Ways to Get Fit
Are you overweight? Do you want to lose weight and remain fit and healthy and live longer? Advice from your friends and relatives or information from books and internet to lose weight is not enough. If you want to reduce your weight, you have to make the decision. It’s up to you to take the initiative. Overweight increases the risk of heart diseases, cholesterol, diabetes and can even cause premature death. So don’t regret in the future, think now and start moving. The two most important things which will help you lose weight are regular exercising and a well balanced, nutritious diet. Both exercise and diet are inter-related. You can’t ignore one, if you intend to shed off a few pounds.
Aerobic exercises help you to live longer and in a better health. Incorporate aerobic exercises into your daily routine. Aerobic exercises are walking, running, jogging, swimming, cycling, skiing, hiking, stair climbing, dancing and skating. These are outdoor exercises. Indoor aerobic exercises are treadmill, elliptical machine, stationary cycle and rowing machine. Aerobic exercise improves the functions of your heart and helps you attain fitness. These exercises increase the metabolism in your body, which burns more fat and calories, thereby helping you to lose weight. 30 minutes of jogging can burn up to 300 calories. Other benefits of aerobic exercises are, it helps you avoid high blood pressure, heart diseases, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. It strengthens your lungs and heart builds your muscle strength, reduces stress and depression and helps you to get proper sleep.
Along with aerobic exercises, you should also do resistance training to help you to lose weight faster. It cannot be substituted for aerobic training, but done along with it. 20 minutes of resistance training increases you metabolism, builds body muscles, burn more fat and calories. The increased muscle mass will consume the fat in the body as fuel for maintenance. This happens even when you are resting. Do you know that each pound of muscle you add will burn 50 calories per day? You have to do 20 minutes of resistance training 3 times a week. Women also benefits from this exercise, so they should not feel shy to do it. It increases the metabolism and calcium level in the body. This will help them to fight against osteoporoses at an older age. Some of the resistance training activities are water aerobics, using exercise ball, using dumbbell and using elastic exercise bands. The more the resistance training, the more calories are burnt. But don’t overdo yourself. Start slowly. Over exertion can cause injuries to your joints and muscles.
Aerobic exercises along with resistance and strength training can help you to lose weight and keeps your body fit and healthy. But whatever type of exercise you are doing a few minutes of warming up is very much necessary. This helps your muscles to adjust and prevent injury.
Interval training which is a combination of slow exercises and fast exercises also helps to increase the metabolism in your body and reduce weight. Two minutes of slow exercise followed by two minutes of fast exercises, will increase the muscle mass in your body, and helps to burn fat faster.
Losing weight and keeping your body fit and healthy is not a hard task. If you want to do it, you can do it. A nutritious diet and consistent exercising is all that you need. Just make a few healthy changes in your life and increase your life span by several years.
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