How to get in Shape and Stay in Shape – It’s Easier than you Think
Aug 2nd, 2010 | By Sarah | Category: Fitness, Health | Print This Article
In America today, far too many people are out of shape and at risk of contracting a serious illness or disease, simply because they are not fit. It seems to be almost a national epidemic or, at the very least, an important health concern.
People who are unfit and choose to remain that way are much more prone to illnesses and ailments that require costly medical care and, frequently, hospitalization. Nearly fifty years ago, President John Kennedy recognized the fitness problem (it existed way back then) and used his “bully pulpit” to promote the concept of fitness and health, especially for young people.
It worked for a time, but as always happens, the push for fitness eventually died down and Americans returned to their old ways—poor eating habits and no physical exercise.
Stand on any street corner in the United States today and watch as people pass by. You will see an almost endless parade of overweight, obese and unhealthy Americans walk into view. You’ll see many that are fashionably slim and slender, as well, but, as you will note, there are far too many people who appear to be out of shape, lacking in physical fitness, and vulnerable to serious illness or even a dread disease.
So, how can the average American (it may be you) overcome this national problem? The solution is easier than you think. In fact, getting fit and healthy – and then staying that way – is not at all complicated. It’s actually easy if you can remain dedicated and motivated to a concept.
In truth, weight loss – and the physical fitness that you want to achieve – can occur if you do two things regularly—eat healthy foods and exercise. It’s that simple.
You don’t need to follow the lead of fitness gurus who want you to buy expensive, but unproven, exercise equipment; the kind you see advertised all of the time on television. You don’t need to spend your hard-earned money on diet pills that often don’t work, but that cost much more than they should—generally a lot more.
Getting fit and staying fit – and healthy – is really quite simple. It involves a lifestyle change and a commitment by you to that lifestyle change. The things that are necessary for greater fitness and better health involve daily exercise and much greater control of your diet. Of course, if you are extremely overweight, or morbidly obese, it’s important that you consult your personal physician before you begin an exercise program or even a change in your diet.
You will definitely lose weight, look better and feel much better if you establish a daily regimen of diet and exercise … and you stick to it. However, if you haven’t exercised in a long time, it may be a good idea to start slowly. Here’s what you should do …
Establish a schedule that includes a walk for personal exercise every morning, seven days a week. Although the real benefit comes from walking briskly and breathing deeply, you can start slowly until your body is acclimated and your legs get in better condition for walking.
Then … increase your pace.
Many physicians and exercise professionals agree that brisk walking is as good for diet and health as jogging or running. And there can be no doubt that it is less jarring to your feet and legs and easier on your joints. Walking works so include it in your exercise regimen. And then, when you also alter your diet, watch the excess weight just melt away and leave you slimmer, comfortably fit, better looking … and feeling great!
If possible (and as you add additional exercises) try to keep this walking regimen a part of your daily life. As you become healthier and your stamina increases (along with your strength), consider stepping up to a more rigorous and difficult exercise program.
However, before you step up, it’s important that you eliminate the “junk” from your diet. I think you know what that means. If you’ve been eating lots of sweets like cake, cookies and ice cream … fatty foods like hamburgers and fried foods from restaurants and fast food emporiums, greasy and oily potato chips, other salty snacks and meals heavy in bad carbohydrates – it’s time to “take the plunge” and make the change.
That change does not involve a short term diet. No, it requires a full-blown commitment to altering the way you live. Eliminate the “bad foods” mentioned a moment ago – as much as possible – and replace them with foods that will keep you slim, healthy and always energetic. What are these “magical” foods?
I believe you know even before I put them to print. And they are not magical, but are simply nature’s bounty, meant to be consumed by humans for good health and long life. Here’s what you need to make an integral part of your daily diet: grilled flat fish (not shellfish) … chicken … lean meats … fruits … lots and lots of green vegetables … and, of course, whole grain breads and cereals.
If you make those foods central to your diet, you will get healthier … leaner … and much more energetic – fast! Then, once your new diet is in place and you’re walking briskly as well, you can take the next step. Move up to a more physical daily workout, such as one that incorporates the use of martial arts. It requires extreme physicality … will help you lose weight … establish more muscle and body tone … even help you learn some of the fine points of self defense.
Of course, you may not like martial arts for your upgraded exercise regimen, and that’s not a problem. There are countless other daily exercise programs available right now that you can do and may enjoy. Importantly, you needn’t spend big bucks to join an exercise program that you have to travel to if you want to participate in it … then pay a monthly membership fee if you want to continue in the program.
There is an easier, less expensive way for you to increase the intensity of your daily exercise from walking to something more physical and demanding. All you really have to do is drive over to the local mall, enter the local video store, and buy a workout DVD that you can study, learn and follow religiously every day – right in your own home. Now that’s easy and affordable.
In fact, after a few months pass and you tire of the same workout, you can return to the video store and buy a new workout DVD. There are so many available, you are sure to find one or more that you like.
As even more time passes, you may even opt for weight training, but that should not appear on your personal horizon until you’ve spent lots of time toning your body, eliminating unnecessary fat and getting yourself fit, energetic and healthy.
Fitness and good health do not need to be difficult to achieve. However, they can be unattainable unless you’re willing to make a permanent commitment to self-improvement.
If you’re currently overweight and unfit – and you know it – make plans to change your life. Alter your diet and start exercising for good health and long life. Take the first step today. In fact, do it right now.
Other articles in this issue:
- How to Create a Food Storage Supply for You and your Spouse … For as Little as $5 per Week
- Saved by a Franklin Stove
- Trash Talk: Survival Sanitation
If you liked this article you may be interested in this product from our sponsor.
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A great ‘low-impact’ exercise is bicycle riding. Almost anyone can do it, and the range of exercise goes from meandering to full out racing.
I agree with the idea of practicing a martial art. Taiji is a great way to relax, increase your balance, stamina, etc. However it is not very useful as a MA unless you plan to practice hours a week for years. I belong to a karate club where the ages range from 60 to 77. Yes, we “old fogies” punch and kick and learn a useful art for 2 to three hours a week. Of course, we train a little differently from what kids are taught (Most are not really learning a marital art. They are learning a sport which is great exercise even if it can get them hurt if they think they can defend against a serious attack.) We also don’t do the contact, etc that a 20 or 30 something might want so our defenses are more knee kicks and elbow strikes. Anyway, even a poor self defense class gets on moving briskly and might prove useful in the unfortunate event of needing to defend one’s self. Good artical.
For some of us, walking is not a real viable option. For me, my left leg was amputated about 10 years ago, and while walking is possible with my prosthesis, walking any distance is still quite a chore.
That’s why in the early days after I lost my leg, we got a rebounder for exercise issues. Even before I got my prosthesis, I would sit on the rebounder, and my wife would bounce up and down on it for 10 minutes or so, and that up and down motion helped me to get stronger as well.
For those of you that don’t understand what a rebounder can do, when you bounce on a rebounder, at the bottom of your bounce, you are effectively exerting a gravity force that is greater than our normal gravity. Then, at the top of each bounce, you are weightless for a moment. These greater gravity/no gravity movements exercise every cell in your body, and over time can bring you to a degree of quite good health.
I only accessory I would suggest you purchasing beyond the rebounder would be a U-shaped handlebar, which easily attaches to 2 of the legs of the rebounder, so there’s no danger of losing your balance and injuring yourself. I started bouncing for as little as 3 minutes at a time, and now am up to 30 minutes a time, every other day. I bought mine from Nordic-Trak, which is now out of business, I guess. but a google search of rebounding or rebounder should turn up a resource for you.
Works for me; maybe it would work for you too
I’d suggest that any person who’s out of shape at all should begin a weight training exercise regime from the beginning to build muscle and strength. Not with huge weights of course, but with their own body weight if they’re obese, or with something as light as soup cans if they can do more than thirty reps of any body weight lifting exercise. From the beginning any person can do leg lifts, and arm circles just like we did as kids in gym class and they’ll find themselves with more energy quicker than if they wait till they’re toned before worrying about weight training. that’s just silly. even a bed ridden individual can start by lifing body parts or grasping an overhead bar and pulling. not everyone CAN walk but everyone can do something.
This article is very right on the money and I can vouch for it through my own personal experience.
I have always been very much an outdoors person. I grew up in the pacific northwest and spent the first part of my life living there, all the time I lived there I was fit and in shape because I could be very active outdoors in the veritable paradise I grew up in.
The problem is where I live right now. Since we have lived out in the Mojave desert in So. Cal. I have slowly gotten softer and fatter as the price of fuel has steadily risen. I used to make trips out of this area constantly to go hiking or biking up in the mountains, but sadly, we can no longer afford the fuel it takes to do so as often as nessesary to stay fit. Out here it is so hot during the summer that going for a walk is a dangerous activity for me and one of my kids (we both get heat exaustion very easily), and during the winter the wind is blowing so badly you can’t see for all the airborn sand and my kids and I have suffered many a scratched corona in our stubborn attempts to walk or ride anyway and I now have a condition call Recurrent Corneal Erosion from my repeated scratches I have recieved because I did try one winter to go for a walk every day despite the wind. Yes I did loose a lot of weight, but at the expense of aquiring RCE, plus I find it impossible to continue physical activity into the summer months, even the early mornings/late evenings are quite unberable. There is also no community pool here in this town either so that I may continue my physical activity into the summer. My only option would be to move out of here, but that is easier said than done with my husband not wanting to move.
Sarah,
Spot on, girl! God made life to be simple, not complicated. Both diet and exercise are needed. And common sense is the rule for both. A simple point on weight loss needs to be added. The rate that the body burns calories is called the basal metabolic rate. This rate drops when one does not exercise and diet. Food affects the BMR in different ways. Protein causes the BMR to go into an anabolic state, which means that fat cells are opened and burned. Carbohydrates causes the BMR to go into a catabolic state which means that the calories are automatically stored as fat which then causes the body to draw upon muscle tissue for energy to burn. Exercise also increases the anabolic state. So, simply said, cutting back on simple carbohydrates and exercising regularly puts the body in the anabolic state so that calories continue to be burned from the fat tissue even while resting. When I was 48 I had to lose weight for a gymnastics meet. After the nationals I stopped my diet and exercise and within a matter of weeks I ballooned back up. The enemy was bread. I recently realized that I had to get back in shape. Reducing my intake of bread, increasing lean meat and fruits and vegetables with exercise again has brought me back into shape. It really is not that hard.
SURVIVAL FITNESS = KETTLEBELLS AND BODY WEIGHT CALESTHENICS
You don’t need a great deal of equipment or an expensive gym membership to get in shape and stay in shape. For a survival situation, though functional strength and all-day stamina are important aspects for anyone. The best bang for the buck that I’ve ever spent on physical fitness….and what I recommend to anyone else… is a steady diet of kettlebell strength circuits and body weight training. The best source of material I’ve found is at http://www.dragondoor.com.
By following a simple regime of kettlebell circuits, body-weight calisthenics, and kettlebell cardio training (I hardly ever walk or run anymore) I was able to increase my functional capacity for power and work astronomically. At over 40 years old and 20 lbs overweight, I cleaned up heavy brush around my house with a rented chainsaw and a machete for two straight days. I cut several overhead branches holding the saw overhead, and re-started the chainsaw to make every cut – hours of repeatedly holding the chainsaw in one hand and yanking the ripcord in the other. I literally broke the saw near the end of the first day and still felt like mix of Paul Bunyan and the Energizer Bunny. The rental firm came and fixed the saw the next day and I broke the thing again midway through the second day and still had the stamina to finish the job when the company came out and repaired it once more.
Reintroduced to the west by a former Soviet Military Physical Fitness trainer, the kettlebell is billed as the AK-47 of fitness equipment. It is basically a cast iron cannon ball with a handle. It is extremely versatile, highly mobile and incredibly useful. I’ve carried mine all over the world. It has been proven by the old Soviet Spetnaz and adopted by the USMC, SEALS and US Secret Service.
A good entry-level kettlebell for an average male who is not in great shape is the 16 kg (35 lbs). A good entry-level kettlebell for the ladies is the 8 kg (18 lbs). If you’re in good shape already but would prefer a minimalist approach to fitness, you may chose a 20 kg or 24 kg bell (Men) or a 12 or 16 bell (women). The 24 kg is standard for most in the military.
I recommend a purchase of one kettlebell and an instructional DVD or book or two:
“Enter the Kettlebell” (DVD and Book) – Excellent Entry-level instruction for the Kettlebell a necessity for safety.
“Naked Warrior” (DVD and Book) and/or “Convict Conditioning” (Book) – Excellent instruction for high-performance body-weight strength training.
There are plenty of other products at Dragondoor that will help to increase your physical performance, but these few items are enough to get the job done and reasonable at around $180 to $200. You can also do a Youtube search. There are lots of good “free” instruction on Kettlebell exercises…95% use the proper (safe) techniques). Keep the back straight, butt back and wrists straight and firm.
Oh… and I DO NOT get remuneration from Dragondoor for recommending their stuff. I’m just sharing something I know will work.