Achieving Success With Your Health and Fitness: Don’t Give Up When You Slip Up
It is Sunday night. As your head hits the pillow, you decide that this week you really will stick to your diet and exercise regimen. You will not have your usual doughnut in the morning at the coffee shop. You plan to have a salad for lunch and skip dessert after dinner all week. You will also head for the gym after work before going home three times this week.
It seems like a reasonable plan and you have every intention of sticking to it. But as you pick up your coffee on Monday morning, you just can’t help ordering a doughnut too. And since you have already ruined your diet for the day, you grab a fast food meal for lunch, skip the gym and have a big bowl of ice cream after dinner. If this sounds at all familiar to you, read on. Read the rest of this entry »
It doesn’t matter who you are in the world, your body needs aerobic exercise. A healthy body and quality way of life requires it. It has many of pros and will help you perform greater in all aspects of your life. So what are the benefits of aerobic exercise?
The US has seen an enormous increase in the mumber of people considered obese by the medical community. In fact many call it an obesity epidemic. To combat this we find all sorts of pharamceutical companies selling the “quick fix” pills, powders, and lotions that do nothing to actually help people take the fat off and keep it off.
The most common challenge that people I talk to face is how to incorporate fitness into their lives. They know they have to do something to get in shape but they really don’t know how. It can be discouraging because of the abundance of information out there. So much that you may not know where to begin.
These days there are many big brands that cater to sports, fitness and recreation enthusiasts. Nike catapulted to number one when they hired basketball legend Michael Jordan to endorse for them because at the height of that advertising campaign everyone indeed wanted to be like Mike. They continued their reign and reinforced their being number one when they chose golf’s amazing newest star then Tiger Woods as another endorser.
This week I was asked an interesting question concerning drinking beer and exercising. It seems that a former Navy Radioman has developed quite a gut since retiring, and was curious about whether he should give up his beer to lose weight? Not only does the gentleman enjoy drinking about 2-4 beers daily, he also has quit exercising. Moderate beer consumption is actually healthy, so I set out to define “moderate” as well as educate on the basics of caloric intake and caloric expenditure. The radioman is not suffering from a beer belly but an INACTIVITY BELLY! Yes, you can still drink beer and be very fit.
Because your body is about 50-55% water, you can temporarily stage-manage your weight with diet pills and fad diets but, you cannot manipulate your body fat percentage. Body fat percentage is a more meaningful metric for gauging physical fitness than what you can get out of height and weight tables.
