Become a Fitness Babe

Raise your hand or nod your head yes if you agree exercise is essential for your overall health and wellness.

Benefits of exercise include it being perfect for losing weight, maintaining a reasonable body weight and boosting your metabolic rate by burning those unwanted excess calories and keeping people looking good and feeling good about themselves. Exercise also revs the heart and lung machinery to make them more efficient doing their natural functions.

In case these are not enough reasons to start a regular exercise routine let us tell you more. Exercise also works to strengthen the bones, give people the stamina to enable them to keep up with the pace of their lifestyles.

Unfortunately, not all people chose to do what’s good for them.  Many choose to hit the snooze button vs. getting up a little earlier to include some exercise OR procrastinate day in and day out calling tomorrow the day they will start.

If you are one of those people the following tips are very helpful to get you started and ultimately help you reach and maintain an ideal body weight.

These tips are especially great for women since their bodies go through several changes and they are more susceptible to osteoporosis. Not to mention that many women are under the pressure of keeping themselves beautiful. It is recommended you incorporate one or two of these times into your workout routine.

Do not be concerned that your chosen exercise routine is not enough. Stay focused on making and keeping a commitment to yourself just like you make and keep commitments to others. The ideal is that you exercise 3 to 5 times a week for 20-60 minutes.  However, when the real world gets in the way one should not get frustrated or give up. Sometimes the ideal is utterly impossible.

What’s best? When you can manage exercise two times a week for twenty minutes per session then pat yourself on the back and be proud of that accomplishment. Start from this point and progress on afterwards by adding another day or more to your exercise routine. This is your first step to feel successful and keeping the commitment to yourself.

What to do first. Start with weight lifting vs the general approach of cardio and then weights. The disadvantage of the cardio and then weight approach is that you may miss a critical component of the routine and spend all your time on cardio training. Try reversing the order weight training and then cardio to see a more visible positive outcome.

Monitor your heart rate. To be sure you are working within your target heart rate use a stop watch or purchase a heart rate monitor or any exercise equipment with this feature. It’s recommended you exercise at 75-85% of the maximum heart rate.

Keep exercise at an hour or less as this will keep you from dreading the exercise time.  Also keep your focus on the exercise and what you want to accomplish as this will help make the workout more efficient.  Adding music to the workout makes it more enjoyable.

Fitness support is always helpful. Find a partner, a group or a fitness community as this is helpful. Choose days at the gym once in a while if you customarily work out at home. One can also try classes in activities that have always been interesting such as yoga, Pilates, tennis, a Zumba class, find what works best for you. Also look into joining a walking or running club in your area.

 You’ll be amazed at the results when you speak aspiring affirmations during exercise . 

Enhance positive results when you congratulate yourself and give out words of encouragement during exercise.

End each workout by patting yourself on the back and giving yourself positive feedback. You deserve it.

Wishing you great success.