5 Super Simple Exercise Tips

The majority of people at one point decided to begin exercising. Perhaps even you made a promise to add more exercise into your day. 

If your efforts at exercising are not going as well as you had planned, take a look at these tips. They might help get you back on track.

Tip #1 – Do Something You Enjoy

Exercise doesn’t have to mean spending hours at the gym peddling away on a stationary bike. It doesn’t mean you have to spend money on exercise gadgets you will likely never use, either. Anything you do to get your body moving is going to be better than doing nothing. Walking is an easy exercise that you can do just about anywhere, in any climate. Bike riding, dancing, gardening, weight lifting, swimming, playing a favorite sport, house cleaning and even playing in the yard with your children are just some of the ways you can add exercise into your daily routine.

Tip #2 – Schedule Time for Exercise

As you would a meeting or a doctor appointment, sometimes the only way to make time to exercise is to put it on your daily schedule. We’ve all got busy lives and we’re often so busy taking care of others that we never seem to make time for ourselves. Once exercise becomes part of your daily To-Do list, you’re more likely to do it. Some people have only a certain time during the day available for exercise while others will have to vary the time each day. Some people need a nudge and for them, exercising with a friend is a good solution. Choose whichever way works best for you. Just remember to actually go and do it!

Tip #3 – Remember that Exercise Can Energize

Even though you might feel too tired to exercise, give it a try anyway. You might be surprised to find how energized you feel while you’re at it and afterwards, when you’re finished. Exercise is a great stress-reliever too and if you know anything about stress, you know that it is one of the body’s biggest energy-sappers.

Tip #4 – Don’t be Afraid to Mix it up

Like anything that is done over and over again, exercise can become mundane. When you get bored with exercising, you’re less likely to keep at it. To keep from getting bored with your workout routine, change it. If you’re tired of walking, try cycling. If you’re into weight lifting, try alternating this with cardiovascular exercises throughout the week. Go bowling or play a game of tennis once in a while, and if you find you enjoy these types of activities, join up with a team.

Tip #5 – Always Begin by Warming up

Regardless of the type of exercise you choose, it is very important that you begin each session by warming up your muscles. Stretching helps prevent damage to muscle tissue and it gets your blood flowing. It gets your heart pumping, too. Just five minutes is all it takes to get your exercise session off to a good start.

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Burning Fat vs. Burning Calories

To lose weight and get in shape you must have a good diet and exercise regularly to burn fat. The first thing you must understand about exercise is that just because you are burning calories does not mean you are burning fat. 

Your main focus when you exercise should be losing body fat, and you can’t lose body fat just from burning calories. When we exercise, our bodies will start burning calories, but the calories that are burned are the calories from carbohydrates in our system. In order to burn calories from your stored fat, your body requires the presence of oxygen. There is a certain amount of oxygen that your body needs in order to start burning fat and the only way for you to measure the amount needed for your own body is to keep up with your target heart rate during exercise. Please understand that if you continue to only burn calories from carbohydrates, you will lose mostly “water weight” which leads to a decrease in your metabolism. Also, think of the calories that are burned from carbohydrates as your energy calories. If you lose too much energy calories then your muscles will not receive enough energy to increase your metabolism which indirectly burn fat. Therefore you must increase your calorie intake when you are on an exercise program to replace your burned energy calories.

Burning Fat Calories during exercise

During aerobic exercise, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you are burning fat. You will hear people say that you are only burning sugar (carbohydrates) not fat during the first 10 minutes of exercise. This is true to a certain extent. I say this because you will continue to burn sugar past the 10 minute mark if you are not working out hard enough for your body to want more oxygen; or you are working out too hard and you can’t supply your body with enough oxygen for fat burning. When you exercise you must move at a steady pace (not too fast, not too slow) so your body will utilize your stored fat (not carbohydrates or sugar) as its energy source. Also remember that just because you reached the fat burning stage does not mean you will stay there. Staying at the fat burning stage once again depends on if you are moving at a pace that is right for your body. Make sure that you are within your target heart rate range.

Burning Fat Calories at rest

The only way for you to continue to burn fat calories hours after you have finished working out is through the anaerobic exercise of weight training. Weight training is the key to burning fat at rest. Weight training is an anaerobic activity that will cause you to burn more calories than aerobic exercise. The calories that you are burning during weight training exercises are mostly calories from carbohydrates (meaning you must eat even more calories per day for energy); but the calories you burn at rest are mostly calories from fat. The reason you are burning fat at rest is because weight training increases your metabolism which uses your stored fat as energy.

To make your body the ultimate fat burning machine you must do aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (weight training) exercises.

Change Up! – Attitude Is Everything

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." - William James

Attitude is everything. I know that you've heard this before and either agreed or disagreed. Either way, you were confirming its truth. Attitude is a filter for everything going into your mind and everything coming out of your mind. Right now, I have no idea what you are thinking because your attitude is unique to you.

It's not a matter of having a bad or good attitude. Everyone's attitude is influenced by so many thoughts at one time that it is almost inevitable that your attitude is always a mixture of positive and negative words and images. While most people speak at 150 to 200 words per minute, research suggests that we think at about 1,300 words per minute. Additionally, many of our thoughts are images, which could encompass thousands of words at once.

Like Herding Cats. I know this seems a bit overwhelming at the moment, but if you stick with me, it will become clear. As with most complex issues, there are many causes and variations within the issues. There can literally be thousands of permutations with any issue. However, as Dr. Phil said on a recent show, "while the problems are complex, the solutions are simple".

Don't Yell at the Computer. What I'm about to write may shock you, but here goes. There are really only three emotions: love, anger, and fear. Love draws you toward something, anger pits you against something, and fear chases you away from something. All of your feelings are a combination of these three emotions. Whether you're happy, sad, worried, anxious, depressed, afraid, or content, these feelings all stem from these emotions.

This is good news. If we can understand what's driving our thoughts, then we can change them. When you make a decision, you can trace that decision back to your thoughts at the time you were deciding. Even though you may not be aware, you are always talking to yourself. Some of you just said to yourself, "no I'm not".

The way to change your behavior is to change your attitude. To change your attitude, you must separate the stimulus from the response. Unlike animals, humans have the ability to choose their response to any situation. There is a space, even though it can be milliseconds at times, that we may choose how to react in every situation. Many people allow their subconscious to make these decisions, which is why they feel so out of control. We can take back control.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company ...a church ...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past ...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.

We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ...I am convinced that life is what happens to me and how I react to it. And so it is with you ...we are in charge of our attitudes." - Charles Swindoll

Why We All Need Aerobic Activity

The term aerobic means "with oxygen." During an aerobic activity , the cardiovascular system, which includes the heart, lungs and blood vessels, responds to physical activity by increasing the oxygen that is available to the body's working muscles. 

Aerobic activity involves an exercise routine that uses large muscle groups, is maintained for a long periods and is rhythmic in nature. Regular aerobic activity improves your fitness as your heart becomes stronger and begins to work better. The result is that the heart can pump more blood (thus increasing oxygen delivery to the tissues) with each heartbeat. 

As your aerobic fitness increases, you can work out longer with greater intensity and recover quicker at the end of the session. This  activity is often coined either High Impact or Low Impact. High-impact aerobic activity includes actions that take both feet off the floor, thus causing more jarring of the joints when the body weight hits the floor again. An example of Low Impact is walking while High Impact is jogging or jumping up and down.

It is important to start at a low intensity and increase this over the following few weeks as the exercise feels easier. For example, 20 minutes of walking, jogging or a combination of walking/jogging may be sufficient to leave you rather breathless and fairly tired at the start of your program, but as the weeks go by, you may need to increase the pace or introduce jogging up some shallow hills to achieve a further increase in fitness. Remind that the heart works better when it is strong.

Because the heart is a muscle, it can be made stronger with regular physical activity or aerobic activity. Explain that there are two types of exercise: aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic activities use the arm and leg muscles and give the heart (and lungs) a continuous workout. Anaerobic activities build and tone muscles but are not as beneficial to the heart and lungs as aerobic activities.

Some of the best forms of aerobic activity are the traditional sports. If you get together and play hockey twice a week with friends, this alone might be enough to keep you fit and healthy. The important thing is to get some kind of aerobic activity, and to make it something that you enjoy enough to keep with it. Some people should consult their doctor before they start a vigorous aerobic activity program. The best advice I have is to join a gym for a month. This will let you try out lots of different aerobic exercises and find out which ones you like.

Fishy Diet – Healthy Eating

Include fish in your healthy eating plan.
Many nutrition experts recommend eating fish at least once or twice every week. The most nutritious varieties of fish, and those that contain the greatest amounts of heart protecting omega-3 fatty acids, tend to be those that live in cold ocean waters. These varieties of fish include salmon and sardines.

It is hard to beat fish and seafood for high protein and low fat. Fish has been shown in study after study to have a positive impact on health, and to lower the risk of heart disease and other diseases. In addition, fish is delicious and easy to prepare.

There is little doubt that fish is a healthy food, containing significant levels of protein and smaller amounts of fat and calories than other types of meat.

As a matter of fact, fish is one of the best sources of protein there is. Everyone needs protein for building muscles and repairing damaged body tissues. In addition, protein plays a vital role in the growth of nails and hair, in hormone production and in many other vital bodily processes.

The key to getting sufficient protein in the diet is to balance the healthy effects of protein on the diet against the large amounts of fat and cholesterol that protein rich foods often contain. The combination of high protein and low fat is one of the things that makes a diet rich in fish so appealing.

With the exception of salmon, almost all commonly eaten varieties of fish are very low in fat, and even salmon contains lower levels of fat than many varieties of meats. In addition, fish is low in saturated fat, the type of fat that is most associated with heart disease and clogged arteries.

Fish is low in unsaturated fat because of the nature of where and how they live. Instead of storing energy in the form of saturated fat as land animals do, fish store their fat in the form of polyunsaturated oils. That adaptation allows their bodies to function normally in the cool oceans and streams where they swim. It also makes them a great choice for anyone seeking to cut levels of saturated fat in the diet.

For all these reasons, fish remains an important part of any low fat, heart healthy lifestyle. Substituting high fat, greasy foods like hamburgers and ribs is a great way to make a change for healthy living.

One note about fish and pollution, however. It is true that many fish caught in polluted waters contain high levels of mercury. While most commercially caught and grown fish is low in mercury, it is important for fisherman to limit their consumption of locally caught fish. Pregnant women are also advised to limit their intake of fish, due to the potential harm to the baby.

Even those who do not cook can enjoy the many benefits of fish in the diet. Many people avoid fish because they do not know how to prepare and cook it. While it is true that fish can present more of a challenge for the inexperienced, there are many recipes and cookbooks that make preparation easier.
In addition, many packaged seafood products contain cooking tips and serving suggestions that take some of the mystery out of preparing a nutritious and delicious meal of fresh fish.

So there is every reason fit fish into your diet and healthy eating plan.