Weight Loss Advice: Doing Something is Much Better than Doing Nothing

When of the most common excuses people use for not exercising is "I am too busy; I don't have time to exercise as much as I have to in order to lose weight and/or tone my body or build muscle." If you are one of those people who use that kind of excuse for not exercising at all, I would like for you to be aware of two very important facts that might just change this mindselt for you for you:

1. Exercising, weight loss and health us the most important thing in your life. I don't care how many children you have to take care of, what you do for a living, and how many professional and social obligations you have - if you are not healthy, fit and happy, NOTHING else will matter to you and all other achievements will be undermined by this missing fundamental link of a healthy, happy life. Hey, if our President, Secreatary of State, and the Governor have time to exercise with all their headaches, who are we to complain that we don't have time?

2. It's very important to realize and remember that when it comes to exercising, doing something is much better than nothing. Too many people do not take the time to exercise just because they don't have a full hour or more to do that. It is not  necessary, however, to exercise for such a long period of time in order to get the health and the weight loss benefits from physical activity that you need. In fact, a very short but intense exercise can be very effective or just as effective for the purposes of losing weight and becoming stronger. Most people, even if they carry a significant extra weight, can run a mile in under 12 minutes, which is a great workout in itself. Even a couple of sets of 3 minutes of squats and three minutes of rope jumping with a few minutes of jogging to warm up and cool down will jump start and significantly speed up your metabolism, and that should only take around 20 minutes or even less.

So, if you know you should be exercising and you just have a few minutes to do so, don't blow your work-out off copmletely because of lack of time, but instead, use those few minutes to get a great, intense workout.

The most rarely mentioned weight loss secret!

After speaking with and observing hundreds of people of different ages who are in great shape and enjoy a very healthy life and high energy, I couldn't help but notice that very few of them had a specific gym routine that they committed to performing every day.

However, I noticed a very different, strikingly important thing that they all have in common. Their great lean bodies are a "side effect" of an exercise activity they already enjoy and would be involved in regardless of their desire to lose weight. In other words, you will not see those people pumping steel or running on a tredmill for a given number of minutes while looking at their watch every minute and thinking "When is it going to be over? I can't wait to get out of here!" Instead, these very fit people seem to truly enjoy whatever sports activity they are performing - hip hop dancing, martial arts, biking, rock-climbing, tennis, soccer, basketball are only few of the activities that are parts of those people's lives.

Obviously, since those people enjoy their activities, instead of waiting to get their exercise over with, they often lose track of time because they enjoy a game or a dance so much and they end up exercising much longer than they might have planned in the beginning. Thus, motivation for those people is not an issue.

Thus, if you too want to lose weight, you are much more likely to succeed if you try to combine "business" with pleasure - the business of losing weight with the pleasure of choosing an exercise that you enjoy.

Go ahead, try different kinds of sports, take a few different dance / yoga / pilates / martial arts classes. I am sure you will run into one or more kinds of activities that you will truly enjoy, and the weight problem will likely take care of itself as you get involved in the activity that you actually like.

Seeing results helps!

It so happens that we all enjoy seeing results of our work as soon as possible. The work we do in order to lose is no different. We want to see some kind of progress shortly after we start working out and maintaining healthy diet. The good news is that there is a simple, reliable way to see the results of your work relatively quickly - get a digital weight scale. A quality digital scale will show you your weight loss progress in precise measurement of 1 or 1/2 a pound.

Thus, if you weight yourself, lets say, once per week, seeing a drop of 1/2 - 1 pound per week will be a very encouraging news for you and it will further motivate you to work harder and stick with your routine.

I do not like endorsing particular brands, but when it comes to scales, quality matters and Tanita make excellent, precision digital scales. Get one and start monitoring your progress weekly, records your measurements and watch how you drop those pounds of fat.