Many people depend on diet changes alone to lose weight. However, this is a mistake. You can lose weight with diet alone, but you will plateau sooner and you will be unable to get your 'treats" and still lose weight. This will make you less likely to continue eating in a healthy manner on a continuing basis.
Exercise gives you control over your weight loss and flexibility in your diet. Making it more likely for you to sustain your weight loss. Let's say, you have a dinner party on Friday. You can prepare for it in two ways: reduce your eating by the amount of extra calories you'll consume or increase your exercise.
Cutting calories before or after the event helps and probably should be only part of the mix. Adding exercise won't make you feel so deprived. And the point of the Get Real! approach is to create a sustainable weight-loss program which doesn't cause you to feel hungry all the time or being cheated out of the good foods other people eat.
I consider exercise payment for my treats. If I want cheesecake, I can walk an extra two hours that week or do an extra hour of aerobics. But I always make my payment in advance. I Don't "buy" my treats on credit. In fact, if you eat your treat within an hour or so after exercising, you have the added benefit of burning the calories more efficiently.
Exercise also provides you with health benefits besides weight-loss. Aerobic exercise builds up your heart, improves your breathing, increases your endurance and gives you more energy. Strength training builds muscle strength and defines and shapes your body. Anything which increases your level of physical activity can lower your cholesterol and possibly delay the onset of diseases of old age like Alzheimer's disease.
I hope you are ready to get perspiring.
Types of Exercise So, you've decided to exercise. But maybe you are bewildered by all the options. You have aerobics, weights, Pilates, machines, floor exercises, running, walking, stepping, dancing, sports, kickboxing and the list goes on and on. Finding the right combination of exercises to fit your weight-loss plan is important for lasting weight-loss. Find out about your options and the benefits of each.
How to Start If, like me, you did little, if any, exercise since high school or college, it will take some time to get back into an exercise routine. Here are a few relatively painless ways to start.
I think many of us don't exercise because of fitness club ads on TV. We see people lifting huge weights or dancing in perfect unison or using machines which look like something from a medieval dungeon. And, as with exercise, we figure we need to do everything at once. I remember joining a gym and meeting with a trainer who ran me through this big ol' one hour routine. I hadn't worked out since high school. Actually, I hadn't really worked out in high school. We did about 10 minutes of calisthenics and then did some sport or another. Whenever possible, I tried to get lost until time to leave. So, for me to jump right into an hour routine of aerobics, circuit training, weights and floor exercises frankly scared the living daylights out of me and I let my membership expire.
Later, I discovered that a more gradual approach is not only less frightening, but also more effective over all.
Start by simply increasing your general level of physical activity. Park a couple of blocks away from work. Walk to the corner store instead of driving. Lose the remote. Play ball with your kids instead of Mario Brothers. This will help you develop more stamina and energy.
After you become more active in your everyday life, add a little bit of planned exercise. It might be a daily 30 minute brisk walk or 10 minutes a day with an aeorbics tape or bicycling for a half hour or so.
Another idea is to join a class, but only go for 15-20 minutes to start and then add 2 minutes a week until you can make it through the whole session.
Which brings us to the principle of 10 percent. Start out exercising up to your reasonable limit, then each week increase the difficulty by 10 percent. If you are doing 10 crunches this week, do 11 next and 12 two weeks from now.
Before you know it, that 15 minutes which totally exhausted you will go by so fast that you wonder where it went. It takes time, but hey, you aren't pushing a deadline are you?
Keeping Motivated Remember that exercise machine you bought which is gathering dust in the garage - or is it the storage shed? Remember those workout videos you used for a whole week one time? And then there was that health club membership. That lasted almost a month, didn't it? Okay, we've all been there decided to start to exercise and then after only a few weeks stopped. Here are some tips on staying the course with exercise.
Remember that exercise machine you bought which is gathering dust in the garage - or is it the storage shed? Remember those workout videos you used for a whole week one time? And then there was that health club membership. That lasted almost a month, didn't it? Okay, we've all been there decided to start to exercise and then after only a few weeks stopped. Here are some tips on staying the course with exercise.
First, start slow and build up your stamina and strength. Many of us get discouraged because we try to do too much too soon and fail. Start with 15-20 minutes a day three or four days a week and work up from there.
Secondly, learn about proper exercise technique. This is especially important when doing resistance exercises such as weights and crunches. Improper technique can cause muscle strain or even injury. The more you know about how to prevent such painful events the less likely you are to drop out because of injury.
Third, don't go it alone. Have some accountability. Workout with a friend. Take a class. Hire a personal trainer. Research shows that people who engage in a weight loss program with others are more likely to sustain the weight loss over time.
Fourth, make a standing appointment with yourself. Monday at 6:45 p.m.; Tuesday at 5:00 p.m., and Wednesday at 5:45 p.m. you will find me at the gym. I consider it an appointment just like any other. And it takes something pretty important for me to break it.
Fifth, when you don't feel like you can exercise, go for five. Say to yourself, I'll exercise for 5 minutes and if I don't feel any better by then I'll stop. Often, once you start, it's easy to add another five and another until you have your full workout.
Sixth, reward yourself for passing exercise milestones. I bought some exercise clothes after I was able to go an hour in my aerobics class. Rewards reinforce behavior. And this is certainly a behavior you want reinforced.
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