The great thing about home workouts is that you don’t actually have to go anywhere per se and could just end up making the best of this lockdown simply by following a few home workouts that you might have come across.

In order to help make the transition for you easier, we have here a few tips and tricks that could definitely make the whole process much easier. Have a look!

Take your pick

Welcome to the quarantine home workout life! From here on out things will definitely start getting clearer for people who are essentially beginners. So what is the first thing you need to do in order to ensure that you are able to carry through your home workout sincerely? Well, take your pick! There are so many different kinds of workouts that you can indulge in, that it can get quite confusing as to what you should follow.

From yoga and aerobics to dancing and cardio, all you have got to do is to decide what kind of workout suits your style and what you enjoy doing the most! Another amazing thing about this is that even if you tend to get bored with a particular workout routine, you could just rotate and mix and match the different kinds of workouts! Trust us, this might just be the best time for you to start working out!

Choose a space

You would be astonished to know what a huge difference it can make to your home workout routine when you have a particular space that you have allotted to your workouts. When you decide to set up space solely for your workouts, you are ensuring that you lay down a foundation to help you get the best from your home workouts.

When you set up space, you are mentally preparing yourself to make a commitment towards a better and healthier lifestyle, knowing that you would be working out during the time you are home. The best part? This does not have to just have to be established merely until the lockdown is over. You could very well keep working out at home post the lifting of the lockdown too!

Improvise

If you are someone who is used to working out with certain kinds of equipment at that gym of yours, then you might initially find working out at home slightly irritating. This is where you can use your imagination to make the best of your home workouts. Don’t have weights at home to lift? Well, use filled water bottles instead! Trust us, they DO come in extremely handy.

Missing cardio at home? Just use a skipping rope and skip your heart out to get it all pumped up for the exercises that are to follow! Don’t know how to go about those leg presses you used to do in the gym? Well, use the sofa as the weight and lift away! Of course, do ensure that the sofa does not end up slipping from the other end!

Don’t lose muscle

This is more of an advice than a tip per se! You see, when you are sitting in one place during your work from home hours in this lockdown, the chances of you losing muscle mass always arise. This is why it is important to prevent the same. For seasoned gym hitters, make sure that when you do workouts at home, you do so till the time you are close to failure. This will help push your body further, thus helping maintain muscle mass considerably.

When targeting larger muscle groups, a set of anything between 12 and 20 a week will help and a set between 8 and 15 for smaller muscle groups will go a long way in maintaining the health of your muscles in the long run as well.

Always remember, some or the other kind of physical activity is always recommended when it comes to helping speed up your metabolism even when you are not at your most active. This, in turn, will help you healthier both physically and mentally as well during the lockdown!

So everyone, do remember to indulge in some or the other kind of physical activity during the lockdown to make sure that you come out of it healthier than you went in!

The post Tips to keep in mind when working out at home first appeared on Fit Foodies Mantra.

We do know how important your smartphones are to you. We are also sure that you must be extremely confused as to why we have suddenly started talking about your smartphones, but bear with us because we have a reason for suddenly blabbering about these devices. Many smartphone apps have become an essential part of our daily life and we can hardly imagine life without them. So here is something that might inspire you! What would happen if we told you that your phone could be your window to achieving your fitness goal even during the laziest season of the year?

So to let you use the power of your smartphone in the most beneficial way, here is our list of the top 5 apps that will help motivate you during the winters.

1. Workout Trainer: If you are someone who believes in variety being the spice of life, this app is definitely for you. This brilliantly motivating app offers you more than 1000 intense workouts. These workouts range anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Every workout also has audio and video that further help in making sure that all the exercises that you are doing, you are doing right. Another great thing about this app is that you are able to choose which area you want to focus on when you workout. From strengthening your core to improving flexibility, this app offers you help in almost every aspect.

   

2. Sworkit: Sworkit, like workout trainer, also helps you concentrate on one aspect of your fitness journey first. Using this app, you can easily choose the basic type of workout that you are looking for. This app offers you a variety of things be it cardio, yoga or stretching. You can also choose the amount of time you want to spend on that particular area/method. Even the timings can fluctuate between 5 minutes to an hour. This proves essentially effective for people who are short on time but want to make the most of what they have got.

   

3. Freeletics: Our list is not complete without the mention of this wonderful app. If you are familiar with the HIIT(High-Intensity Interval Training) method of working out or are someone who wants to give it a go, then the app will prove especially useful for you. The app basically concentrates on 4 main platforms that also happen to be free. These are gym, body-weight workout and training, nutrition and running. So in short, everything! Offering videos of the routines that you need to follow also helps you to know how exactly to carry out the exercises step-by-step.

   

4. The 7 Minute Workout: This app goes one step further in making sure that you remain motivated and are more than willing to sweat it out. The app literally acts like your personal trainer, how cool it that? The name of the app itself says it all. We mean who cannot take out 7 minutes from their busy day to feel healthier and happier about it all? Even a mere 7 minutes with this app will leave you feeling extremely good about yourself post your workout! This too has different categories under what sort of workout you want to do. Makes everything so much easier we tell you!

   

5. Yoga-pedia: Yoga has always been one of the most appreciated forms of exercises that not only helps in shedding those extra kilos but also contributes a great deal to your overall well-being. You have to admit that no workout regime is complete without yoga in it. The app is a great one when it comes to teaching yoga to people who are new to the whole yoga experience. You can choose what asanas you want to learn depending on whether you want to improve your flexibility or help in relaxation. The app offers more than 80 asanas by category and also provides video instructions to the users!

We really hope that these apps prove to be of help to you when it comes to living a healthy, active and fit life. We ourselves are having a blast using these apps and still cannot decide which one we like the best!  And if you want someone to help you on the healthy food front, then we are always available to help you with that!

The post Top 5 Go to Apps for a Healthier You! first appeared on Fit Foodies Mantra.

The Zone Diet was developed more than 30 years ago by Dr. Barry Sears. Can you imagine? This master plan has been around for 30 years! A known dietician in Central Delhi has done a lot of research, and recommends the diet boisterously!

The basic idea behind this brilliant diet is to reduce diet-induced inflammation. Diet-induced inflammation basically consists of factors that may promote inflammation. Some of these are

• Excess intake of saturated fats, omega-6 fatty acid, and excess calorie intake
• Lack of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet and lack of intake of fermentable fiber and polyphenols both of which help promote gut health.

There are many benefits that you will experience when you decide to opt to follow the Zone Diet. Some of the main benefits are:

• Reduced risk of chronic diseases drastically
• Adds years to your life by slowing down the aging process
• Helps you knock off those extra kilos quicker than any other diet
• Helps in the overall physical and mental performance of your body.

But don’t think that we are writing about this because it is supposed to be a fad diet! The Zone Diet is anything but that! It is more of a lifestyle change than just a diet! The dietician in Central Delhi still gives credit to the diet for helping her manage a healthy lifestyle!

The main aim of the Zone Diet is to make sure that you have balanced meals throughout the day.

• A plate of your food should consist of a 1/3^rd portion of lean proteins like egg whites, lean beef or fish.
• A 2/3rd portion of your plate should contain healthy carbs like a lot of colorful vegetables and a little fruit. Do remember to avoid fruits that have a high level of sugar in them like bananas and grapes.
• Just add a dash of monounsaturated f, in turn, olive oil or almonds to your plate of food and you are done!

The Zone Diet helps in minimizing your grain and starch intake and maximizing the intake of fruits and vegetables. This, in turn, provides some major hormonal and anti-inflammatory benefits.

Did you know that The Zone is a real physiological state present in your body and can be easily measured in clinical tests? What it means is that if you are found to be “In the Zone”, then you have improved your ability to control diet-related inflammation. This inflammation is the main reason that makes you gain weight, age faster and becomes sick easily.

There are particular markers that helps you measure whether you have achieved being in the Zone. Just go through the chart you will understand what we are talking about.

Just remember you don’t need to follow a fad diet to help you stay healthy, all you need is a change in your lifestyle to ensure that you are the top of your health game throughout your life!

The post In the Zone with the Zone Diet first appeared on Fit Foodies Mantra.

At this rate, it’s highly likely for you to have been suggested using fitness tracking apps and fitness gears, thus modernising to keep up with the advancement in technology. Determined to be healthy, you must have, at some point, ditched the old school ways of contacting a nutritionist or keeping a personal trainer; thus, resorting solely on the smartphone apps and smartwatches to smarten your habits. Initially the vanity might have impressed upon you, keeping up with its promises of –

• Reminding you to drink water at proper intervals
• Tracking your daily steps
• Tracking your workouts while hitting the gym
• Tracking your calories burnt after jogging, or calorie-intake after meals, and so on.

But are you getting depressed because your fitness tracker isn’t fetching you positive results? You keep diligently following whatever information and orders these mere apps are providing you with, perhaps even randomly omitting certain elements from your diet. This outright deprives your body of the necessary nutrients and therefore, you are either still gaining fat or suffering from offbeat inanition, or, exhaustion. Naturally the mirror or the weighing scale fails to show any desirable changes, putting you into a sense of rejection.

Well then, it’s high time for you to escape the trap of these software-driven inaccuracies. Remember, everything has both positive and negative sides, and you may have simply surrendered to this dangerous deception. Time for a reality check— Can a mere app on a smart-device ever provide you with the authentic results that a clinically accepted protocol can? Especially when it concerns your very biological self?

Let’s face the truth. Most of the time, these apps are blatant hoax, and provides you with arbitrary mathematical values- which is not at all correct. Do not place you blind faith into them because, if you have not faced your desired results, then this is what must have happened to you. So, a simple suggestion- avoid being a technology-slave and take up matter in your own hands.

Take out some time from your schedule. You know, they say, you’re never busy— it’s all about priorities. So, for the sake of your body’s well being, stop feeling depressed and go pay a visit to a certified nutritionist or a gym trainer. Pros always impart the most trustworthy stratagem which an app never can— experience counts, you see! Most importantly, you have to keep in mind that physical exertion alone wouldn’t help, as, A LOT depends on the diet.

Embracing the most authentic technique, will give you an odd sense of satisfaction when you will get the sweetest fruit. When you get the proper diet regime that conforms with your body’s requirements, in certain cases, you won’t even have to work out! Adequate quantities of water and a proper diet is actually what you need to be in shape, actually (though, working-out never harms!). Add to that adequate amount of sleep, and you’re good to go. Needless to say that a healthy body paves way for a healthy mind. But most importantly, all you would need is proper professional guidance and not rely on a dubious app.

So stop drowning in depression just because your app is faulty and go seek some professional dietary guidance. You’ll positively see wonders happening to your body and soul!

The post Are you getting depressed because of fitness tracker? Find it out here… first appeared on Fit Foodies Mantra.