It’s Time to Start a Healthy Life

How many times have you gone to sleep at night, swear­ing to your­self that you’ll go to the gym in the next morn­ing, and then just eight hours later, after you get up you changed your mind because you don’t feel like exercising?

While this can hap­pen to all of us, but it doesn’t mean you should drop the ball alto­gether when it comes to stay­ing fit.

The things you need to real­ize is that stay­ing active and eat­ing right are crit­i­cal for long-term health and well­ness, and that an ounce of pre­ven­tion is worth a pound of cure. You know, the more you know about how your body responds to your lifestyle choices, the bet­ter you can cus­tomize a nutri­tion and exer­cise plan that is right for you.

When you eat well, increase your level of phys­i­cal activ­ity, and exer­cise at the proper inten­sity, you are actu­ally inform­ing your body that you want to burn a sub­stan­tial amount of fuel, which trans­lates to burn­ing fat more effi­ciently for energy.

In the other words, proper eat­ing habits plus exer­cise equals fast metab­o­lism, which, in turn gives you more energy through­out the day and allows you to do more phys­i­cal work with less effort.

The true pur­pose of exer­cise is to send a repet­i­tive mes­sage to the body ask­ing for improve­ment in metab­o­lism, strength, aer­o­bic capac­ity and over­all fit­ness and health. Each time you exer­cise, your body responds by upgrad­ing its capa­bil­i­ties to burn fat through­out the day and night, and exer­cise doesn’t have to be intense to work for you, but it does need to be consistent.

Here is what you can do — engag­ing in reg­u­lar car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise four times per week for 20 to 30 min­utes per ses­sion, and resis­tance train­ing four times per week for 20 to 25 min­utes per ses­sion. This bal­anced approach pro­vides a one-two punch, incor­po­rat­ing aer­o­bic exer­cise to burn fat and deliver more oxy­gen, and resis­tance train­ing to increase lean body mass and burn more calo­ries around the block.

Here’s a sam­ple exer­cise pro­gram that may work for you:

* Warm Up — seven to eight min­utes of light aer­o­bic activ­ity intended to increase blood flow and lubri­cate and warm-up your ten­dons and joints.

* Resis­tance Train­ing — Train all major mus­cle groups. One to two sets of each exer­cise. Rest 45 sec­onds between sets.

* Aer­o­bic Exer­cise — Pick two favorite activ­i­ties, they could be jog­ging, row­ing, bik­ing or cross-country ski­ing, what­ever fits your lifestyle. Per­form 12 to 15 min­utes of the first activ­ity and con­tinue with 10 min­utes of the sec­ond activ­ity. Cool down dur­ing the last five minutes.

* Stretch­ing — Wrap up your exer­cise ses­sion by stretch­ing, breath­ing deeply, relax­ing and meditating.

Remem­ber that when you are start­ing an exer­cise pro­gram, it is impor­tant to have real­is­tic expec­ta­tions. Depend­ing on your ini­tial fit­ness level, you should expect the fol­low­ing changes early on.

* From one to eight weeks — Feel bet­ter and have more energy.

* From two to six months — Lose size and inches while becom­ing leaner, clothes begin to fit more loosely. You are gain­ing mus­cle and los­ing fat.

* After six months — Start los­ing weight quite rapidly.

Once you make the com­mit­ment to exer­cise sev­eral times a week, don’t stop there. You should also change your diet and/or eat­ing habits. Count­ing calo­ries or cal­cu­lat­ing grams and per­cent­ages for cer­tain nutri­ents is imprac­ti­cal, instead, I sug­gest these easy-to-follow guidelines:

* Eat sev­eral small meals (opti­mally four) and a cou­ple of small snacks through­out the day
* Make sure every meal is bal­anced — incor­po­rate palm-sized pro­teins like lean meats, fish, egg whites and dairy prod­ucts, fist-sized por­tions of com­plex car­bo­hy­drates like whole-wheat bread and pasta, wild rice, multi-grain cereal and pota­toes, and fist-sized por­tions of veg­etable and fruits
* Limit your fat intake to only what’s nec­es­sary for ade­quate fla­vor
* Drink at least eight 8-oz. glasses of water through­out the day
* Take a multi-vitamin each day to ensure you are get­ting all the vit­a­mins and min­er­als your body needs.

I sup­pose that’s all I can think of for now, hope you start to live the way to wellness.

Enjoy life, we all deserve it