The beginning of the year is filled with positive goals. You’ve made your resolutions. You’ve committed (or maybe just considered) a dry January. You’ve pressed pause on the busyness of life after dashing through the holidays, and you feel ready to make changes for a happier, healthier you.
However, the road to poor health can be paved with good intentions. Jumping in blindly and trying to reserve past wrongs without help can lead to accidental—but serious—harm and injury.
Our team at Elitra Health Center can keep you safely on the path to success. Below, we’ve outlined the common mistakes people make when trying to get healthy, as well as how Elitra’s expert team can correct and finetune your positive, new habits.
Choosing the wrong diet
It’s easy to get stuck on whatever diet is sweeping the headlines. Right now, that trendy diet is keto. With the “transformation” stories and the indulgence-friendly guidelines, it’s easy to see the appeal. You can eat all the cheese you want—and still lose weight! But if you don’t take into account your blood pressure and salt intake, you’re setting yourself up for a huge health risk.
“Keto diets should only be used under clinical supervision and only for brief periods,” Francine Blinten, R.D., a certified clinical nutritionist and public health consultant in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, told Healthline.
Keto also is not an optimal diet for someone trying to amass muscle, which is what allows you to keep weight off long-term. “It can do more harm than good,” Blinten said. “It can damage the heart, which is also a muscle.”
Trying to bypass fads by reducing your caloric intake to below 1,200, however, also isn’t the solution, and it will cause your body to crash and go into withdrawal. You won’t succeed in achieving long-term weight loss—and you’ll put unnecessary stress on your system that will leave you vulnerable to sickness and fatigue.
Instead of getting lost in diet books and trends, leave the work up to our certified nutritionist at Elitra Health Center. Our nutritionist will sit down with you and conduct food diary and stress/behavioral reviews to see what you need from—and enjoy in—your meals.
They’ll select a diet for you based on the results of the wide range of tests and components of the Elitra Health physical, and will select meal and snack solutions for you. You’ll learn what to eat, how much to eat, and even when to eat it (because skipping breakfast is a firm no).
Choosing the wrong exercise
While the humble set of weights remains the same, the fitness industry has changed tremendously in the past ten years. New workouts offer a break from routine and make it easier to lace up your sneakers, but it’s important to make informed decisions about your fitness options.
Someone at risk of arthritis and knee injuries shouldn’t be doing a HIIT workout. On the flipside, if you’ve done the same exercise for the past five years with only slight change in your body composition, just upping the frequency of your workouts isn’t going to challenge your body into results.
Our exercise physiologist can develop a personalized fitness plan for you that accounts for the complete picture of your health. From exercises to quickly burn fat to preventative exercises for bone health, our physiologist can choose and demonstrate every exercise with you to ensure optimal form. They can also make sure you are wearing the right shoe and gear to protect your body while working out, and help you differentiate the good burn from the bad aches.
If you find that in a couple months down the line you’re tired of the exercise or not seeing the expected results, our experts can sit down with you again, talk about the experience and map out a new fitness plan for you.
Eating more calories than they burn
So, you just started a rigorous new workout program, and you find that you now need a lot more fuel to get you through the day? It’s suddenly a lot easier to justify that second serving or that mid-afternoon sweet when you know you’ll be going to the gym later.
All of this is totally expected and acceptable, as your body is burning more calories and building muscle. There’s a fine line, however, to negotiate when increasing your daily calories and carbs to fuel up for your next workout. Unlike what you may have heard, you can’t actually exercise away everything you eat.
Our nutritionist and exercise physiologist can help you determine how to adjust your diet and moderate your portions to best suit your exercise habits and body composition. You’ll learn how to time your workouts and recovery meals to get the most out of both, and you’ll be surprised at how much more you can achieve in the gym when everything falls into place.
Going into it blindly—and alone
Getting healthy takes a village. You need licensed professionals to get you on the right track and motivate you to keep going, and you also need to know what exactly you are working with when you start out on your journey.
Coming in for an Elitra Exam is the best way to kickstart and track your progress.
At Elitra, we will take you through comprehensive lab analysis, body composition and muscle mass analysis, as well as a complete cardio-pulmonary evaluation, full body CT scan and ultrasounds. You’ll spend over five hours with our team enjoying the luxury of our one-of-a-kind medical facility.
You’ll receive all of your results that same day—after wrapping up your tests with a massage. As Elitra’s team of experts only see two to three patients for a day, you’ll have our full attention and energy as we go over the reports, answer your questions and walk you through the next steps.
We’ll coordinate and schedule any specialist follow-ups you need, and will be here to answer and assist with your questions.
It’s expected to some make mistakes while trying to get healthy. With the Elitra Health Center team at your side, you’ll breeze over any bumps in the road—leaving you to focus on the health goals and successes ahead of you.