If you didn’t quite stick to your new years resolution and your weight has increased over the winter, it is time to do something about it. The right time to get fit and healthy isn’t next week or next month, it is NOW. We spend every hour of every day in our body; so why not feel good in it year round.

Many of us have tried and succeeded in getting in shape for summer in the past; before falling back to our old habits and repeating the cycle year after year. This article isn’t about trimming those extra kilos so that we look good on the beach this summer. It is about changing our daily habits, so that when bikini season does come around, it hasn’t snuck up on us; instead we have been ready for it all year.

Winter can be a time when we are spending large portions of our day indoors, and either consciously or unconsciously enjoying warm comfort food, often very high in energy. Because we are putting this extra fuel into our body yet staying inside and not burning it off, this fuel gets converted to extra padding around our stomach and hips. Remember, the aim is not to shed those extra pounds before Summer, just to have them return over the colder months. On the journey to achieving and maintaining your healthy lifestyle and body, often the first hurdle is the biggest. Starting.

Start slowly and ease your way into it. When starting or restarting a program you will pull up quite sore on the days following the first few sessions; don’t let this deter you, these aches will subside and the benefits will start to shine through.

It is important that your new program has a balance between the many forms of exercise.

Top 5 Things to Remember:

1. Your program should include:
   • Cardiorespiritory Training
   • Muscular strength, endurance and core stability work.
   • Flexibility Training
2. Try to get some form of exercise in for 30 minutes a day; most if not all days of the week. This can be in the form of walking or running, doing a resistance training program or exercise such as pilates or yoga.
3. If 30 minutes all at once seems to far away, recent research has shown that 3 x 10 minute or 2 x 15 minute sessions can be added together to achieve a similar result. You can start at this intensity and work towards and beyond a 30 minute session; remembering to stretch at the conclusion of each session.
4. Resistance training can be done with equipment such as free weights or using exercises that utilise your bodies own weight as resistance (if you are having trouble coming up with a safe resistance training program that is tailored to your needs, consult a health and fitness professional such as your exercise physiologist).
5. Remember when starting your program vary the exercises that you complete, and have fun with them. This will keep it interesting and improve the chances of adhering to your program in the long run.

Sticking to a simple program like this, as well as watching your diet will have you looking and feeling great this summer and many more to come.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 6:11 am and is filed under Exercise Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.