I’ve written about drinking water, staying away from carbs, using a calorie counter app, and using short Youtube videos as easy ways to get healthy. I’ve told you the positives and negatives regarding these tricks, but overall none of them are sufficient enough to provide serious weight-loss or health results on their own, at least not for the lazy, such as myself.

Now comes the time for the cold hard truth. There is no easy way to achieve major weight-loss or to drastically improve your health. As much as many of us would like to believe, we are never going to have, “rock hard abs in under 10 minutes!”

That doesn’t mean your weight-loss or health journey has to be miserable. If you find something that you love to do, getting healthier may not be easy but it will be enjoyable. There are so many activities out there waiting to be explored. Maybe you love to cook and will learn to love creating new healthy recipes. Maybe you love the outdoors and will begin to enjoy biking. Maybe the gym will even become your friend, as crazy as it sounds. Maybe you aren’t as lazy as you think; you just haven’t found your passion yet.

Now, that isn’t to say that what I’ve told you isn’t useful. When you do find the activity that speaks to you, I invite you to try implementing some of the tricks I’ve written about. On their own they aren’t too successful, but when combined with a healthy lifestyle they will surely accelerate your health goals. They also serve another purpose – inspiration. Through writing this blog, I’ve been inspired to intensify my health journey, and if I can do it, you can too.

Now go on, find the activity you love, but most importantly learn to love you, no matter what shape or size. Because I’m going to tell you something, you (yeah, you) are awesome, laziness aside.

Allyson Knappers

Allyson Knappers is a second year student of the Professional Writing Program, and a native to the Ottawa area. Although a seemingly quiet young woman, Allyson loves to find the humor in life, and prefers to spend most of her time laughing with her friends. Allyson has an assortment of random interests, the most prominent of course, writing.

Follow on Twitter | Also check out:  health.com and My Fitness Pal

YouTube Your Way To a Better You

You can find almost anything on YouTube these days. Most people use YouTube for music, “how-to’s”, or to get a good laugh (David after the dentist anyone?) but what about using it to get fit? There are tons of fitness videos on YouTube, and it was brought to my attention that this just might be an option to get healthy the easy way. They had me at easy, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

I tried out two different videos, both by POPSUGAR Fitness. The first one was called “Get Madonna’s Arms” and the second was called “10-Minute No-Equipment Home Workout.” Both videos were great (I felt the burn) and short, meaning they fit into even the busiest work schedule. But overall, how well did using YouTube videos as a means of exercise work?

Well, let me start with the positives. The video’s themselves were great and let’s not forget free! These videos give you fitness expertise without having to leave the comfort of your own home. This is a major bonus because let’s face it, going to the gym sucks. It’s also nice to be able to workout at your own speed and without the pressure of others watching you. Also, if you miss anything you can simply rewind the video and try it again when you’re ready.

Now onto the negatives; although working out alone is quieter, I find that working out in a group pressures me to push myself harder, giving me a better workout. There’s also no instructor to tell you when your form isn’t correct. If you work out improperly you may not receive the full benefits from the workout and you risk hurting yourself. Another problem I found is that there are too many distractions at home. It’s easy to keep saying, “I’ll do it after the next episode.”  

The fact is you are not likely to get as good of a workout as you would at the gym or in a class. However, it is an adequate replacement if you can ignore distractions. Perhaps, once you integrate daily videos into your routine, you’ll be able to see results sans any gym trips.

For more great workout videos check out Daily Makeover.

Allyson Knappers

Allyson Knappers is a second year student of the Professional Writing Program, and a native to the Ottawa area. Although a seemingly quiet young woman, Allyson loves to find the humor in life, and prefers to spend most of her time laughing with her friends. Allyson has an assortment of random interests, the most prominent of course, writing.

Follow on Twitter | Also check out:  health.com and My Fitness Pal

Stay Away From the Big, Bad Carb!

There have been many fad diets in the past few years, and most have one thing in common – they include ditching foods rich in carbohydrates, or “carbs” (because really, who has time for “ohydrates”? Not this lazy gal). These diets caught on fast and attracted lazy people such as myself because: a) you could still eat fatty foods, and b) you could lose weight with little to no added exercise. You may recall the Atkins diet, The 4 Hour Body, or the Caveman or Paleo diet, to name a few. Basically, these diets revolved around the notion that you could eat whatever you wanted besides carbs and that this alone was enough to make you lose weight

When The 4 Hour Body was first recommended to me I was inspired to give it a shot. This diet was complex. You weren’t allowed fruit or dairy amongst other things, but the main point of the diet was to not consume foods high in carbs. It sounds easy, that’s probably why so many people, myself included, were drawn to it.

Now for the reality of things -  although I try to tell myself everyday that I’m not going to eat carbs, the fact is I usually do. Avoiding carbs is hard. If you haven’t noticed, carbs are everywhere, and they’re delicious. Try finding carb-free meals when eating out, there usually aren’t many. I also found that this diet is particularly difficult to follow as a student because carbs make for inexpensive meals. Eating meat and vegetables every night is much more expensive than it seems, which is probably why many students live off of ramen noodles and grilled cheese.

On the plus side, I can tell you that ridding your body of carbs feels amazing. When I was carb-free I was amazed at the difference it made. I had more energy, I was in better shape, I never felt gross and bloated, and dare I say it, I was even a little less lazy. Overall, I just felt better.

So, although cutting carbs isn’t easy, it is one thing I would recommend everyone try to do. At the very least, I suggest regarding carbs with an "everything in moderation" attitude. 

Allyson Knappers

Allyson Knappers is a second year student of the Professional Writing Program, and a native to the Ottawa area. Although a seemingly quiet young woman, Allyson loves to find the humor in life, and prefers to spend most of her time laughing with her friends. Allyson has an assortment of random interests, the most prominent of course, writing.

Follow on Twitter | Also check out:  health.com and My Fitness Pal

There’s an App For That!

 There’s pretty much an app for everything these days and one that I’ve come across on my health journey is My Fitness Pal. It isn’t overly complicated or high-tech; in fact it’s just a simple calorie counter. However, it’s a calorie counter that you can download as an app for your phone. For those who don’t have a smartphone, never fear. You can also access My Fitness Pal online. 

 The app only takes a few seconds to download and is pretty user-friendly. When you first download it, it asks a few questions to help personalize it (e.g. height, weight, occupation). This information is necessary to ensure the numbers the program calculates are accurate to your body. The app will the ask you what your weight loss goal is. I chose the goal of losing two pounds a week. After I was done, it calculated that 1, 200 was the number of calories I could eat each day to achieve this weight loss goal.

 Now, one of my favourite parts of this app is that it has a huge food database. Whenever you eat, you are supposed to enter information into your daily diary. You do this by selecting food from a database, which has all different types of food and their nutritional information. My Fitness Pal has complete menus for almost all fast food places as well as for many grocery store brands. This makes entering your food very easy, and ensures calorie counts are accurate.

Another fantastic thing about this app is that it gives you your nutrient intake. This means you can see that you’ve only received 30 percent of your daily iron or vitamin A. This is especially important because when getting healthy people often forget about nutrients and focus solely on calories and fat.

Overall I have to say this app is great. You do still have to have the will power to not eat unhealthy foods, but when you see how many calories you’re actually consuming, it’s my experience that it makes eating healthy easier. Also, having an app makes it unbelievably accessible and gives you no excuses for being lazy; after all I do need something to do while I’m waiting for my next life in Candy Crush.

For more information on My Fitness Pal check out:  Lifehacker and iTunes.

Allyson Knappers

Allyson Knappers is a second year student of the Professional Writing Program, and a native to the Ottawa area. Although a seemingly quiet young woman, Allyson loves to find the humor in life, and prefers to spend most of her time laughing with her friends. Allyson has an assortment of random interests, the most prominent of course, writing.

Follow on Twitter | Also check out:  health.com and My Fitness Pal

Alotta Water

Most people who want to get healthy know that there are many ways to do so. Some  even sound easy. We see it everywhere, “Five Easy Ways To Get Flat Abs Without Hitting The Gym.” Sounds almost unbelievable right? That’s probably because it is. Sure, there are tricks to getting healthier without doing intense cardio everyday, but my question is, how well do these methods actually work for the presumably lazy people that use them? As a self-proclaimed “lazy girl,” I’d like to see what easy ways to get healthy are out there and which ones actually work.

First, let’s look at one of the oldest tricks in the book - not drinking calories. It sounds like an easy way to cut calories without really trying and if you do it you can cut about 400 calories a day or about 3.4 pounds a month. The problem is in reality it’s just not that simple (surprise, surprise).

The thing is, almost all drinks are full of calories. Even those ones that you think are healthy can have about 122 calories per serving (I’m talking to you, milk). So, to use this trick, your options become limited to black coffee or tea and water. Exciting, I know. I’m choosing not to include diet-type beverages here because most of them contain aspartame which some studies say is bad for you, see what I mean here.

I have been trying to apply this lifestyle change for some time now and although I  prefer drinking water to soda or juice (it’s free and not cloyingly sweet), I still find myself having a hard time with being limited to that. One of the problems I’ve encountered is avoiding alcohol. Now, I’m not an alcoholic by any means (I promise mom), but consuming alcohol is often an aspect of social situations, especially when you’re student. Unfortunately, alcohol is full of calories (see here) and even one night of drinking can lead to hundreds of empty calories (along with that killer hangover).

So, for those of you lazy people like me, this trick alone may not give you the drastic results you seek. However, switching your cola to water and lowering your alcohol intake can't hurt.

Allyson Knappers

Allyson Knappers is a second year student of the Professional Writing Program, and a native to the Ottawa area. Although a seemingly quiet young woman, Allyson loves to find the humor in life, and prefers to spend most of her time laughing with her friends. Allyson has an assortment of random interests, the most prominent of course, writing.

 Follow on Twitter | Also check out:  health.com and My Fitness Pal