Exercise
No one wants to hear it. Everyone wants an easier fix. However, the truth is that aside from a great diet, exercise is the best way to keep your body fit, trim, and healthy. Exercise alone burns calories, strengthens your heart, improves concentration and stamina, improves lung-capacity, promotes feelings of happiness and contentment, increases energy, fights off diseases like cancer, wards off high cholesterol and blood pressure, and greatly reduces the risk of premature death. There is no better way to support your diet than through exercise.
A little bit goes a long way
If you are out of shape it is likely that you cringe at the word exercise. However, becoming an “exercise” does not necessarily mean become a person who runs marathons or is the star of the local jazzercise class. In fact, just walking briskly 1/2 hour a day is enough exercise to reap all of the aforementioned benefits!
A brisk 1/2 hour walk burns 100 calories. To lose any amount of weight, you must follow remember that what goes in should come out. If it doesn’t come out… it will sit there, in the form of fat and cellulite, on your hips or stomach or thighs. A person who does not exercise burns fewer calories while sitting than an active person burns while they are sitting. This is because even just a 1/2 hour of walking a day boosts your metabolism, which is turns mean your body burns more calories throughout the day, even when you aren’t walking.
Try lifting some weights!
Want to burn even more calories? Incorporate strength training into your exercise routine. People who participate in both cardio and weight training burn more calories, are stronger and healthier, and are more likely to maintain a healthy weight than those who do just one or the other. Although lifting weights does not burn as many calories as an intense session on the elliptical might, weight lifting isn’t over when it’s over. I.e., when you lift weight you are creating muscle, and creating that muscle takes energy, and that energy comes from… calories. Muscle burns more calories than any other tissue in the body. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn throughout the day.
How do I even know where to begin?
Begin small. Take a week and make an effort to walk 1/2 hour five days a week. Keep a journal of your calorie intake and output. Studies prove that people who record their food and exercise routines are more likely to lose weight than those who do not. Seek exercise and diet support through a friend, an exercise class, a gym membership, or online forums.
After the initial week you should have assessed how much food you are actually taking in and out much energy you are putting out. Step up your exercise plan! Weight loss is best accomplished when the exerciser varies his or her workout. This happens for two reasons: 1) a variety exercises continuously challenge the body to do new things and 2) the exerciser is less likely to get bored and quit exercising if it’s new and different every week. Ride the exercise bike, go for a jog, take an aerobics class, etc. When you feel lifting weights is effortless, make sure you up the poundage!
Finally, try relaxing a bit
Exercise relieves stress. Stress can cause overeating. Overeating can cause weight gain. Try a yoga class in order to center your mind and let go of anxieties and worries. Take your anger toward you co-worker out on the treadmill. Ride your bike in a park that’s beauty inspires you. You may not believe it now, but you will actually begin looking forward to exercising. It will make you more confident, more adventurous, more relaxed… and better looking, too! And after while, you will begin to think that exercising WAS the easy fix after all.