How To Get The ‘Old You’ Back – Only Better!

By Donna Aston

Life is busy and many of us put our health on the back burner while raising a family and pursuing a career. Sound like you? The good news is while you may have let your health and self-care slide, you can the ‘old you’ back, only much, much better!

Here are my seven tips to regaining your health and confidence:

1. Nourish your body. Rather than focussing on what you ‘shouldn’t’ eat, focus on nourishing your body with a balance of whole foods. Your need for protein and calcium increases with age, so allowing yourself to become deficient in either can be detrimental to your muscle and bone health. Ensure you are consuming a portion of protein in each meal, a diverse range of colourful, fibrous plant foods and unrefined healthy fats and oils.

2. Feed your brain. Make a deal with yourself to learn something new every day. Keeping your mind engaged is not only great for your cognitive function, but it also gives us a sense of purpose.

3. Be kind. Don’t sweat the small stuff and make friends with your body. Prioritise important over urgent. Don’t bow to someone else’s timeline and know how to say No when you need to make space around yourself.

4. Move it. We have muscle-memory, so we can regain any diminished lean muscle tone at any age. This is your foundation of metabolically active tissue, which not only supports your bones and joints, it also provides structural support for your skin as you begin to shed excess body fat. Strength training is critical to changing your body composition – more lean, less fat – regardless of whether you need to lose weight.

Image by Kristina Litvjak/Unsplash

5. Prioritise sleep. You may need to consider what interferes with your sleep and make some lifestyle changes to allow your body adequate rest and recovery. Keep your room cool (<18 degrees), avoid screentime two hours before bedtime, avoid caffeine after midday, don’t eat three hours before going to bed and remember that alcohol is known to shorten your sleep duration and interfere with sleep quality. A solid 7-9 hours sleep a night is crucial for optimal physical and mental health.

6. Don’t snack. Stick with three balanced meals a day and fast for at least 5 hours in between. Snacking prevents your body from readily accessing stored fat for fuel (fat loss), compromises digestion and exacerbates inflammation.

7. Be aware. At the heart of your lifestyle non-negotiables is self-awareness, self-care, understanding priorities and having a deep sense of purpose. We need to have integrity in our actions and tie our lifestyle habits to our core values. Health isn’t a destination. It’s a way of life.

Donna Aston is one of Australia's top nutritionists and is passionate about improving the health of Australians. She developed the online program AstonRX, which focuses on improving metabolic function and gut health. See Donna at AstonRX.com.