Extra weight on your body often makes you self-conscious and interrupts your normal lifestyle by causing sleeping problems, back and joint pain and even heart disease. A commitment to lose weight improves your overall health but also adds variety to your life because you'll stay busy making changes to your diet and engaging in different types of physical activity. Recognize the many ways to stay busy while slimming down to start on your journey to a healthy body weight.
Examine Your Diet
Stay busy in the early stages of weight loss by taking a critical look at your diet. You'll need to eliminating fattening items like fried meats and sugar-filled drinks and desserts, because weight loss only occurs when you consume fewer calories daily than you burn with activity. Aim for weight loss of 1 or 2 lb. each week, a goal that is reasonable and can be achieved by eating fruits, whole grains and vegetables --- low-calorie foods that help you stay full longer. Counting calories takes time, but helps you remain aware of your intake. Most healthy diets require consumption of between 1,000 and 1,600 calories, although your doctor's input on a safe goal is essential.
Your Favorite Workouts
Aerobic exercise represents your best way to keep busy and lose weight because numerous aerobic options exist --- and all burn calories. Sports like soccer, tennis, basketball, and even football and volleyball are aerobic workouts that elevate your heartbeat. Other popular forms of aerobic exercise include brisk walking, swimming, participating in an aerobic dance class or riding your bike around the lake. Health experts recommend aerobic workouts up to five times every week for 30 to 60 minutes. Begin at a comfortable pace and work at a moderate intensity suggested by your doctor.
Build Your Physique
Dedicating at least two or three days every week to activity that builds your muscles keeps you busy and also makes you more likely to achieve significant weight loss. Strength training includes pushups, squats and pullups, as well as workouts with flexible resistance bands, although the most popular workouts feature weightlifting. Fitness professionals endorse strength training for weight loss because muscle uses calories quicker than other body tissue. People who keep busy by training for at least half an hour are also rewarded with a metabolism spike that makes it possible for the body to continue burning calories even during leisure periods.
Regular Activities
Aerobic workouts and muscle-building routines burn the most calories, but your waistline also benefits when you keep busy with regular physical activities as much as possible. Consider yard projects like raking at a brisk pace, enhancing your garden or trimming your yard with a walking mower rather than a riding model. Doctors also suggest using the stairs whenever possible and parking your vehicle a safe distance from the entrance to the grocery store.
References
- Cleveland Clinic: What Is the Best Type of Aerobic Exercise?
- MayoClinic.com; Strength Training: Get Stronger, Leaner, Healthier; June 2010
- MayoClinic.com; Aerobic Exercise: Top 10 Reasons to Get Physical; February 2011
- President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition: Exercise and Weight Control
- MayoClinic.com; Obesity; October 2010
- The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library: Diets
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