We’re nearly a full month into the new year, and you swore to yourself that you’d make some new year fitness goals before the Thanksgiving turkey even hit the table last fall. It’s time to get to work on that resolution, young lady. After all, it takes some sizable effort to switch up on your habits — whether it’s your diet or your workout that needs some adjusting, don’t be afraid to do some research and find your starting point. Lucky for you, we here at Weekly Sauce have done the bulk of the research for you and we’ve come up with a short list of ideas to get you a little closer to your fitness goals. Remember — don’t drive yourself crazy about numbers on the scale, since “healthy” doesn’t necessarily mean “super skinny.”
Clear It Out
The first step to meeting your new year fitness goals is cleaning your slate, essentially. Make sure that you reach out to your doctor first, to run your plan by her/him. The trend du jour is to detoxify before kicking off with a juice cleanse. The drink of choice? Try a healthy dosage of charcoal juice. Food-grade carbon, or activated charcoal, is flavorless and typically blended with ingredients like citrus zest and spinach to pull certain toxins directly out of the digestive tract. Crazy, right? Supposedly, in doing this, it helps brighten your skin — even while it’s getting all of the “bad stuff” out of your body. Dirty Lemon makes a raw detox from cold-pressed lemon juice, organic dandelion root, ginger root and, of course, the charcoal. The “daily detox” is vegan and gluten-free but they claim that it isn’t a cleanse — simply a way to get the toxins out while allowing you to indulge or “say yes more.” One week, or six doses, are $65 and can be shipped to your home. If you like having some variety, California-based Juice Served Here has eight detox juice bottles that you could subscribe to weekly for $75. Their Detox Pack includes Charcoal Lemonade, Field of Greens (spinach, kale, romaine, parsley, cucumber, celery, micro greens) and something called The Pipe Cleaner (apple, lemon, extra ginger), which we’re sure is less intimidating than it sounds.
Keep It Clean
So you’ve detoxed and you feel like you’re ready to take on anything. Cool. Try an actual juice cleanse now though, just to replenish the nutrients you may have lost while getting the toxins out during that week or two before. Juice Served Here offers a Green Pack, eight bottles of juice per week at $75. There is a slight variation between the three offered but they all pack loads of spinach, kale, parsley, and celery to boot. There are plenty of vitamins to be had in kale alone — Vitamin A, C, and Calcium abound! Just be sure to read up on the potential dangers of juice cleanses beforehand, though.
Exercise Your Choices
Okay, so you hate running. You may not want to join CrossFit either, although it looks like fun every time those guys run sprints around the block. If it’s been a while since your last workout, so you may want to start off slowly — but effectively — if you want to make sure those new year fitness goals stick. Jumping right into high-impact workouts every other day may lead to a fast burnout, so take your time and really think about what your new year fitness goals are trying to accomplish. Do you want to tone up? Pure Barre studios are popping up everywhere, in various states. Stop by one day and take a class specifically targeting your “problem” area — from the thighs to your stomach and even your butt, these barre sessions should get you right in no time. If you do decide on taking barre, invest in a couple of cutesy pieces from Sweaty Betty to make the grind seem a little more bearable. The Athlete Tank and the Turn Out Dance Leggings should hang in there as you try and make sense of first position and second — but hey, at least you aren’t running laps!
Keep Sippin’
Three out of four items on this “New Year Fitness Goals” list are telling you what to put into your body. This is super important, and we can’t say it enough: It’s cool to work out diligently but a lot of times the issue with our health is what we’re choosing to eat (and drink). Try keeping a food journal for a couple of weeks and write down everything you put in your mouth and the time. That way you can look back and review what time of day you have a sweet tooth, what time of day you crave salt and how much you’re actually consuming. That being said, remember to drink lots of the “right” sort of fluid. Water is always good in addition to the juices mentioned above. Also, Panatea offers something called “matcha” — green tea leaf powder straight from Japan. The matcha is mixed into hot water and the benefits are sublime — focus, energy, and a boost in metabolism. Not to mention, this drink is another route to take if you’d like to detox sans the charcoal.
