Finding The Right Exercise For You

Exercise is a crucial part of every weight loss program, especially if you want to enjoy long-term success.  But how many times have you suffered through grueling, painful, or boring exercise activities?  Perhaps you tried to force yourself to take up running, and limped home vowing never to do it again.  Or maybe you thought joining an expensive health club would inspire you to stick with a workout routine, and ended up paying several hundred dollars for a membership you used only sporadically?

Exercise doesn’t always have to be unpleasant, and this article is going to share a simple way to find physical activities that you will truly love to do and make them a permanent part of your life.  Grab a sheet of paper and a pen, and begin making a list of the physical activities you used to enjoy, or enjoy even occasionally now.  Have you always loved to go dancing?  Do you enjoy refreshing walks in the park?  Do you love playing with your children or pets in the back yard?  How about window shopping at the mall?  All of these activities and more can be turned into fun ways to stay active.

Not only is it important to choose activities you will love, but you may also want to consider the times of day when you naturally feel most energetic.  Do you have a hard time crawling out of bed in the morning?  If so, forcing yourself to exercise at that time may not be the best idea.  Do you seem to get a boost of energy in the late afternoon or evening?  Try to incorporate most of your physical activity during these times.  If your schedule won’t allow a full workout during the time you are naturally most energetic, try including smaller bursts of activity in your normal routine.  For example, use your morning or afternoon coffee break to walk briskly around your workplace, or find a local health club to visit during your lunch hour.

When you make exercise a fun and fulfilling activity and focus on how good you feel during and afterwards, you’ll be honoring your body’s natural rhythm and therefore be much more likely to stick with it for a long time to come.

Loving Yourself to Health

Many of us tend to see weight loss as an unpleasant necessity to reaching our desired goal.  In order to achieve the size and weight we want to be, we have to restrict ourselves from indulging in the foods we love and enjoy.  We need to push ourselves to exercise even when we’d rather rest, and force ourselves to make the choices we know are ultimately best for us.  The problem with this kind of restrictive approach is that it makes us feel like we are being punished.  We act as if we are “bad” and need to be beaten into submission because our habits are so out of control.  We think we have no choice but to severely discipline ourselves and force ourselves to “behave.”

If you have ever approached weight loss in this manner, you know how unpleasant it can be.  Instead of feeling good about the positive changes you are making, you feel like you’re being punished.  You feel like there must be something wrong with you, that you are somehow not good enough as you are.  Not surprisingly, you just end up feeling worse about yourself than you did before you started dieting.

There is a better way to form lasting positive changes in your life, and that is: loving yourself to health.  Rather than trying to restrict and punish yourself or forcing yourself to do the things you know are best for you, why not begin treating yourself with love and kindness?  Why not eat foods that are good for you because you want to treat your body with love and respect?  Why not move your body with the intention to make it feel stronger and better?  Why not listen to the signals your body is sending about the foods and activities that are right for it?

When you do this, you automatically make living a healthy lifestyle much simpler and easier, not to mention less traumatic.  You enter into a state of natural self-respect, rather than punishment.  Not only do you end up creating an easier journey that leads quickly to your goal weight, you end up feeling good about yourself all along the way.

Finding Balance In Your Weight Loss Program

Starting a weight loss program often results in an “all or nothing” mind-set.  You vow to never eat junk food again, follow your diet plan to the letter, drink gallons of water, push yourself to work out religiously, and lose those pesky pounds once and for all.  This attitude usually stems from a strong sense of dissatisfaction about your current state (i.e. fat), and a strong determination to reach a “better” state (i.e. thin).

But entering into any weight loss program with such a rigid focus can only set you up for failure.  How many times have you gone on a binge before a diet, eating every “bad” food you could think of – just because you didn’t know when you might be “allowed” to eat it again?  How many times have you slipped and eaten something that wasn’t on your food plan, and then despaired that you had blown your whole diet?  The problem with rigid ideas about what is “allowed” and “forbidden” is that they only make you crave the forbidden foods and mire you in constant cycles of deprivation and frustration.

Your chances of success are much greater if you instead strive for a sense of balance in everything you do.  Certainly making positive changes is beneficial, but it is possible to do this in a much more balanced way, rather than binding yourself with chains and taping your mouth shut.

How?  Simply stay AWARE and make wise decisions.  Each moment of your day before you eat, drink or do anything, ask yourself if the action you are about to take will support your goal.  Will eating a cookie support your weight loss goal?  Not necessarily, but will it destroy your diet altogether?  Probably not.  There are no “rights or wrongs” with this process.  Sometimes you may indeed decide to eat the cookie.  Sometimes you’ll decide that you really don’t need it.  The difference will be that YOU are the one making the choices for yourself, not some preconceived notion about what is acceptable or not.

Energizing Your Mind And Body

When your body is out of balance you often feel sluggish and heavy.  This happens on a physical level foremost because your body is not operating at its peak potential.  You may have been ingesting large quantities of sugar and fat-laden foods and not drinking enough water to keep your body adequately hydrated.  Maybe you also had other unhealthy habits like relying too much on large quantities of caffeine to keep you going, or being a “couch potato” and living a largely sedentary existence.

As you begin improving the quality of your diet and exercise habits, you may first experience a dip in energy and vitality because your body has adapted to your unhealthy lifestyle.  You may feel a bit lost without the foods and beverages that you have come to rely on, and experience mild physical discomfort as your body gets used to your new routine.  Gradually you’ll begin to feel lighter and more energetic, but it can take time to see noticeable results.

Before the tangible results begin showing, however, there is a simple exercise you can do to help energize your mind and body each day.  This exercise will help you feel stronger and more balanced, and provide the motivation to stick to your new plan until you begin to see the results you desire.

Do this exercise first thing in the morning or any time during the day when you begin to feel lethargic.  Simply close your eyes and imagine yourself running, walking briskly, dancing or doing any form of rigorous exercise.  Imagine that you are already fit and strong, and feel the sensation of your muscles flexing, your heart and lungs working at peak performance – and your entire body humming with well-being.  Allow this feeling of well-being to fill your body now, and know that it will soon be your default state of being.  Stay with this vision for as long as you like, and then continue with your normal routine.  Just doing this for a few minutes each day can go a long way in helping you to feel stronger and better able to handle any momentary discomfort you may experience.

Inner Transformation For Effective Weight loss

Getting healthy and losing weight is most often seen as an external process: eat better quality food, move your body, lose fat, transition to smaller size clothing . . . and so on.  But focusing on the outer process alone often leaves you with a sense of disconnection with your mental self-image.

Have you ever walked past a mirror and caught a glimpse of yourself out of the corner of your eye – and did a double take because you couldn’t believe that was you?  Have you ever looked at photographs of yourself and gasped because you didn’t realize you looked like that?  These mental jolts take place when there is a gap between your physical appearance and your mental perception of your physical appearance.

Weight loss is not just a physical process.  You also need to “shed” the limited self-image that you have become accustomed to seeing in your mind.  One of the easiest ways to do this is by visualizing daily the person you are becoming.  The act of visualizing is not to make the pounds drop off, but rather to get your mind more familiar with the new person into which you are transforming.  The more comfortable you can get with your beautiful new self-image, the more easily you will transition to your new physical state of being.

Tonight, spend some time creating a mental image of the person you wish to be.  See yourself as slim, fit, healthy, and strong as you want to be, and put as much detail as you can into the vision.  Love and appreciate this new and improved version of yourself, and then make an effort to BE this person in all of your daily activities.  Think, speak and act like this person would think, speak and act.  Move the way this person would move.  The more completely you can do this, the more easily you will find yourself transforming into a better you – mentally, physically and spiritually.

Natural Nourishment

Have you ever attempted to lose weight by ingesting products that don’t even resemble real food any more?  You can probably remember a few awful diets that forced you to eat or drink strange concoctions that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy – everything from chalky shakes to pre-packaged “fake” food and pills that promise a magic cure.  Quick fixes and shortcuts aren’t necessarily all bad, but more often we find that they don’t deliver what they promise and we waste a lot of time by desperately seeking the next “miracle” product that will make all of our skinny dreams come true.

Have you noticed that the best results often come through simplicity?  To make your weight loss permanent and as healthy as can be, you may want to gravitate toward lifestyle changes that you can really live with for the rest of your life, rather than trying to find the next quick fix.

One of the most powerful ways to do this is to adopt a natural approach to nourishment.  Eating foods that are naturally created by Mother Earth (not man), that are loaded with nutrients and minerals that your body craves will seldom steer you wrong.  Likewise, drinking plenty of clean, filtered water (not beverages filled with artificial sweeteners and chemicals) will help keep your body hydrated and operating efficiently.  It does take more time and effort than popping a pill or gulping down a shake, but aren’t you worth it?

Granted, it’s still possible to overindulge on natural foods, so a keen awareness of your body’s wisdom is also necessary.  Taking a more natural approach to eating doesn’t mean that you can’t still enjoy a few of your favorite foods here and there – your goal is simply to balance those indulgences with a more conscious way of nourishing your body.  Doing this ensures not just a quick fix, but long-term health and success.

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