Exercise Ideas

When you think of exercise, you think of losing weight and most of the time when people work on losing weight they just change their eating habits rather than their activity level. Exercising has many more benefits than losing weight. It helps to build your self esteem, improve your mood (it increases your serotonin level), boosts energy, combats diseases and conditions, helps you to sleep at night (for more ideas of how it can help see my previous blog post). Oftentimes for most people it can be hard to exercise because they don't set a regular pattern or want to change their lifestyle. To start exercising, you need to motivate yourself and set a goal. Even finding a friend to exercise with can help motivate you enough to form a habit. I find if I don't have a goal, I am not motivated enough to exercise long enough I will just want to run one mile instead of three or four. There's also many ways to exercise. It's best to find something fun and that you will enjoy to help you to keep doing it and stay motivated. Here are some different options:

• Zumba
• Yoga
• Join a team: soccer, baseball, basketball (they have adult and teen teams just google it)
• Ultimate Frisbee
• Water Aerobics
• Swimming laps (my favorite)
• Running (also my favorite)
• Lifting weights
• Biking
• Speed Walking
• Dancing (Take a partner and learn some steps at a class)
• Aerobics
• Hiking
• Tae-Bo
• Boxing

The important thing is stay active. It doesn't matter what activity that you do, just as long as you keep at it!

Strengthening Those Muscles

From http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Exercise takes time. Not, only does it take, but it takes patience and sometimes it takes a while to see the results. Most of us when our lives get busy start placing exercising on the back burner. It's hard to feel motivated to do it. Yesterday, at my voice lessons, I was struggling with a song. I wasn't struggling because of going off-key, I was struggling to control my stomach muscles. I've been practicing a breathing exercise all week to help, but it's not something that won't instantly happen, it's something that may take months and even years to develop those stronger muscles that will help with my breathing while I am singing. Exercise is the same way. The first few times may be painful and you might expect to see results right away, but it may take months. So, stick in there and keep strengthening those muscles. Here are some of the benefits of exercising:

• Helps improve health: It might not reduce all your medical ailments since those depend on other factors, but it will help manage chronic diseases and help reduce your chances of health risks.
• Strengthens and tones: Your body will gradually start losing the fat and improve your muscle strengthen and tone.
• Enhances flexibility: Flexibility helps prevent injuries and strains on your muscles.
• It makes us feel mentally better: Exercise helps boost your mood and reduce stress.
• Sleep better at night: It help energize you during the day and help you to relax better at night.
• Helps your bones to become stronger.
• More Energy
• Brain Power: Able to remember things more effectively

Just to warn you, exercise my increase your desire to eat more. So unless you want to maintain your weight, try and distract yourself by staying active by developing your talents or reading a book so that you won't damage your efforts with constant snacks if you are trying to lose weight.

Also if you're wondering how often you should exercise, start off with 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week then gradually start cross training with different types of exercise and increasing it to an hour a day.

 Sources:
Exercise 7 Benefits of regular physical activity
Why Exercise? How Exercise Benefits Your Health & How to Begin 
Why Exercise Makes Us Feel Good
Ever Wonder Why Exercise is Good For You?
Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin