Whether your goal is getting fit or merely losing weight, the two tips below will help you achieve your goals. Ultimately weight loss is about creating a caloric deficit – expending more calories than you consume to put it simply. And fitness is about making food and exercise choices that are good for your health.

Here are two simple fitness tips that you should be using if you aren’t already:

Don’t let sports drinks sabotage your workout

So-called sports drinks that are supposed to ‘recharge’ you or supposed to give your workout that ‘extra’ something; are usually laden with sugar. They taste good and may even give your workout an extra something by improving endurance but this benefit is mostly for elite athletes.

For the rest of us the fact is that these sports drinks probably cancel out the caloric deficit that you created by exercising.

To put things into perspective – a 380 ml bottle of a popular sports drink contains about the same number of calories as a Mars bar! Those 266 calories that you just gulped down by way of a sports drink was the equivalent to the number of calories you burned by pounding on the treadmill for half an hour. So, your half an hour of good work just got canceled in a few gulps.

Even sports drinks with artificial sweeteners which contain far fewer calories can have their own fallouts and are best avoided.

This is why most of us should simply stick to plain water. This will help hydrate the body, replenish lost fluid and help you actually reap the benefits of your workout.

Incorporate nuts and seeds in your diet

A simple way to get fit, lose weight and get healthy is to incorporate seeds and nuts in the diet. While nuts such as almonds are highly calorific, the sort of fat they contain is really good for the body. So long as you control the amount that you eat (portion control) these can actually help you lose weight.

In a study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, men and women were divided into two groups who ate the same number of calories per day. However one group ate nuts and the other did not.

According to Dr. Gary Foster, who led the study, nuts can not only help you lose weight they also help lower cholesterol and triglycerides levels as a welcome side effect.