Aug
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- The 7 worst mistakes to make while trying to lose weight, become fit and get healthy.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #1, fad diets.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #2, forgetting about exercise.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #3, do no research.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #4, too much cardio.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #5, weight training too hard and too early.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #6, treating setbacks as failures.
- 7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #7, Trying to do it alone.
The beginning of this series of articles was a list of the worst mistakes people make when they start working on improving their health. Now I’d like to cover each one of those items in detail. Today’s topic is item 2, do no exercise.
How often have you talked to someone who was overweight and thinking about changing their life? What’s the first thing they think of? Typically, it’s a diet of some kind. If they’re smart, they’re at least thinking healthy eating instead of fad diet, but they’re still thinking in terms of diet. There are two things wrong with this mind set.
First, it equates weight loss with being healthy. That’s absolutely wrong. Losing weight is not the same thing as being healthy. You can in fact lose weight and be unhealthy just as you can gain weight and become healthy. If people thought of losing weight as losing fat then maybe I would agree with that mindset, but they don’t. Yes, losing some weight can usually lead to a healthier life, but not always and not for all people. A better way to think of weight is in terms of body composition. You want more of your body to be lean tissue such as muscle and less of your body to be fat.
The second thing wrong with the “diet only” mindset is that it focuses on one side of the equation only. Even if your only concern is losing weight, you should still be looking at more than just your food. Remember, weight is a simple result of calories in versus calories out. So why are you only looking at your calories in? Why aren’t you also examining your calories out? Eating 100 calories less a day is the exact same thing as spending 100 calories more a day. Either way, the net result is a 100 calories less that day. However, the 100 calories you spent in exercise also helps your body in other ways such as improving muscle tone and cardio vascular fitness.
Women and Exercise
Women seem to be the ones who usually shy away from exercise and focus on diets. My personal belief is that this is due to our culture’s ridiculous need to pressure women away from anything remotely masculine. For some reason we’ve gotten it in our heads that gyms, weights and exercise in general are meant for men and women should stay away for fear of becoming butch body builders. However, that’s just plain idiocy.
Exercise will not make you into a body builder, even if you go to the gym to do it. Body building requires an incredible amount of time, dedication and specialized training. Going to the gym three times a week or working out at home for 20 minutes a day is not enough. It’s like believing that driving to the supermarket will make you into a race car driver, it’s just not true. Exercise will also not make your muscles all bulged out and veiny. That too takes a lot of time, dedication and specialized training. What exercise will do is help you lose weight by spending calories and speeding up your metabolism. It will make you healthier by improving cardio vascular fitness. Plus the healthy and athletic look is sooooo much more attractive than the thin and boney look.
Personal Experience
And just when I’ve told you that focusing on diet only was primarily an issue with women, I’m going to add that primarily does not mean only. Many men have this problem too. Years ago, when I first started gaining weight, I tried various diets. I tried eating less, eating better and just plain not eating, but for some reason, I never thought of exercise. I had an odd mental block which told me weight was all about food. I knew intellectually that exercise played an important role in my health and weight, but I never made the connection intuitively. When I saw my weight I blamed the food I ate that day, not the ten hours I spent sitting on the couch and not moving.
Moving past
The solution to all this is to understand two things. First, your goal is not to lose weight, your goal is to be healthy. Part of that may be to lose weight. In fact, losing weight is almost always a part of getting healthy, but losing weight is not the end goal, it’s just one part of it. Second, you need to understand that what you eat is only 50% of the problem. What you do is the other 50%. So get past your irrational fears of the gym. Stop believing the myth that picking up a dumbbell will make you into a steroid chugging body builder and start being active. Exercise, workout, move your body any way you can.
Summary
Think about it this way, what’s a better way of losing 100 calories from your daily total? Worrying about how to eat more broccoli and less cheese or going dancing, hiking or walking? Exercise and physical activity is a vital part of any effort to lose weight and become healthier. Never forget that.
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[...] weight, become fit and get healthy.7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #1, fad diets.7 mistakes to avoid while trying to get healthy. #2, forgetting about exercise. This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series, 7 things to avoid when trying to get healthy. 60 in [...]