Starting a Healthier Lifestyle!
How many of us realize that we need to get healthier? How many of us have told ourselves ok tomorrow I am starting a healthier lifestyle, but tomorrow never seems to come?
I don't know how many times I have went to bed at night, promising myself that I will go to the fitness center in the morning, and then I awake and change my mind. It is a fact that most people do not like to exercise in the morning.
While this happens to most of us, it doesn't mean that you should give up altogether, and not exercise. We all need to realize that staying active, and eating right is vital for long term health and wellness. Starting a healthier lifestyle is essential for our health.
You have heard of the old saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.", which means we should do whatever we can to take care of our body, and our health. You will be able to make good food choices, and an exercise plan that can keep you healthy and strong, by knowing your body better.
When you are eating well, you can increase your physical activity, and exercise at the right intensity level. You are actually telling your body that you want to burn a lot of fuel, which translates into burning fat more efficiently for energy.
Proper eating habits plus exercise equals a higher metabolism, which in turn gives you a lot more energy throughout the day. This allows you to do more physical and mental work with a lot less effort.
By exercising you send a constant message to your body asking it to improve your metabolism, strength, and overall fitness and health. Every time you exercise, you body responds by burning fat throughout the day, and into the night. Exercise does not have to be intense to work for you, but it does have to be something you do on a daily basis.
It is recommended that you add cardio exercise at least 4 times a week 20 to 45 minutes, and resistance training 3 to 4 times a week for 20 to 25 minutes. By following this regimen, you will get your aerobic exercise to burn the fat, and the resistance training to increase your lean body mass, which will burn more calories around the clock. Perfect combo!
Sample Exercise Program
- Warm up for about 5 to 8 minutes of light aerobic exercise. This will increase the blood flow, and warm up your tendons and joints.
- Resistance training
trains all your major muscle groups. Do one or two sets of each exercise, and rest 45 seconds between sets.
- Aerobic Exercise: Pick two of your favorite activities, such as walking, jogging, biking, or skating. Pick something that fits your personality and lifestyle. Perform 12 to 15 minutes of the first exercise, and continue with 10 minutes of the second one. Cool down for the last 5 minutes.
- Stretching should be done after your through exercising. Stretch, breath deeply, relax and then maybe add a little meditation to end your exercise circuit.
Always have realistic goals when you start exercising. It will depend on your fitness levels but you should feel the following changes early.
- Between 1 to 8 weeks you should feel better, and have more energy.
- Between 2 to 6 months you should start to notice your body is getting smaller and losing inches. You are becoming a lean machine.
- After 6 months you might notice that you will be losing weight a little faster.
Once you have made that commitment to exercise during the week, just don't stop there, we need to reach the goal of starting a healthier lifestyle. You should also consider changing your diet, and your eating habits. Counting calories, or calculating grams is impractical. Let me suggest a few guidelines that are easy to follow.
- Eat several small meals a day and include a couple of snacks too. This will keep you from feeling hungry during the day.
- Make sure that your meals are healthy and well balances, not junk food.
- Limit your fat intake to only what is necessary to add a little flavor to your food.
- Drink at least 64 ounces or 8 glasses of water daily.
- Take a multi vitamin daily to make sure your body is getting the nutrients it needs.
So let's get get going by starting a healthier lifestyle right now! Let's take care of ourselves so that we can live, long, happy, healthy lives. Let's choose to be thin, fit, and healthy, so that we can achieve the healthy lifestyle that we are striving for.
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