Diet and Fitness
Get active, support your diet with fitness goals and exercise for weight loss. Diet Freedom provides help with dieting, fitness and exercise.
Exercise and fitness motivation for weight loss
All you need to do is get moving about more, doing something fun that you enjoy and turn it into a habit. It really is that easy, not to mention enjoyable.
Being sedentary increases your risk of a heart attack or stroke by the same amount as smoking. If you walk briskly for 30 minutes a day on most days of the week it's enough to bring about real benefits in terms of promoting your health and preventing you getting ill.
Why do you need to get active?
- It gets our hearts pumping - fending off heart and circulatory disease amongst other things
- It builds lean muscle, makes us more toned and our new muscle carries on burning more fat even when we are asleep
- It gets our digestion moving - getting rid of nasty toxins and waste
- It gets endorphins pumping, making us feel good, confident, sexy and it combats depression and stress related illnesses
- It increases levels of good cholesterol
- It lowers high blood pressure
- It boost our immune system
- And it helps us to sleep better too.
Your own exercise and fitness goals
In reality most of you aren't going to spend four hours a day in the gym with a personal trainer. Let's not forget that the cover girls / boys / celebs make a supreme effort in time and money and have an awful lot of help. Apart from being airbrushed to perfection of course ... In the hectic, frenzied, time-poor normal world it just ain't gonna happen and how boring it must be to spend 5 hours a day in the gym like Madonna!
You may well feel under a lot of pressure to conform and become unrealistic, sad Ken and Barbie clones - it's far more helpful to set a real goal. You know in your heart of hearts when you are happy with your weight / clothes size so don't follow the crowd, be your wonderful self, celebrate your uniqueness and set your own standards. You might want to try our Me Slimmer photo service as a great realistic inspiration.
Choose some form of exercise you enjoy and will make the time for, get some great music on an MP3 player, grab your trainers and stride away. If you aren't sure which activity floats your boat - try a few new ones, you'll be surprised what you might end up doing - belly dancing or karate anyone?
Can you walk the dog for an hour? If not can you borrow someone else's dog? Try out rambling, pole dancing, indoor rowing, rock climbing, belly dancing, aqua aerobics, horse riding, yoga, pilates, wood cutting, fencing, salsa, karate, water skiing, biking, self defence ...
Do your kids need entertaining? Take them swimming - if you can't swim, no worries - use a float or stride purposefully through the water - loads of folk do it so you won't be on your own! Put a hoop up against the side of the house and get the basketball habit, play cricket or rounders in the garden or your local park.
Put on your favourite music (or get MTV blasting out) crank it up and do the housework / lawn / garden with a bit of extra oomph. Mow the lawn without the collection bin and rake the cuttings or weed the flowerbeds. Take the stairs, get off the bus a stop earlier, walk up all escalators, use the loo on the next floor at work. You know how it goes.
Check out your local community centre / gym / park and see what activities are on offer. They are getting very creative these days!
Fitness friends
Rope someone else in if you can and make your activity plan together, it makes it easier to stick to and you'll soon make it a habit. Make sure you also have a treat afterwards - maybe a cappuccino and a natter at the local café?
Sex also counts as an activity but only if you throw yourself into it!
Our message is - activity makes you feel fantastic - and its fun! If you aren't currently doing a regular activity you enjoy you are missing out. You will not only feel great, have more confidence, look better and have more energy - you'll also banish any wobbly bits you'd rather not have.
Reward yourself along the way. If you stick to your activity plan every fortnight, have a nice meal out, book a massage or see a film – do whatever makes you feel rewarded.
Just remember whatever you do start slowly and build up rather than going bananas to start with, you will only put yourself off or injure yourself if you do that! There is no time frame - it's not a race - you have the rest of your life to do it!
If you are not very active, have restricted mobility or have a medical condition talk to your doctor first about any planned new activity.
We have some great motivational tools in our shop to get you in the right mindset to start your activity and stick with it. Our Hypnosis Exercise & Fitness Motivation CD is a simple way to get motivated.
As a member you will receive help and advice from some of the top sports dieticians in the UK plus lots of ideas to spice up your activity along with the latest research.
Find out more about the great membership benefits For Him or For Her and Sign Up now.