Nutritional Challenge #NUTRES: Healthy & happy

*Si quieres conocer esta información en español visita el fan page de Nutres*

About the challenge:
This is a weekly challenge with two principles, one emotional and one nutritional. Montse said “I will help you reach a healthy weight, change habits slowly and improve your health and wellbeing”, so I’m pretty excited and committed to making this change in my life. I really feel this is a great way to reach some of my goals with good and profesional help. So what do you say? Would you join me? I’m going to write and explain the challenges week by week in english, so there’s no excuse to miss it!

Let me introduce you to the creator of this challenges, I don’t want you to think that this is my idea or just someone’s who doesn’t know a thing about nutrition. Monserrat González is 24 years old, she has a degree in Nutrition, graduated from San Diego State University with a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and right now she’s doing her Master in Nutrition. Also she has a diploma as a Health Coach from the INAT, she has a Nutrition Clinic in Tijuana and she also works online with her patients. You can follow her fan page NUTRES and/or watch her videos here Nutres Youtube (they are all in spanish).

Challenge week #2 – Do some physical activity and smile.

Nutritional challenge: Do some physical activity
– Cardio for 45-60 min. 5 times a week if your goal is to lose weight or 3 times per week if your goal is to keep your form. Examples include running, swimming, elliptical, dancing, walking, jogging and cleaning the house also counts!
– Resistance 3 times a week, to increase muscle mass. Examples include yoga, pilates, weight training, push ups, sit ups. You can exercise daily without repeating muscle, because muscle should rest 48 hrs.

The exercise beyond helping to reach a healthy weight, it helps to release endorphins, fills you with energy, oxygenates your brain, burns fat, increases metabolism, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, increases your strength, strengthens the heart  and increases bone density.

Emotional challenge: Smile
Smiling relieves stress, improves your immune system, is contagious, helps you to be positive, change our mood, makes you look younger and it’s a natural painkiller.

I’m excited about this emotional challenge because I spend all my day smiling and laughing so I’ll be able to accomplish that one! Yay! And about the physical activity I think it’s time to do it, I’m sooo lazy I’m embarrassed of myself and because I’m traveling pretty often I can’t go to a gym, but I’ll start running/jogging every day in a little park near my house just before going to bed or in the mornings. Also I’m trying to do hiking around the city with my friends and it’s cool because now that my boyfriend is here we can to this together and I think it’s nice to also have ‘healthy time’ with your partner.

How I did last week –
Drinking only water was harder than I thought, not because I don’t like it, but because I forgot a lot about it. I go out to eat a lot and when I’m eating I realise I just hate the way water ‘erases’ the flavor of food. And well, for breakfast I ended up ordering natural orange juice without sugar or anything else and for lunch or dinner some green tea or natural lemonade. Other than that I think I did well while I was at home.

Where I totally failed was in not complaining, starting everyday while driving, it’s so hard! I have an explosive personality and if something goes wrong or I don’t like it I’ll complain, maybe just in my mind, or I’ll do a ‘complaining face’, but it was almost imposible for me not to do it.

Hope you’re doing great and it doesn’t matter if you’re doing a little bit bad like me, the thing is you gotta keep trying to have a better and healthier life. I wish you the best luck and remember, if you want to change, you will, don’t be discouraged because we can do it!