Viking Muscle
Tired, lazy, sluggish? Not for a Viking!
If you’re like me, the morning usually comes too soon. I have to convince myself each day that I am a morning person. The mornings are important, you need to wake up with a sense of purpose and a drive to improve yourself from the moment your feet touch the floor. I have found a few tips to really get me moving in the morning.
Number 1: The obvious, get more sleep
I see this everywhere, “get more rest”, “go to bed earlier”, “don’t do any activity an hour before bedtime”, “stay away from the computer TV or your phone before bed”. In my world, sometime this just isn’t possible. I’ll be the first to tell you that you shouldn’t make excuses for yourself, but with a demanding work schedule and a number of other reasons for staying up late (writing this post for example…), we need to adjust our lifestyles a little to help us ease into bed at a reasonable hour and make the sleep we do get more valuable. In a new study just released, “Adequate Sleep Helps Weight Loss”, the study confirms that getting more sleep not only help you eat less throughout the day, but also burn fat more efficiently as well.
Here are a few things you can do to get more high quality sleep:
- Dim the light in your house before bed: This will help signal your body to settle down and make it easier to fall asleep.
- Use your bed for a bed: Stop reading, working, or browsing from your bed. Calming the brain when you get into bed helps you sleep better.
- This includes smart phones! I can easily spend an extra hour browsing Facebook, Twitter and Reddit from my iPhone each night… Turn it off until the morning!
- Don’t go to bed angry or anxious:This one is hard at times, be you need to make an effort to check your troubles at the bedroom door.
- Make a habit out of accepting what has to be done tomorrow, shut your brain off for tonight.
- Don’t sleep on your stomach: This was a biggie for me, sleeping on your stomach hyper-extends the back, causing back pain the next day (even more with big pillows) and it can deprive you of oxygen, which will cause headaches and sluggishness the following morning.
- Get rid of your snooze button!
- Don’t use it! You set the alarm for a reason, don’t think about it and tell yourself you can spare 30 more minutes. Just – Get – Up!
- Find an optimal sleep pattern.
- You can use a tool like sleepyti.me to find an ideal time to go to bed based on 90 minute sleep cycles. If you need to be up at 7am, try to be asleep by 10 or 11:30pm to get the most worthwhile sleep.
Number 2: Get moving!
For some of you, morning workouts are perfect, for the rest of us, it’s like pulling teeth. Working out in the morning is a great way to get your body burning calories for the day as well as setting a commitment to sticking to your daily goals, it will really set the tone for your daily routine. Remember something is always better than nothing when working out. Here is my No time for a workout, Workout that you can do in 5-15 minutes depending on how much time you have:
Do this circuit 3 times, resting 1-2 minutes in between sets.
- 20 Pushups
- 50 Squats
- Hold a 60 second Plank
- 50 Mountain Climbers
- 100 Jumping Jacks
Number 3: Eat right
For those of you that know me, I don’t eat breakfast in the morning anymore. I start each morning with a shower and a nice large cup of fresh ground black coffee and get on with my day. However, when it is time to eat, I make sure to eat fresh whole foods.
Think about the foods you put into your body, imagine if your body were a large complex machine that you needed to insure was well taken care of and could run for 80-90 years with little maintenance. Well, you could justify paying a premium for the best fuel for this machine because it needs to last a lifetime. That is your body, and every calorie you ingest should be serving the purpose of fueling your day at optimal performance. When I put people on a new diet plan, I tell them to think about getting the maximum bang for their buck when choosing foods.
You could eat a McDonald’s Big Mac with the following macro-nutrients:
| Size | Calories | Fat | Carbs | Protein | |
| 1 Big Mac® | 7.6 oz | 550 | 29 | 46 | 25 |
or… You could have a Chicken breast, sweet potato, side of veggies, a salad, and Greek Yogurt with honey for the following macro-nutrients:
| Size | Calories | Fat | Carbs | Protein | |
| Large Meal | 19.5 oz | 450 | 10 | 52 | 43 |
As you can see, you can eat over twice as much food (11.9 oz’s more) and one hundred less calories by making better food choices. You can eat a large, satisfying meal packed with nutrient dense foods, that will help give you the right energy you need to perform at your best all day.
Starting the day right will make a big difference on your progress to hit new fitness goals, keeping yourself focused on diet, exercise, and metal sharpness in the morning will put you in good position to conquer your day.
Get up, get moving, get strong!
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