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!