DIA Blog 016 - Get Fit Without The Gym! Why Expats NEED To Work Out And How To Find The Right Plan For You by H8R

by H8R

Expat life can be pretty demanding. You've decided to leave your hometown, friends, family, and the comforts of home behind.

Many expats find themselves in an unfamiliar (and sometimes unwelcoming) environment with a host of challenges to face and obstacles to overcome.

Take into account that you've also ditched your support system and those expat blues can start to sink in PDQ (pretty damned quick).

As people become depressed, they often find comfort in food. If you start to adopt a sedentary lifestyle and put on some extra pounds, this can compound the effects of that expat despair and lead you to a dark, dark place.

So what can you do about this?

When life gets you down, it's best to get moving! Exercise has been shown to provide many benefits for your physical and mental health including a better mood and sustained energy throughout the day.

If you can consistently stick to a fitness plan, you'll find that other parts of your life start to get easier!

There are a lot of reasons why people put off getting on an exercise plan.

Maybe you say to yourself, "I don't have enough time," "I don't have enough money for a gym membership," or "I don't speak enough of the language to start a membership." 

These can be some valid reasons, but if you really want to achieve a goal, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from making some progress.

I've recently started doing a new workout plan that I've created. Depending on how much time you have, you can get in relatively good shape without a gym membership and tons of equipment.

But before we get into specifics, let's take a look at the big picture!

Deciding to do something

First, you have to identify your fitness goals. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to get ripped? Do you want to have overall better health? Do you want to be able to run a marathon?

Whatever your goals are, you're going to have to keep them in mind and also figure out a way to measure success.

Remember to keep your goals realistic to avoid discouragement.

It can also help to incentivize your workouts. For example, you can say to yourself if I reach this particular goal by this particular time, I'll reward myself by (insert name of an activity you usually don't do but enjoy here).

Rewarding yourself based on your performance can be a great motivator and a way to hold yourself accountable to your plan.

Components of a good workout plan

Searching for different types of workouts online will provide you with an abundance of differing (and sometimes contradictory) information.

It can be hard to sift through all of the fad workouts, diets, clickbait, and gadgets that are constantly being marketed online.

For me, the old school approach works well. A good diet and exercise plan will (usually) always work.

When it comes to choosing and good exercise plan, the first thing to emphasize is safety.

If you are going to hurt yourself doing some crazy maneuvers that you're not ready for, you're kinda defeating the purpose of working out.

Next, you want something that will work the entire body and give you some cardio too. The amount of strength training vs cardio you do will vary depending on your goals, but you definitely want to be doing some upper body, lower body, core, and cardiovascular exercise.

The bottom-line is that if you find something that works for you and is healthy, stick to it!

Finding the right diet and sticking to it

Like a good workout, the best diet to try is one you can actually maintain. People may be getting results with some of the fad diets out there, but just make sure you choose one that's healthy and fuels your body while not being too extreme.

If you lose 5 pounds in one week just to put it back on plus MORE the next week, you're setting yourself up for failure.

As someone who had gained and lost weight a few times, I can tell you that the best thing to do is cut out empty calories.

That means it's time to put the bag of chips away and avoid the ice cream. Sugary snacks and alcohol can also put a wet blanket on your fitness goals.

Don't get me wrong, you can still enjoy some of those guilty pleasure snacks every once in a while, but if they're part of your daily diet you really won't lose any weight.

The key will be to only eat them sparingly (maybe this can be your reward, huh?) and to limit the amount you eat at a given time (portion control!).

That's it!

Now you should have an idea of what kind of diet/exercise plan you'd want to start and how intense you want it to be.

In the next post, I'll talk more specifically about what I'm doing and how it's working for me.