5 Essential Items to get Fit and Lose Weight at Home

With the rise in popularity of home fitness workouts and home fitness equipment, there is now more demand for people to get the great results they want from home. Fitness workouts across the internet and equipment from the likes of Peloton are all good and well. Still, suppose they don't deliver the result you want from your body. In that case, they simply become a waste of time, money, effort, and energy. Just look at how many people own gym memberships but rarely use them.

 

In this article, I share with you the 5 essential items you’re going to need to ensure your weight loss and fitness journey from home is successful!

Here are the 5 essential items you need:

 

  1. Fitness equipment – You will need a set of light & heavy dumbbells, a 5mm thick exercise mat, and a Reebok Deck (adjustable step).

 

  1. Fitness Tracker – You’ll need a tracker that records calories burned, sports/workouts, sleep, and Heart Rate Variability.

 

  1. Ideal Fitness clothing & Trainers – You need clothing that will match your activity. General gym wear is adequate when exercising at home. However, suppose you take up running or any other outdoor fitness regime. In that case, you'll need suitable clothing to do the right job.

 

  1. Nutribullet – This piece of kit will allow you to push in the exact nutrients you will certainly need for your fitness journey. Easy to use, easy to clean and very effective.

 

  1. Digital Journal – You need to track and measure all your workouts so you can see progress or make notes when change is required. Without this, you'll be lost and playing the guessing game with your transformation effort.

 

Home Fitness Equipment

 

There's a mind-boggling amount of choice in home fitness equipment these days; how are you supposed to know what the best thing to purchase is to ensure you achieve your fat loss and fitness goals is? Regardless of your goal, these 3 items provide the best bang-for-buck and will help you get into the shape of your life.

 

Light Dumbbells

A set of light weights around the 3-4kg mark are incredibly effective for executing circuit training routines where you'll need to move your body for 1-2 minutes without stopping. This will create a high intensity on the body after 30 seconds of exercising, mainly when making total body movement patterns such as a lunge and shoulder press. The movement will look and feel simple to start but trust me after you go past 30 seconds, the lactate begins to build, and the burning sensation in the muscles kicks in. Along with muscle burns comes oxygen debt, greatly challenging your cardiovascular system.

 

You can find a library of workouts of this nature on my workout page; click here to watch the inspirational fitness videos.

A pair of 3kg dumbbells will cost approx £24, including shipping. There are plenty of retailers, but here is a link to Amazon.

 

 

Heavy Dumbbells

These are excellent for creating a highly intense impact on the muscular system quickly. Conversely to the light dumbbells, you'll only need to lift this weight for only a few seconds; if you go past 30 seconds lifting these, then the weight is too light. An excellent guide to know the ideal weight to purchase is to aim for a rep range of 10-15 reps max. You should be really struggling to lift the weight in this rep range, and after a few sets, you'll likely drop from 15 to as low as 6 reps.

 

Short bursts of intensity from heavy lifting causes an excellent response from the muscular system. This soon shapes the muscles all over your body, creating a nice aesthetic look whilst benefiting from less time spent exercising.

 

If you're inexperienced with exercise and you have no idea what heavy is for you, then there are a couple of options you can do.

 

  1. Find an experienced friend with a weight training background and ask to join them for a workout one day and explore several different weights and different exercises. You want to aim for a challenging weight when executing a push, pull and squat based exercise, remembering to aim for 10-15 reps zone of struggle.

 

  1. Use a personal Trainer – Hire an experienced Personal Trainer for 1 session, giving them the task to help you find the ideal heavyweight for you following the guidance in point 1. They will effectively find that sweet spot that challenges you, so it's worth paying for if you're a complete exercise novice.

 

  1. DIY – If you're happy to do this yourself, get a gym pass for a day, venture into the free-weights area and try a push, pull, and squat exercise. Here are examples of what to do:

Overhead Press - Standing or Seated

 

Squat

Sumo Squat 

Bent Row

 

5mm Mat

Anything less than 5mm will create nasty friction burns when doing HIIT exercises in the prone position. Planks and their variations will create friction on the elbows, wrists, and palms of hands, so using a 5mm mat will ensure the soft cushion stops any burns. If you experience friction burns, it will make exercising painful for over a week.

Again there are plenty of retailers, but Amazon is a safe bet and decently priced at around £18.

 

Reebok Deck (Adjustable Bench)

The Reebok deck is an excellent piece of equipment that allows you to do many isolation and integration exercises particularly when using heavyweights. The platform provides excellent stability and allows you to literally execute thousands of different exercises. The other great benefit of this piece of equipment is its practicality. You can collapse the deck, so it takes little room in your home, and it's light enough to pack away in your car to take with you on your travels if you're on the road for a while. The price point is between £90 - £130, but it's worth every penny and can be found in most popular retailers like Amazon or Argos

There are many cheaper versions available on the market; however, from previous experience, I've found low priced adjustable benches to be of inferior quality. As a result, you end up needing a replacement within a few months of usage.

 

Fitness Tracker

As a Liverpool & Wirral Home Personal Trainer, I constantly push my clients into keeping a fitness tracker. You need a digital metric of your input & output data to see your health & fitness progress. This is so you can understand the actual outcomes of the effort you are putting in.

 

Fitness watches and monitors are inexpensive these days. Whatever brand you decide to go with, make sure the device can record your workout data, sleep, calories, and Heart Rate Variability. In an article coming soon, I'll go into the depths of how to use a fitness tracker to get the best use from it but, for today, here are the basics you need to know.

 

  • Workout data – Record all the workouts you do so you can start to assess how many calories you burn during your workout time. As you get more experienced, you'll look at heart training zones for your workouts which is an excellent monitoring tool for your fitness level. But, for now, just get focused on how much you burn for each routine you complete.

 

  • Sleep – Arguably one of the most critical components of health. Insufficient sleep can cause you a lot of problems both physiologically and psychologically. Mastering your sleep patterns is vital to excellent health, so using a tracker to see the length and quality of sleep you have each night is a great tool to help you maximise your recovery. If your sleep patterns are good you will function well the following day and optimise your hormonal function to benefit your fitness and weight loss journey.

 

  • Calories – Although Fitness trackers can be up to 20% inaccurate, tracking your output helps you monitor your daily calorie expenditure. This is a good tool for weight loss if you have little experience with nutrition.

 

  • Heart Rate Variability – This variation in time between your heartbeats. It's an excellent tool to monitor because it allows you to track how much stress you're under and how well or poorly you can recover. Low HRV is correlated with lower levels of performance, poor recovery, illness, and injury. The aim is to improve your score over time. As you become better by reducing your stress load and improving your sleep patterns, you will experience enhanced mental and physical well-being.

 

 Ideal Fitness Clothing and Trainers

 

This may seem like a less apparent essential item. However, there are two excellent reasons to wear ideal fitness clothing.

 

  1. Functionality – Wearing the right gear can make a big difference in your exercise performance. Bleeding nipples, blisters on feet, and crotch rashes can be all part of the fun during your fitness journey. Wearing the correct footwear and using soft fabrics can stop these painful irritations (and they are painful). However, your footwear is also critical. The impact on the mechanics of your foot function when exercising plays a significant role in your ability to exercise effectively. So it's worth investing in trainers from your local high street running store that will help you and not hinder you when training. For clothing, my advice is to use retailers like Nike, Gym Shark, Adidas, who provide soft but tight fabrics that have been ergonomically designed to fit you perfectly. Make sure you avoid loose clothing, especially if you're looking to run.  

 

  1. Your Identity – This is about how you feel when you exercise. Believe it or not, how you feel in your clothing will impact how you show up for an exercise session. Along with finding functional clothing for what you want to do, find clothes that suit your body shape well and flatter you. Feeling good when exercising is essential. Conversely, feeling out of sorts because your fitness clothing doesn't fit your body well creates another barrier between you and getting a workout done. Make it easy and find clothing that makes you look and feel good!

 

Nutribullet

 

If you want to get fit, lose weight and be healthy, then you're going to need a Nutribullet. By now, you should know the importance of good nutrition. However, if you want a simple guide to creating your ideal nutrition plan to achieve your goals, simply visit my nutrition page packed with guidance and recipes from my Home Fitness Kitchen.

 

Why a Nutribullet?

 

I use this as my preference because of the following:

 

  1. Blending capability – It doesn't matter what you throw into this thing. It will mix it within seconds. So any veg, fruits, nuts, ice and anything else you want to create a smoothie, this thing will do it!

 

  1. Easy clean – No mess, hassle cleaning. You simply unscrew the base, run under the tap, and it's done.

 

  1. Convenience – The containers are perfect for blending anything you want but then drinking from it immediately. You don't need to use more cups or containers, simply throw your stuff in the container, screw on the base cap, blend and then drink. In addition, each container comes with a screw cap to place on top if you wish to take the container with you in the car or to the gym, making it very convenient and practical.

 

  1. Exact Nutrition – When you start learning what your body needs from a nutrition perspective, you'll soon take the fuss out of providing your body with the specific nutrients required. You can literally create a complete meal within seconds with the convenience to take it with you to your place of work or on the road.

 

The Nutribullet is a no-nonsense and convenient way to perfect your nutritional intake on your health and fitness journey, so the price point of approx. £60 is undoubtedly well worth paying for! You'll find a Nutribullet in many high street and online retailers.

 

Digital Journal

 

The success of your fitness journey will become reliant upon your ability to track and measure your progress. The best exercise and nutrition plan counts for very little if you’re not keeping a close eye on the reality of the things you are doing.

 

Suppose you follow an exercise plan but fail to execute several sessions or miss some exercises without keeping a journal. This will mean you'll reach a point where you're expecting to see good results only to be disappointed. Likewise, suppose you've worked hard but don't seem to have got the results you wanted. In that case, you’ll only have yourself to blame if you haven’t been monitoring your fitness and nutrition progress.

 

When you record what you’ve done for each workout and track your food intake for each day, at the end of the week, you'll be able to see your efforts and how closely you've adhered to your plan. If you know that you've fallen way short of your program because it seems too difficult to match your lifestyle, then you need to adjust the plan… Not the Goal!!

 

Using a digital journal for your exercise and nutrition plan will also allow you to find what is working best for you. Don't forget, plans are just intelligent guesses about what will work for you. All plans will deliver results, but your ability to execute and keep consistent is what really matters. The only accurate way to know is to track your progress by keeping a daily digital journal.

 

You don’t need to purchase any special apps, simply use the notes on your phone and keep a folder with all your entries. Update your journal each day with your activity and nutrition consumption, then review it at the end of the week. Then see where you need to improve or where you need to change the programme to a more realistic schedule.  

 

Remember, tracking and measuring is a science-based approach to success regardless of what you want to accomplish. This process gives you the ability to consistently achieve your goals by adapting, tweaking and enhancing as you move forward. This is how winning is done… So do it!!

 

To conclude

 

You can get into the best shape of your life from home. With these 5 essential items, you'll significantly strengthen your chances of success. Using these tools, how I've explained form the critical components of any goal-setting programme. Despite their specificity to fitness and diet, they are key principles of achieving goals.

 

Regardless of your fitness, weight loss or life goals, use these principles, and you won't go wrong!

 

Until next time

Keep Healthy

 

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