Wellness Wednesday was originally conceived as a place to post about fitness. While I am glad it has morphed into a space about all kinds of wellness, I’d like to take this moment to focus back on the one thing that is the
best illness prevention,
best mood enhancer,
best fat burner,
best strength builder,
best beauty treatment of all:
exercise, of course.
I don’t think it gets the press time or the limelight it deserves in the the halls of modern medicine, or in our public media space. There are studies are out there to support exercise for both prevention and adjunctive treatment for disorders from A to Z. These studies are not glamorous and not really media worthy, because in many cases they are confirming things which we already strongly suspected. So the results of these exercise studies are not sensational in any way. So the media is partly accountable for not continuing to remind us of the central importance of fitness. Medical caregivers are to blame since their focus is elsewhere and they themselves have insufficient knowledge and experience with fitness. Most importantly, the public is to blame. They would much rather read about a pill to cure obesity than read about how a consistent regimen of 30 minutes of daily exercise can reverse diabetes and heart disease.
I would like to take this opportunity point you back to my website pages on fitness, and encourage you to read through all the links.
That way, in about 5-6 minutes you can get the important points in a short period of time. But for those of you who are not link clickers, I will give you the nutshell version here:
- Those with medical problems should obtain medical clearance to exercise.
- Exercise should be engineered and planned into your day like an important meeting.
- Start with brief easy sessions 6 days per week to build a habit.
- Determine why you need to exercise.
- Resolve to make exercise fun.
- To begin, pick at least 3 easy fun routines or an exercise which requires little thinking on your part. Do not go over about 30 minutes per session on your first 3 months of exercise. DVDs or a class are ideal. Chose workouts that include concurrent cardio and resistance. Until you know what you are doing, go with a professionally designed workout which is safe, effective, balanced and includes warm up and cool down. My favorite library of workouts is Beachbody on Demand. I also love Jillian Michaels workouts.
- Pick a place of exercise that is time and weather independent. This could be a 24/7 gym, the outdoors, or a DVD in your living room.
- Arrange accountability through an app, a log, or a friend.
- Arrange self tracking through an app or a log. Include, weight, waistline, type and duration of workout. Do not measure your weight and waistline more than once per week.
- Have comfortable and flattering exercise wear.
- In the first three months go mellow to let your body begin adjusting. After that ramp up in intensity to your tolerance, provided you are tired but refreshed afterwards, rather than wiped out.
- Hydrate well all day long and have water during every workout.
- Remember that it takes 3 months to build a habit.
- Focus on how good you feel when you are finished.
