Category Motivation

Are chronic excuses keeping you from the rewards of a regular, challenging exercise routine? If so then you’re missing out on much more than you realize.

Here are the Top 7 Reasons to Exercise
Reason #1: To Melt Fat Away

The most coveted side effect of exercise is, of course, fat burn. The combination of a challenging exercise routine and a balanced meal plan is the best known way to lose fat. Here’s what losing fat feels like:

• Your pants become loose
• People around you begin to say that you look great
• A glance at yourself in the mirror makes you smile
  

  Illustration depicting a sign with a stop making excuses concept.

• Your energy levels soar
• You feel amazing

Reason #2: To Alleviate Pain

Regular exercise is a great way to alleviate chronic muscle and joint pain. Persistent back pain can be lessened by strengthening your core, and you’ll protect yourself against injury. It amazes people when the chronic pain that they’ve lived with for years begins to fade after starting a regular exercise program.

Reason #3: To Increase Lean Tissue

More muscle is good for many reasons. You see, muscle uses many more calories each day than fatty tissue. In fact, one pound of muscle burns 30-50 calories each day at rest—compared to a measly 9 calories per pound of fat.

When you exercise your body composition will change to contain more lean tissue, thus resulting in extra calories burned while you sleep. What could be better than that?

Reason #4: To Stay Young

Tim D. Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College in London, led a study on the effects of exercise on aging. The results were astounding. They found that exercise appears to slow the shriveling of the protective tips on bundles of genes inside cells (called telomeres), which means a slowing of the aging process.

Here’s the study in a nutshell:

• Telomeres cap the ends of chromosomes and every time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter.
• Once a telomere gets too short, that cell can no longer divide.
• Aging occurs as more and more cells reach the end of their telomeres and die. This results in weakened muscles, skin wrinkles, loss of eyesight and hearing, organ failure and slowed mental functioning.
• The study analyzed the telomeres from the white bloods cells of twins over a 10-year period. Telomere length was used as a marker for the rate of biological aging.
• It was found that the length of telomeres was directly related to that twin’s activity level. “There was a gradient,” Spector said. “As the amount of exercise increased, the telomere length increased.”
• People who did 100 minutes of weekly exercise had telomeres that looked like those from someone about 5-6 years younger than those who did 16 minutes of exercise each week.
• People who did 3 hours of vigorous exercise each week had telomeres that looked like those from someone about 9 years younger.

Reason #5: To Prevent or Control Type 2 Diabetes

Regular exercise helps to stabilize blood sugar levels. This is something that people with type 2 diabetes, or at risk for type 2 diabetes, gain substantial benefits from. Exercise improves the body’s use of insulin, and the related weight loss improves insulin sensitivity. Of course patients with type 2 diabetes need to follow guidelines from their doctor before starting an exercise program.

Reason #6: To Lower Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Levels

Exercise has shown to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels for these two reasons:

• Weak heart muscles pump little blood with lots of effort. By exercising you strengthen your heart muscles and train them to pump more blood with less effort. The stronger your heart is the less pressure will be exerted on your arteries.
• Exercise Increases HDL levels in some people—this means a decrease in your risk for heart disease. Other heart disease risk factors such as weight, diabetes and high blood pressure all show improvement with regular exercise.

Reason #7: To Feel Great

The first thing that clients tell me after starting an exercise program is how much better they feel. Most didn’t even realize how bad they felt. It is easy to get used to feeling sluggish, achy and unmotivated. Exercise boosts your energy levels and makes you feel amazing.

The quickest, easiest way to guarantee that you’ll meet your fitness and weight loss goals is to work one-on-one with a qualified fitness professional. You’ll be held accountable with your workouts and you’ll be instructed properly and shown techniques and strategies that will expedite your results. If you’d like to get started, or haven’t been to the gym in a while, give me a call, shoot me a text, or just schedule an appointment. I’d love to help you get moving again and on the past to feeling great!

Belly fat is the worst…and these days it’s harder than ever to get rid of. With social pressures and modern conveniences constantly in your face and in abundance in the grocery store, it’s no wonder that your waistline continues to expand.

While losing fat, and losing it quickly, can feel impossible, I’m here today to give you a 3-pronged approached to shrink your belly fat once and for all.

#1: Eat Well

It may seem obvious, but everything you put in your body has the potential to go to your belly. The top offender for growing your belly is sugar. This means if you want to slim down around your waistline, cutting sugar from your diet is going to help you fast track your way to your goal. Don’t think this means just avoiding chocolate cake at birthday parties. It means giving up the three tablespoons of sugar you add to your coffee, saying no to soda, and skipping sports drinks. Get your sugars from whole fruits with natural sweetness that also has nutrition.

While cutting sugar from your diet, you’ll need to fill your belly with satiating foods. One of the best options is lean protein. It helps you build muscle (extra muscle = extra belly fat-burning ability) and keeps you full for a longer amount of time. Of course, it also gives you extra energy that helps your workout endurance in the gym.

#2: Work Out Well

Speaking of workout endurance, if you’re going to really shed belly fat, you’re going to have to commit yourself to exercise. No more excuses, and if you are coming to the gym, no more halfway doing it. You’ve got to go all out. But before you laser focus on your core, you should know that, burning off belly fat by targeting all exercises directly at your abs won’t work.

Instead, you’ll need to put in a full-body exercise routine that gets your heart pumping. That means on top of a solid foundation of weights and other strength-training exercises, you’ll want to pile on plenty of high intensity cardio exercises.

#3: Track It All

Getting rid of belly fat is a daunting task, and even when it’s going well, it can feel remarkably slow. By keeping track of your progress and your daily intake and output of calories, you can better determine what’s working and what’s not, and have a better perspective on your actual progress.

Tracking isn’t just good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s also useful for setting goals. Run for 20 minutes yesterday? Go for another couple minutes today. Or better yet, if it took 20 minutes to run two miles yesterday, try running an extra tenth of a mile in the same amount of time today. Keep piling new on challenges for yourself, and that fat that has clung so tightly to your belly through the years will soon start dropping off your frame.

Even the best exercise routine in the world is fruitless if you throw away your results with sloppy eating. Remember to keep your meals lean by avoiding processed carbs, packaged foods or fried items. Fill up on lean proteins and fresh vegetables and reward yourself with organic, seasonal fruit (if it’s on your meal plan.) That, my friend, is lean living!

If you haven’t made an appointment for a nutrition consultation, now is the perfect time to get started. Just text me to set one up. With the fresh summer vegetables that are in season, you can make some delicious, nutritious meals that well help melt that belly fat away in no time flat! If you already a Full Spectrum Fitness client, thank you so very much for your continued support. If your friends have asked you ‘what have you been doing?’ please tell them to come in and check out our offerings, or go the website to learn more. Thank you.