Time is precious, but so is your health! Incorporating healthy living into a busy lifestyle can sometimes feel like spending time you don’t have. At Active8me, we completely understand and want you to experience the value of saving time, that is why we created a stylish, convenient, simple to use and TIME SAVING app that acts like a personal trainer, dietician and life coach in your pocket. Keep scrolling to discover some more smart, time saving hacks for healthy living. Your watch and your waistline will thank you!
Shop, Chop and Portion all in One Day
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success” – Alexander Bell
Every week the Active8me app gives you access to a full week worth of meals and their recipes. Write your shopping list then prepare and portion as much of the raw ingredients into daily meal containers. You can easily slice, dice and chop vegetables. Pre-weigh or measure noodle and rice portions. Boil eggs and gather condiments necessary for flavour and dressing. Taking the time to prepare for the week ahead will save time and prevent your excuses for making bad food choices when things are busy and the week is in full swing.
Blend it!
Drinking your fruit and vegetables is a quick, easy, filling and delicious way to extract and effectively digest all the nutrients. Blending is not to be confused with juicing. Unlike juicing, blending allows you to retain all the fibre from the pulp and the benefits of a slower release of nutrients and sugar into the bloodstream.
Read about how adding fibre to your diet can help you lose weight.
Try the favourite Active8me Avocado and Kale Protein Smoothie for breakfast: combine 1 stick of celery, 1 cup kale leaves, half of a medium cucumber (seeds removed), 5 mint leaves, half an avocado, half cup low-fat yoghurt, half cup ice cubes and blend! This fresh and silky smoothie is yummy, filling and has the benefits of containing weight loss wonder foods.
Boost your immunity
You’re already super busy and you can’t afford to pick up the bug that’s been infecting your friends and colleagues. Arm yourself with immune boosting foods to avoid the downtime. Foods, such as yoghurt or miso soup, that are rich in probiotics are thought to help enhance your immune function. Ensuring you add the beneficial bacteria, known as probiotics, to your diet will protect your gut health and stimulate your immune system, with some studies suggesting they reduce the severity of respiratory infection symptoms and create a speedier recovery when you do fall ill.
You can also easily snack on vitamin C rich citrus foods, such as oranges or grapefruits that are proven to both lower your risk of infection and speed up recovery of common colds.
Be Equipped for the Snack Attack
Feeling hungry is completely normal and is your body’s natural signal to make you aware that your blood sugar levels are dropping. This is usually after 3 to 4 hours without food or after a particularly vigorous workout. Overcome the learned tendency to reach for the high sugar snack by having some low GI snacks (what is GI you ask? Glycemic Index, learn more here) readily available to fuel your body with enough nutrients to get you through, without spoiling your appetite for the next meal.
Just like your weekly meal prep, you can portion snacks in advance too. Vege sticks can be chopped and dips prepared in batches. Protein shakes are an easy and quick alternative. You can bake an easy pumpkin loaf, slice and freeze it in individual servings. Keeping a stash of wholegrain crackers, nuts, dried berries or a fruit bowl at work means you only need to replenish them every so often, saving you time and money, which you would otherwise waste on vending machines.
Invest in a funky drink bottle
Save yourself time, money and empty calories by utilising a drink bottle for water instead of purchasing sugary soda or fruit juices. Drinking water is an essential part of healthy living. Apart from it being necessary for the transport of nutrients and general functioning of the human body it is filling, removes toxins, promotes clear skin and regular bowel movements. Express your individuality with a funky designer drink bottle (some even come with their own filters) and infuse it with fruits or herbs. Try adding some fresh strawberry, lemon and basil for a sweet, yet zesty tang to your water or freeze fruits into ice cubes to pop in your water bottle as you need them!
Disconnect
You’re a busy person, so it seems counterintuitive to switch off your devices while you eat. Surely, you can multi-task the mindless chore of putting food in your mouth while still being connected to the virtual world? This is exactly the issue! A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that ‘distracted dining’ not only caused a moderate amount of overeating at the time of the meal, but also an increased intake of food later. So, turn off your phone, put away the laptop and make eating a mindful task, where you chew slowly, savour flavour and most importantly avoid the pitfall of overeating and gaining weight.
