Time for Exercise

There are many misconceptions about what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. If you watch much television, you’ve seen plenty of ads promising you the chance to lose lots of weight with little effort. Of course, there’s always the teeny, tiny disclaimer that the results shown on the commercial are not typical.

So how do you get healthy?

To really be healthy, you need to combine your efforts. You need to improve your diet, your fitness level and your exercise habits.

Diet alone is not enough, even though that’s where many people focus. If you go on a diet but don’t exercise, yes, you can lose some weight, but you aren’t improving your healthy by as much as you could be.

You don’t have to be in great shape to exercise. Even most disabled people can exercise, working around whatever physical limitations they face. Even if you’re overweight, you can find ways to start exercising, and build your routine as your body adapts.

Despite all the talk of low carb or low fat diets, your body does need these in order to function correctly. Cutting back on them can help you lose weight, but you need to know how far to cut back in order to maintain your healthy diet.

A major part of keeping your weight down is to simply not eat more calories than your body needs. The average person consumes perhaps 2500 calories per day, yet many nutrition labels base their facts on a 2000 calorie per day intake. This throws off how much of each nutrient you actually need.

To make things more confusing, the number of calories you need depends somewhat on how active you are. If you are in a very sedentary job and don’t work out regularly, you will need fewer calories than someone working a very physically demanding job who then goes to the gym.

If you want to get a look at how many calories you need daily, check out MyPyramid.gov. You can also see how many more calories you would need if you become more active. Of course, this relates to being a healthy weight, so it’s not absolute.

With an idea as to what you should be eating, you can look at your need for exercise. Much of this depends on where you are now and what your goals are. If you’re pretty fit, you probably already know your exercise needs pretty well. If you’re just starting out, go talk to your doctor about your diet and exercise plans for specific recommendations.