My fitness journey, workout essentials, favorite workouts, meal hacks, and more!

I have never written about my health and fitness journey but it is an area of my life I have remained pretty committed to and consistently excited about for a number of years. Being overweight from the ages of 10 to 12 when I first moved to the US, I adopted a fitness and healthy-eating mindset pretty early in life.

In my mid-20s when I moved to Ghana, exercise became paramount for my mental and emotional well-being while navigating new terrain and wresting with old demons. These days, the combined benefits of looking fit and keeping mentally and physically strong keep me pretty tied to health and fitness.

Still, I have periods of low motivation and/or high stress that take me off the path of intentional effort this goal. In fact, I was going to the gym periodically earlier this year but with consistent events/ commitments, nonstop travel, and some emotional turmoil, my fitness journey took a hit.

The last two months under ‘stay-at-home’ orders in NYC has given me a rare opportunity to double down on my commitment to health and fitness. In the relative stillness, I have found the space to set incredible fitness/wellness goals and I am finally beginning to see progress towards their materialization! Though the early signs of a 6-pack deeply excite me, it is the mental and emotional stability that has resulted from aiming to keep fit that I keep me deeply grateful for committing to fitness.

For anyone similarly interested in what committing to fitness could look like and mean for them, here are some tips that have helped me along the way to getting back in shape. As a caveat, I am an extreme foodie and cook a ton (these days). So if you love to eat and aspire for health and to challenge yourself, I think my tips and workouts may be a good fit for you.

My Workout Essentials

With gyms closed, I have done well with just my yoga mat, jump rope, my sweatbands, and 3lb weights and yams for the occasional 5-lber workout. Like most people, I have never worked out consistently from home as there was never a need to and I am surprised by the results I see from the minimal resources I have available to me.

On using sweatbands

I think workout aids like sweatbands, etc are great, especially as I get older and burning fat becomes more difficult! I have waist and thigh sweatbands in particular. I find it especially difficult to lose weight in my thighs and I find that the Sweet Sweat thigh bands, which I actually bought 4 years ago while in Ghana, really help me to ramp up the heat and sweat in that area. I also use the brand’s waist trainer and find it really useful for keeping good posture while I work out. Both men and women can use these.

My Favorite Workouts

I have stuck to YouTube workouts during this period. Friends have sent me IG workouts and I just can’t get into them. I have realized that I have a hard time with solo exercise videos. I also dislike non-challenging workouts for my strength level. I LOVE workouts videos that have 2+ people because of the banter and team motivation. I also love workout videos that usually go above my strength level so that I can push myself and have something to aspire to. With those, I usually start with the modifications then work my way up.

For the last month, I’ve been doing cardio/hit 2x, dance 1x, arms 1x, booty/thigh 1x, run/jump rope 1x for a total of 6 workout days during the week. I usually workout in the mornings before my day gets busy and fatigue sets in. I always start my morning with warm water, lemon, and honey then eat a fruit 30 mins after before I start my working routine. My routine consists of a 10min yoga stretch, then a 40 min workout activity of the 6 types I mentioned above. On my rest day, I do an hour-long yoga session to stretch deeply (see below).

Here are some of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE workouts this season :

ARMS

THIGHS (Absolute Burner)

FULL BODY

DANCE

YOGA with Kassandra is the BEST!

Then STRETCHING changed my workout game…

I used to be among the annoying crowd that runs out of class at the gym during cool down because I had more important things to do. These days, I find that to actually keep from getting sore or injured, and to have the energy to return to working out the next day, I must do the warm-up and cooldowns. For high energy folks like myself, they seem boring initially but they pay off down the line. I also use my rest day to do some deep stretches and I think that has been a real game-changer for setting me up for the next week. Here is one of the classes I love:

On taking on occasional fitness challenges

Next week, I will try one of Chloe Ting’s challenges. Chloe Ting has become a household name in the last few weeks for her workout challenges that are giving people insane results. As I mentioned above, I am not big on solo-instructor workouts! I prefer the group/class dynamic but I have tried various in-person challenges in the past and find that they break the monotony of my workouts and allow me to challenge myself through committing to one specific fitness goal for a short period of time. I will keep tabs on how this goes on my IG.

Side Note: I know that one of the challenges I had in Ghana was with data costs so I wouldn’t spend extraordinary amounts of time on YouTube daily. If you find yourself in that predicament, you could download these videos through sites like Y2Mate and refer to them daily or you could also use diagram workout charts which have worked really nicely for me in the past.

On Food

I eat often but I eat well.

I don’t think that we - Africans/Ghanaian - have to give up our beloved traditional staples to stay healthy. I do believe that eating just our carb-heavy traditional diet no longer makes sense for our sedentary lifestyle. So I experiment with ways to make Ghanaian food healthy, including integrating lots of vegetables and substituting certain elements. Here is one such recipe I love:

I also make food from other cultures/diet groups regularly to balance my diet and have fun with food. Here are two of my favorite vegan YouTube channels:

Then, there is the foreign idea of paying attention to portion size. As a Ghanaian, not having heaps of rice on my plate is a struggle but I am making way with this.

And ofcourse, I have learned to up the protein to see weight loss results

For someone who eats meat sparingly, I can struggle with my protein intake. I have been doing well with eating more protein through beans, seeds, and nuts these days because I have time to cook every meal to my taste. I also decided to add some protein supplements to help me keep full and rebuild muscle.

So that’s all for now! Thanks for reading! I hope this helps! Let me know if there is any part of my fitness/health journey you want me to dive into some more and which of these tips/insights you have decided to try/implement. Alongside my daily banter about data science, Africa, and economics, I also share my food experiments and fitness journey on IG. Do join me there.

Wishing us all health & wealth.