There’s no denying that living on a balanced diet and exercise plan will help you stay slim and looking healthy and youthful.

Exercise can prevent cancer, osteoporosis and other conditions for which women are statistically at a higher risk. But when it comes down to it, it’s all about sticking to a regimen, breaking bad habits and sticking to the good ones. So to help you out we’ve got the best tips you’ll ever need.

1. Eat clean

Eating clean is the cornerstone of healthy nutrition, so we can’t overstate it enough. This means eating nutrient-dense foods that don’t contain additives, excessive fat or sugar and are not processed. To get the most out of your workouts your body requires proper nutrition, which means eating clean, eating lean and eating often!

2. Increase exercise intensity

Losing weight is all about burning more calories than you consume. To get the most from your time in the gym, whether its 30 minutes or an hour, use high intensity training to burn more calories per minute and start seeing the results sooner!

3. Rest

While the time you spend lifting weights or running on the road is important, if you don’t take the time to let your muscles recover then you won’t see the results you want. When you exercise you stress the muscle and cause micro-trauma to the muscle cells. It is only when you rest and feed the damaged muscle with the proper nutrition that your body starts to respond to exercise. As such, it is important that you give yourself at least one day’s rest during the week and that you include periods of active rest and recovery in your programme to avoid training plateaus and overtraining.

4. High intensity cardio

High intensity interval training (HIIT) has been proven to burn more fat than steady-state cardio and also helps elevate your metabolism for a longer period of time after training. By working through a wide heart rate range during a 45min spinning session, for instance, will burn more fat and more calories than 45min of the stationary bicycle as it uses more energy systems, increases post-exercise oxygen consumption for a prolonged calorie ‘after-burn’ and places greater demands on your cardiovascular system. It also releases a different set of hormones due to the intensity, which aid in muscle building and fat loss, whereas steady-state cardio increases the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which can lead to increased fat absorption.

5. Challenge yourself

Setting yourself a goal is important, but you can make the journey there more interesting by setting yourself a number of smaller goals or challenges along the way. When you achieve or complete them you will have a feeling of accomplishment, which will give you the motivation you need to keep working towards your next goal. It is also important to challenge yourself at every training session in an effort to constantly improve your performance.