Exercise – Why is it so hard?

Want to know a secret?  Health Club pencil pushers love to see us coming!  They know that you will be enticed to sign on the bottom line of their contract with all good intentions – especially in January.  You go to the gym for awhile but then you find all kinds of excuses as to why it won’t work on particular days and before you know it you are paying for the privilege of having your name listed in the Club’s membership list with “absent” marked next to your name.  You had every intention of going, starting the new year right, dropping those excess pounds – but you just cannot muster up the motivation to go.  These clubs actually overbook the memberships knowing that statistically a certain percentage of people will not show up.

What about all those really neat exercise gadgets we buy?  Ab-roller bars, Suzanne Summers’ Thigh Squeezers, Rebounders, Boflex, Treadmills, Exercise Bikes, Dumbbells (often wondered why they call them that – perhaps, dumb because we don’t use them???) etc. – most of them become an expensive clothes rack in our designated rooms.  We spend so much money on “things” to do the work for us but it won’t work unless we actually use them.

Exercise success has to be purposeful.  We all have the purpose in mind – but sometimes not spirit.  We KNOW we need to, but we procrastinate doing it.  Am I the only one who has felt this way?  I think not – as I’ve talked to many clients who honestly tell me that they do the Hallelujah Diet but struggle with the exercise part of it.

Your body does not like being exercised at first – it’s a struggle – it hurts a little – you suddenly discover muscles you did not know existed.  You are stretching areas of flab that you didn’t know existed.  After about three weeks of consistent exercise, your body will change its mind and it will desire and expect to be exercised.  As you bend and stretch – your pant seams are stretched to the max because our waists have thickened so.  In your mind you justify that the dryer has shrunk another pair of jeans when in reality it was probably those extra helpings you dished out on your plate.  We are so easily deceived!

Don Colbert, MD, in his book “Seven Pillars of Health,” makes reference to just walking the dog for twenty minutes a day, five days a week can achieve an annual weight loss of 14 pounds.  Those who did this routine only twenty-six weeks did not see significant weight loss.  It’s the consistence that achieves our weight loss goals.

You have so many choices out there – so many different diets you can go on but the interesting fact is; that none of them work without exercise.   The Hallelujah Diet is no exception.  To guarantee the benefits you deserve from the effort you will put into this program, do some form of aerobic exercise everyday.  Your exercise program should be greatly varied and balanced.  Boredom will not set in if you do a variety of things each day.  Everyday you need to pant and puff, sweat and squeeze, stretch and bend. Aerobic exercise is one that stimulates the respiratory and circulatory systems.  It oxygenates your blood.  Your heart is a muscle, and just like any other muscle, if you don’t use it, you will loose it.  Did you know that horses sweat, men perspire and women glow!

Look into rebounding.  It is a terrific way to insure yourself an excellent full-body workout everyday.  You can jump on ones of these to a variety of exercise videos that we carry and before you know it, 20 minutes has gone by and you have had a WORKOUT.  If you begin your day in this way, you will have abounding energy – you’ll be at work and around 3:00 when everyone else has the afternoon slumps, you will be acing like the energizer bunny.  They will certainly wonder what your secret is!  Astronauts and sports teams have been using rebounders for years.  The best part is you can do this in your own home in front of your own TV and for those of us over 50 – you can feel good about yourself as you try to keep up with those 20 year old Barbie Dolls leading us to Ex-Flabs-ville.   Rebounding stimulates the lymph system, oxygenates every cell in your body, helps to eliminate accumulated toxins in the body and strengthens and tones every cell of the body because it works against the gravitational pull.

If you’ve never used one before, make an appointment to stop by the Lifestyle Center and we will be glad to show you the tapes we use and let you demo one.  It’s fun and if you don’t want to use a tape, you could just watch TV and rebound each day.

Regardless of which exercise you choose – you should choose at least 20 minutes of brisk activity.  The neat thing about rebounding (for us Type A personalities and time-crunchers), 20 minutes on the rebounder is the equivalent of one hour on the jogging trail.  A real time saver!  Making this effort will bring about dramatic results in a short amount of time.  As you apply exercise to your health regime, you will start to feel better, literally, you will really start to feel better as you drop weight and fit into smaller clothes and the best thing is the compliments you will receive from others who notice the difference.

Please don’t make the mistake of excluding exercise from your daily life.  The success of the Hallelujah Diet depends on it.  Your body will thank you for it, your health will most assuredly improve and the mirror will reflect a very happy, satisfied YOU!