Healthy Weight Loss Made Fast and Easy

If you’re like most people, you’re starting to sit up right now and think a little harder about your overall health and fitness. It’s no secret that obesity rates are on the rise – all you really have to do is look around you and you’ll see how grossly overweight much of our population is becoming.

If action isn’t taken to help put a stop to this trend, our health care costs are going to skyrocket and everywhere people will be facing dire health consequences that could literally put their lives in jeopardy.

But, this is talking to the extreme. Unless you’re currently in a situation where you’re battling 50+ pounds you may think that you really don’t have much to worry about. So you might be a little overweight – big deal. There are worse things in life than being able to pinch an inch – okay, maybe two if you’re going to be honest.

You’re interested in learning more about fitness and do want to take steps to improve your health but right now, you just don’t have the time. You have other obligations you have to fulfill first and when the opportunity arises, then you’ll focus on your health and fitness.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s time for you to make time. Tomorrow is never going to get here and chances are, that schedule is never going to be freed up enough for you to finally be ready to step into fitness.

Instead, it’s time for you to dive into fitness – sprint if you have to because if you’re like most people, you have quite a bit of catching up to do in the race with good health. While the decision to start devoting more of your time and energy to improving your health, bodyweight, and fitness level will be a completely personal decision, it’s one that you should think very hard about.

In the following information we’ll be discussing the primary benefits that you’ll see from engaging in a regular health and fitness program along with a few simple yet highly effective action steps that you can take today to get yourself onto some results.

Remember, health and fitness doesn’t need to be uncomfortable. Even small changes over time can lead to great things in the long run so do what’s comfortable.

Let’s get started.

Benefits From A Regular Exercise Program

First let’s begin by discussing some of the main benefits that you’ll get from a regular exercise program. For many people, getting more active and becoming involved in exercise is going to be slightly easier than the other half of the equation – changing their diet. Since most of us do derive great pleasure and enjoyment from food, changing habits in that area definitely proves to be quite a bit more challenging. But we’ll be discussing diet shortly so right now let’s focus on exercise. What benefits will a regular exercise program get you?

Let’s take a look.

Increased Energy

First things first, one of the biggest benefits that you’re going to see from a regular workout program is a greatly enhanced level of energy. Some people may think this to be the opposite since if they’re out there expending energy in intense workout sessions they’re going to feel drained for their workouts but this isn’t the case at all.

As you get into better shape from doing regular exercise you’re going to find it has a direct transfer over impact on how you feel throughout the day. This is due to the fact that the body is going to be that much better conditioned so all the daily tasks you do on a regular basis aren’t going to take as much out of it. Instead, you’ll feel fully ready to take on anything that heads your way and will not feel completely exhausted by the time the evening rolls around.

If you live a fast paced life and feel like you’re on a constant treadmill of fatigue, regular exercise is definitely going to help you fight back against this in a major way.

The Ability To Keep Fat Off For Good

Second, one of the most attractive benefits of participating in a regular exercise program for most people is the fact that exercise is one of the most powerful fat fighters around. If you’re someone who’s concerned about the normal weight gain that most people experience with age, you simply must start exercising today.

Why?

Put simply, exercise is going to help to elevate your metabolism for hours after you’ve completed it so you’re going to continue to burn calories off at an accelerated pace. Since the more calories you burn off each and every day the lower the chances you have of adding body fat, you can clearly see why this is so powerful in the fight against body fat. What’s more is that chronic regular exercise will lead to long-term metabolic increases so then even if you do miss a workout once in a while, you’ll still continue fighting off body fat. This means that you will be able to have more of the foods you enjoy in the future without suffering the weight gain that everyone around you is. With excess weight comes anxiety also. If that’s not a good reason to exercise, I’m not sure what is. With regular exercise, weight gain as you get older can be completely eliminated.

Improved Muscle Mass and Strength

Another key reason why doing some form of exercise is important on a regular basis is because this is going to send the message to the body that you need your lean muscle mass tissue. Going back to our concept of metabolic rate and your daily calorie burn, the more lean muscle mass you have on your body, the more calories you are going to burn. To put this into perspective, for every pound of muscle mass you’re going to burn about 30 calories more every day. That is without exercise – just to simply exist. Muscle mass is extremely energy costly so the more of it you have, the more calories your body is going to need to stay alive. Fat, on the other hand burns a measly two calories per pound per day. See the difference? If you gained ten pounds of muscle you’d be able to eat 300 calories more per day without weight gain while if you gained 10 pounds of fat you could eat only 60 more calories to maintain that tissue.

Which scenario would you rather be in? Regular exercise is going to help you keep all the muscle mass you already have and possibly even help you build more so that you really crank up the heat and burn off more calories than ever on a daily basis. As you go about doing this, you’re also going to see noticeable improvements in the amount of muscle strength you have, which will also be vital to help you perform all those daily activities you do. We typically do lose muscle mass with age unless exercise is performed to signal the body to keep it and that’s the biggest reason why many people find themselves growing weaker in time. Exercise and you won’t have to deal with this!

Greater Bone Health

Moving on, if you’re someone who is concerned with your overall bone health, it’s also going to be important that you start up on a regular exercise program for this reason as well. Weight bearing exercise is going to place a very low level of stress on the bones and joints and as a result, they’ll begin to grow back stronger than they were before.

This, over time, can really help to prevent stress fractures or other issues such as osteoporosis, so isn’t something that you’ll want to overlook. Running and weight lifting tend to be the best activities to promote strong bones however any other form of activity you enjoy can do it as well. Even something as simple as going for a twenty minute walk every morning can go a long way towards strengthening your skeletal system.

Improved Confidence Level

Okay, let’s get slightly superficial for a second. What happens when you look good?

When you look good, you feel good, and what happens when you feel good? When you feel good, your confidence level is going to jump through the roof! There is definitely something to be said about confident people. They tend to be viewed as much more attractive by others and as much as some of you may not want to admit it, very often are treated better because of it as well. Confidence is sexy – there’s no getting around that and regular exercise will really do a number to your confidence levels.

Even if you don’t have a care in the world what other people think of you, you should do this for yourself. Feeling confident in yourself will make you feel so much better as a whole and you’ll find that you just enjoy life that much more.

Enhanced Mental Clarity and Concentration

If you’re someone who often finds that you tend to lose concentration and focus throughout the day, guess what? Yes, exercise can help with this too!

When you exercise on a regular basis your body is going to release a number of ‘feel good’ hormones that will not only put you in a better mood but also help to relax the body and keep your mind calm and collected. This will then help to improve the clarity and concentration you have throughout the entire day whether you’re at school or work or just going about your daily life. Many people find that exercise is a powerful fighter against bad moods and some will even use it as a means to help treat mild depression.

There’s no question about it, exercise is going to have a very good influence on your overall well-being.

Improved Sleep

Finally, the last benefit that you’re going to get from regular participation in exercise is much better quality sleep. Those who exercise regularly have been shown to sleep more soundly and are also able to enter into deep sleep – the most important kind, much sooner than those who don’t. Just do be sure that you’re not exercising too close to bed-time however as that can work against you and instead just cause you to stay up. If you keep your workouts to at least a couple hours before you plan to go to sleep you shouldn’t have any problem with this issue.

So that covers some of the main benefits you’re going to see from regular exercise. Strength training exercise, whether you choose to use free weights, bodyweight, or weight machines tends to be best for increasing your metabolic rate over the long term and improving the amount of muscle definition you see while activities like walking, jogging, swimming, and team sports tend to be very good for maintaining cardiovascular fitness, improving your moods, and helping you to sleep better at night.

Ideally you want to do a combination of both types of exercise within the overall workout week but if you can only fit one in, remember that that will always be better than nothing.

Finally, don’t forget about flexibility training either. Adding ten to fifteen minutes of stretching at the end of all exercise sessions you do will help to increase your range of motion and go a long way towards preventing joint stiffness and immobility.

Often people will find that they do tend to get very tight and tense as they grow older and if they aren’t taking the time to pursue regular flexibility exercises, it’s really going to creep up on them.
With flexibility training it doesn’t take much to show improvements over time but if you stop performing the training, you’ll lose whatever flexibility you do have very quickly.

So now that we’ve covered the exercise aspect of leading a healthy lifestyle and how many benefits there are from doing so, now let’s look at things from the nutritional point of view.

Benefits From A Sound Nutritional Approach

Notice in our heading we said ‘nutritional approach’, not ‘diet’ approach? That’s the biggest problem with most people today. Rather than viewing the changes they are thinking about making as a lifestyle strategy that they will stick with in the long term, they view it as a ‘diet’ or a quick-fix solution that will get dropped immediately upon them reaching their goal weight. The flaw in this thinking is that if you view it as a diet and come off just as fast as you went on, that weight that you lost is going to come rushing back to your body in a very short time period. Just like your old habits once caused you to gain weight, there’s nothing to stop them from causing you to gain weight once again.

If you are able to get creative in the kitchen and think of new recipes to try out that are much healthier than what you’re typically eating you’ll find that maintaining a healthy diet isn’t nearly as hard as you might have once made it out to be.

Let’s now take a peak at the benefits good nutrition has to offer.

Dramatically Enhanced Energy Levels
If you thought adding more exercise to your day would boost your energy levels, wait until you see what eating healthier will do for you. When you focus on quality source of protein in your diet paired with slower digesting, non-processed forms of carbohydrates you’re going to maintain steady energy levels that won’t sputter out on you halfway through the day.

What’s more is that you’ll find you recover from your exercise sessions much more quickly as well so you have more energy to devote to those each and every session as well.

Increased Metabolism

Next, we’ve already discussed how regular exercise can boost your metabolic rate, well diet can do the same. When you’re eating a balanced diet that is slightly higher in overall protein content your body is really going to be burning up calories quickly. Since protein actually takes more energy to digest after eating it simply by focusing on lean sources of protein in your diet you can boost up your total daily calorie burn. Again, this is going to really help out as you work towards the goal of body fat loss.

Better Blood Sugar Control

One thing that many people really notice improves when they start eating healthier is the amount of control they have over their blood sugar level. If you’ve ever had a meal and then felt highly energetic afterwards only to find yourself crashing a few hours later, you know precisely what this point is all about. When you eat very simple carbohydrate-rich foods, as they enter into your body they are quickly going to spike your insulin level and then afterwards, as the insulin sucks the glucose up into the tissues, they’re going to cause a rapid decline in blood glucose. This translates to you feel on top of the world one minute and incredibly tired, cranky, and irritable the next. When that occurs, that’s also when you likely head right back into the pantry in search of your next ‘quick-fix’ which then starts you up on the endless cycle of overeating and weight gain. When you instead provide a slower digesting source of carbohydrates to the body your energy will remain ate a more moderate and constant level and you’ll therefore bypass this cycle altogether. All of a sudden weight loss becomes incredibly easy and you feel great.

Prevention of Body Fat Gain

When it comes to maintaining your body weight in the long run and preventing that yearly body fat gain, exercise is definitely important but more than that will be watching your diet. This is for the simple fact that it is way too easy to overconsume 500 or more calories in just minutes with a few poor food choices.

For instance, say you, in a weak moment, decide to go in for that second slice of pumpkin pie. Well, that may just set you back a good 800 calories for that indulgence. Compare that to the fact that you’d literally have to run for almost an hour and a half straight to burn off that many calories and you can quickly see just how important eating right is for weight control. Your daily calorie intake is very easily controlled through proper food choices so if you want to maintain your body weight, getting your weight in line is a must.

Reduced Disease Risk

Finally, the last important thing that eating a healthy diet will do is help to reduce your overall risk of disease development. If you include plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables within your plan you’re going to be providing a number of antioxidants to the body that will help to promote good health. In addition to that you’ll also be taking in all the essential vitamins and minerals that you need so that too will really help keep your body functioning smoothly. While you can always look to supplemental forms to help fill any gaps that may be present from the diet, this is never going to be as effective as what you’d get when you actually take the nutrients in from whole food sources. By focusing on eating a diverse diet that includes a wide array of healthy and fresh foods you really can’t go wrong.

So there you have some of the main benefits that you’ll get from eating a healthy diet. As you can see, it goes far beyond just weight control. There’s no question that if you want to obtain a desirable body weight and maintain it there you will have to be watching what you eat on a daily basis and in doing so, you’re also going to reap all these additional benefits as well.

Let’s wrap up this guide now and provide you with an action plan that you can put to good use.

Your Action Plan For Better Health

The important thing to remember for most people is to begin by making gradual changes to your current daily diet and exercise routine. You can’t expect to complete a full diet and workout overhaul and stick with it – in most cases this is simply too much to handle. If you focus on making a few easier changes each week though, week by week, you will move much closer to your end goals. That’s what the following action plan has set out to do. With each step you’ll focus on doing something different from what you normally do that will take you one step closer to being the healthiest you ever. If you need to stick with a step for a few days in order to feel comfortable with it, If you find you already do one of the steps listed – great, keep doing it. As you progress along through this action plan it’s also important that you make sure to keep up all the habits that you’ve changed. Don’t let yourself slip back into your old ways but instead keep pressing forward and you will be that much further ahead.

So get ready – here is your plan of ACTION. Don’t just sit back and read through it – actually do it. Remember, time is your greatest commodity in life – once it’s spent you can never get it back so make sure that you’re doing everything possible to live each moment to the fullest. Living the healthy lifestyle is going to do accomplish that goal wonderfully.

1. Get out and do 3, 10 minute walks today.
2. Focus on drinking at least 8 glasses of water today.
3. Begin a ten minute stretching routine each night while watching TV.
4. Make sure you have at least one serving of fruits and vegetables to each meal you eat today.
5. Perform a circuit of push-ups, sit-ups, and bodyweight squats, doing three sets of 20 of each exercise.
6. Make sure that you eat one lean source of protein such as chicken, fish, lean red meat, or low fat dairy in every meal and snack you consume.
7. Step up one of your 10 minute walks to a light jog.
8. Try and eat three meals and three snacks today.
9. Add 5 minutes of abdominal exercises to your circuit training routine.
10. Take the day off – you deserve it!
11. Add some weight lifting movements at home or in the gym using a simple set of dumbbells. Good exercises to include are lunges, shoulder press, bicep curls, overhead tricep extensions, and dumbbell squats.
12. Try and eliminate all refined or processed carbohydrates from your diet.
13. Increase the length of your 10 minute jog to 15 minutes (or 20 if you can).
14. Try and eat all of your carbohydrates before dinner and then focus the last meal and snack around protein and healthy fats only.
15. Try a new exercise class such as kickboxing or bootcamp – it will help you stay motivated.
16. Have fish for dinner tonight – you should be aiming to eat fish at least twice per week for good overall health.
17. Set some new goals – now that you’ve made it this far, you’re well on your way to living a healthier lifestyle. Set some new goals that you hope to achieve and find yourself a complete program to follow that will guide you along every step of the way to healthy weight loss made fast and easy. You’re on the road to success!

This program will help you help yourself and guide you to a better, happier you. Your health is an important part of your life as well as those around you who want and need you to be around for a very long time. Think happy, healthy thoughts and you WILL achieve your dreams! Be healthy! Be happy! Be proud of who you are!

Get started living your dream of weight loss today!