Physical Activity

Becoming More Active To Get Healthy!

 When your goal is to lose weight, first you must realize that you have to consume fewer calories than what you burn, and what you eat must be low in fat. Physical activity will help you to accomplish this; the more exercise that you do compare to what you eat will help to shed the pounds. Exercise is important for many reason, it helps prevent heart attacks and strokes and even diabetes.

One of the things that really hurt people is that they don't eat food for fuel but because of habit, guilt or boredom and even pleasure. Think about it when you are at home doing nothing you tend to think you are hungry, but when you are out and about food is usually not on your mind. One way to prevent these cravings would be to exercise, exercise pulls stored calories in the form of glucose and fat out of the tissues so that blood glucose levels stay even and you do not feel hungry.

Increase calorie burn and you will shed fat, when you exercise you not only burn fat, but also build muscle. Building muscle is very important for long term weight loss and weight loss in general. When you build muscle and exercise frequently your metabolic rate increase, the more muscle you have the more calories you burn because your body works harder and burns more calories to maintain it. Studies show that the majority of people when dieting forget to add strength training or weight training to the exercise regiment and this is not good because if you just do cardio than you are most likely going to lose weight but also muscle. So be sure to add weight training into your exercise.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that you exercise at least 30 minutes a day burning a minimum of 200 to 300 calories; these numbers are more than sufficient for weight loss. You want to workout out at a moderate to fast pace, but not where you have to stop and take a break. A good rule of thumb is if you can walk and talk you should be fine, if you can sing and maintain your level of effort you should probably step it up.

Get up off of the couch, you have to be willing to make exercise a routine and a commitment, I have personally found that first thing in the morning is best because you jumpstart your metabolism and you will feel a lot better through out the day. This might require you to get out of the bed an hour early but if your health is important to you, which it should be than, it is a very small sacrifice, go to bed an hour earlier and you can't lose. Start with this advice and get in the gym or where ever you have to go and as the weight drops your self esteem will increase as well as your looks and your drive will only get stronger but don't quit if you work hard the results will come. You must stay physicaly active.