it’s been loud and clear…

I’ve proven it to myself, as have millions of others:

Regular physical activity gives you energy, levels your body out, and most importantly, cuts the risk of heart attack and stroke!

Here’s 5 Ways to take care of your heart (and live longer!) through exercise:

1. Document your exercise goals – in writing!  Look at them daily, try for 30 to 60 minutes three days a week of biking, brisk walking, or running.
2. Use visualization – keep an ideal image of yourself in mind, and readily accessible.  I found my f#$(*1@ inspiration, and it’s really helped me!
3. Make exercise a priority – many times, this is easier said than done.  The big thing that’s changed in my mindset is the fact then I don’t think about doing it, I just DO it.
4. Take action and start moving – keep in mind, a body at rest, tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.
5. Buy a pedometer – “you can’t change what don’t measure” and this plays a key role in elping you understand how much you walk per day, aim for 10,000 steps a day.

Another approach that’s worked very well for me is disguising my exercise – for example, I’ll:

• walk to the bookstore (about a mile away),
• ride my bike to work (about 3.5 miles away),
• walk to a restaurant (about a mile away), and
• take the stairs.

If you’d like to learn more, here are some great books I’ve found.

Take care, and I hope this helps you!

Charly

…issue at some point in their life, changed their lifestyle and lost a lot of weight is that they’re food vigilant.

USAToday just posted this article reviewing exactly what I’ve noticed:

• Those people are more physically active, knowing the importance of exercise.
• They do higher intensity work-outs about an hour a week.
• Are restrained eaters who watch calorie intake.

I’m definitely much more aware of my calorie intake now-a-days, and have a fairly intense exercise routine as well.

How many people do you know like that?

When you want to maintain your weight, you live in “maintenance mode”.

Once you start living your new lifestyle, you’ll live in loss mode, and when you arrive at your dream weight, you can loosen up a little (the KEY being “a little”), and live in maintenance mode.

The goal in loss mode is to consume 500 calories less than your body needs every day.  You really don’t want to go over this amount, because it can be considered unsafe to your body.

It’s a known fact that 3,500 calories equals 1 pound.  The general idea is to lose a pound a week, or 500 calories a day.

7 days a week times 500 calories a day is 3,500 calories a week.

You can figure out how many calories your dream body needs everyday by knowing your dream BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate.  If you don’t know it, calculate it by checking out “Knowing your BMI & BMR“.

My loss mode lifestyle at 262 pounds consisted of consuming 2,300 calories daily (I was consuming well over 3,500 a day at the time).

That’s a difference of about four 20 Oz Mountain Dew’s PER DAY (each bottle is about 300 calories).

My maintenance mode lifestyle, at my dream weight of 178 pounds, requires about 2,000 calories.