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Gen Wright asked:


Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires discipline, commitment and dedication. When you live an active life and exercise regularly, it is hard for you to gain weight. It is important to keep your body weight at acceptable levels because an over weight body can cause severe health problems.

For example, some people suffer from strokes because certain arteries in their bodies are blocked by excess cholesterol. The body won’t be able to function normally when it is burdened by excess fats. In addition, people who are overweight also find themselves having low esteem, and living a lower quality of life.

Excess weight also seep into other areas of an individual’s life. Besides health implications, someone who is overweight is also likely to face discrimination at work, and has a less active social life.

Fortunately, a whole life can be turned around just by adopting a more active lifestyle – exercise regularly!

For many overweight people, getting started is perhaps the hardest part. But Rome is not built in one day. Everything has to start from somewhere. And when it comes to exercise, the best place to start is to let the heart workout.

The heart is the muscle that pumps blood and oxygen throughout our body. Everything starts from the heart. If the heart stops working, the body stops working as well. No blood and oxygen means no energy. The way to let the heart get its exercise is to engage in aerobic activities.

Aerobic activities include movements of the body, arms and legs. The idea is to keep the body moving so that the heart has to work to get blood and oxygen flowing through the body. The higher the intensity of the workout, the harder the heart has to work. This sounds like hard work but a strong and healthy heart has many benefits.

First of all, a strong and healthy heart allows the individual to build up other parts of the body. In a way, the heart is like the engine in a car. There is little point having a big car that looks powerful on the outside, but has a small and weak engine on the inside. The car just won’t perform!

With a strong heart, an individual can eventually move on to other challenging exercises such as cycling, weight lifting and so on.

Now you understand why aerobic fitness is so important. Anyone can start exercising by performing simple yet effective aerobic exercises. There is little strain on other parts of the body, and the heart is allowed to grow and strengthen at a comfortable pace.

Even if an individual decides not to progress further with other form of exercises, aerobic exercise alone is enough to bring back the glow in the cheeks. Weight can be effectively managed and the overall quality of life will improve.

C Lynn Beebe asked:

The key to achieving good health is really quite simple. About now youre undoubtedly thinking, if it is so simple, why is the health level of the overall population declining at a record pace?

Of course the key to how one becomes healthy and maintains health is not difficult. In fact you may already know several of the things you should be doing to improve your health. It becomes complicated when we are faced with choices that are less than healthful and they cloud our judgment. These distractions compete for our attention with more healthful alternatives that may not seem quite as exciting.

We must allow ourselves to become focused by gaining an understanding of what is required in order to get the big prize – a healthy life. Basically there are three parts we need to master including proper nutrition, fitness, and finally the motivation to keep on track with both.

Proper nutrition, or healthy eating, is probably the most basic and easiest to understand principle of good health. Virtually everyone is aware when they are eating something that is healthful versus a food that is void of nutritional value.

Many times the simplest method of including a majority of healthful foods in the diet is to focus on good foods to eat rather than on bad foods that should not be eaten. As with most things in life, focusing on the positive usually produces the best results. Try to include as many fruits, vegetables, lean meats and whole grains as possible in each days meal plan. By including a large amount of good foods each day, you will find that theres little room left for the not-so-good foods. Proper nutrition will be nearly automatic.

Unlike nutrition, fitness is a bit more difficult to incorporate into daily life. The primary reason for this is that everyone must eat in order to live. Achieving proper nutrition simply means making the right choices for something you are going to do anyway. Activity, however, is not something we must do every day. Even though we should move every day, we wont suffer major consequences immediately if we dont. Instead, the price will be paid years down the road.

The key to increasing ones fitness is to build upon the activities already in place. For example, walking is an activity that most people perform every day. To get the most of this daily activity, expand the amount of walking you do. For example, park in the back of a parking lot to increase the number of steps it takes to reach your destination. Once inside a multi-level building, take the stairs to move from floor to floor rather than the elevator. Start with small changes and build from there.

Once you have increased your natural activity level it is time to focus on developing a fitness routine. Start slowly with just a short period of time devoted to your program each day. Even ten minutes is a good start. The key is to start a program and stick with it.

Sticking with it is where the motivation factor comes in. Motivation is tricky and its different for everyone. Many people are motivated by doing something routinely and building on it. If youre one of those people, consider yourself lucky and just get started with your health plans. The rest will take care of itself.

For the rest of us it is important to find what motivates us. Maybe its buying a new workout outfit or trying a new healthful recipe. Many people like to read fitness magazines and search online for new tips and exercise techniques. Others read inspiring stories and quotes.

Whatever it is for you, find it as soon as possible and hold on to it. Getting motivated is the number one key to achieving your health and fitness goals.

Gen Wright asked:


of people are being led astray by incorrect information, beliefs, opinions, and practices recommended by health care professionals, fitness instructors, and coaches who do not fully understand exercise and its requirements.

Many governmental agencies and fitness industry institutions promote the supposed health benefits of general physical activities over planned structured exercise. In an effort to gain compliance, these organizations have lowered the requirements of exercise to such a level that virtually every activity that involves mere movement of the body qualifies.

Such misinformation has caused many people to miss the real benefits that a proper exercise program can deliver or, even worse, to end up injured in the pursuit of health. Others become frustrated by lack of results or confused by conflicting information and choose to do nothing at all.

Suddenly there are all these experts saying things like, just park the car a bit further away from wherever you are going, or just do some gardening or housework. The most misleading of all is the notion that walking alone is enough to strengthen and condition the body and that is all that is necessary. Well listen up, we all have legs and we all walk, legs are the things that move our body and walking is what you do when you need to go to the shops or somewhere. How did it suddenly become an exercise program?

The truth of the matter is that if you want to lose weight, get fit, increase your strength or change your risk for heart disease you are going to need to work your body much harder than simply going for a leisurely stroll.

If it were that easy why is the world now facing an epidemic of overweight and obese people, sky rocketing levels of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other life threatening illnesses and conditions labeled lifestyle diseases? One of the greatest global health threats of the modern age is our sedentary and inactive lifestyles.

People who have health disorders which can be treated with physical activity should not be mislead into believing the “walking is all it takes for a good health” myth. This myth has given many a false sense that a stroll through the neighborhood is all you need to stay strong, fit and healthy. Instead of pushing people to become more active, it has merely provided an excuse to do as little as possible.

The other misleading type of information is to just “do something you enjoy”. What has fun got to do with an exercise program? Getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning to exercise before work is not any fun at all. Sometimes it is dark, cold and wet and it takes commitment and discipline to roll out of bed when it would be so much easier and nicer to stay in bed. Absolutely no fun there!

Well, here’s the truth that no one else in the health and fitness business wants to tell you: change is tough and getting fit takes hard work. In the fitness arena, that might mean better health, higher levels of cardiovascular fitness, increased strength, decreased body fat or decreased risk of disease or illness.

In competitive sport it might mean performing a skill or event at a higher level of competency.

Exercise training should challenge you to accomplish something not normally experienced in everyday life and to conquer new challenges. Have the courage to leave your old comfort zone, and step out into the discomfort of new territory, then you can achieve the healthy body you have always dreamed of…