Fitness and Lifestyle

The reality is: you can lose weight in the absence of exercise but it is much much harder. There is also a very high risk that the eating habits you are adopting are very much perceived as a temporary fix, which is used to reduce the weight and then abandoned. Inevitably, returning to the old habits after the initial goal has been achieved, will lead to us going back to square one and having to do it all over again before long.

Exercise can be fun, even though in the beginning this may seem very unlikely. It creates opportunities to meet new people, definitely much more so than sitting at home in front of the TV. In addition some of the benefits of regular exercise are:

  • Increased level of energy
  • Feeling of general well-being
  • Weight control
  • Suppression of comfort eating and stimulation of a healthy eating pattern
  • Increase in intellectual performance
  • Improved capacity at work
  • Stress reduction
  • Slow down of the ageing process



How can I get fit?

If you have not done any exercise for a long time or are very overweight, any physical exercise may seem very much out of the discussion. It is vital for you to have a medical checkup to make sure that you are medically fit for exercise. This is very important because certain medical conditions can cause exercise to be fatal.

Assuming there are no medical problems, getting started on an exercise program is easy. Walking is the simplest and also a very effective form of exercise. As for quantity, intensity and duration the simple answer is: "Listen to your body". It is not always so simple because some people are extremely keen and tend to over-exercise one day, only to then be unable to exercise for the rest of the week. Other people are at the other end of the scale and tend to use every little twinge as an excuse not to exercise. However, the general rule is that you should not exercise to be totally exhausted but to just make you feel like you have done something. It is often very useful to have a personal coach assess your situation and provide recommendations and a plan to get fit.

What is the best exercise for me?

There are many different forms of exercise to chose from. You need to find something that suits you and that is also effective for weight control. If you are a busy person, the integration of the exercise routine into your day is very relevant. If you are trying to maintain an exercise regime, that is incompatible with the rest of your life, it is doomed to fail.