Friday, March 13, 2009

Making Workouts Work for You



The Weight Watcher four way approach to losing weight:
Eat Smarter
Attend Meetings
Build Helpful Habits
Move More


A lot of times we ignore the "Move More" and change it to be the 3 way approach. All four of these work together to help us lose weight in a healthy way and keep it off.

It seems we hear so many conflicting things about activity and exercise. Do I need to run a daily marathon or do a little gardening? The truth is somewhere in between.

In order to maintain good health and reduce your risk for chronic diseases you should get at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise 5 days a week.

To help manage body weight and prevent gradual, unhealthy body weight gain in adulthood we should engage in approx 60 minutes of moderate to high intensity activity on most days of the week.

Weight Watchers isn't in the business to train athletes, but in decreasing sedentary behavior.


We talked about all the benefits of moving more and you can do a search on activity in the sidebar to read about the benefits. Type in the words "benefits of exercise" in Google and see what comes up.


The important thing is to find an activity or two that you like-if you hate what you're doing chances are you won't keep it up.






Here are some key behaviors to "Successful Exercisers".



  • Do different activities to avoid boredom and work different muscle groups.


  • Fit workouts into your life in small doses. You may think 30 minutes at one stretch is too much for you to fit in your schedule. Well, try three 10 minute bits of time.


  • Use free weights. Strength training makes you look and feel better and slows the loss of lean muscle mass.


  • Tweak your schedule to stay active. Maybe you can park 10 minutes from work. Heck, by the time you get back to your car at the end of your day you'll have 20 minutes activity under your belt. Find the time that is necessary to take care of yourself.


  • Increase intensity to get more "bang for your buck". This is especially important if you only have a limited amount of time.


Above all know what you are doing is worth every effort. Make time for yourself to be healthier and your family will be happier too.

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