What You Need
To change the way you live your life, you need three things. First, you need to know what kind of change you want to make. To help you here, in this chapter you will learn more about what type of activity you need to incorporate into your life to see benefits. Next, you need the intention to change. To help you with that, in this chapter you will learn how to create active intentions, which will outline how you will add fitness into your life. Finally, you need a realistic plan for making change happen. Again, this chapter will show you how to do this. At the end of this chapter, you will have all of the tools you need to create an easy fitness plan that will enable you to reach your goals.
Activity in Your Life
To really be fit, you're going to have to find room for two things: (1) regular workouts that will strengthen your heart and other muscles, and that will burn calories; and (2) more activity in your day-to-day schedule, such as short walks and regular stretches. These two aspects of fitness cannot replace each other. You need both of them to truly be both healthy and fit.
The 30 minutes of daily activity can be of moderate intensity, which is the equivalent of walking 3.5 miles per hour. But the exercise sessions that you need for fitness and weight management need to include aerobic and anaerobic exercise for your heart, as well as strength training and flexibility sessions to keep your muscles strong and limber.
Making Activity Easy
For the purposes of this book, “easy” activity means nonstressful, workable ways to add exercise into your life. “Easy” means you can make your desk job more active, find time to go to the gym if you want to, create effective exercise sessions for your home, and take walks that burn fat and calories right off. Start your workout plans with activities you enjoy, whether they are biking, swimming, walking, or meditation. If you start with things you like to do, your goals will be that much easier to reach.
It won't be hard for you to adapt these changes to your life or for you to incorporate the changes into your schedule. Fitness is easy when it's fun and when you see results, and that doesn't mean you have to stick to a plan you don't enjoy, or do exercises that you hate. Instead, this plan is easy because you're going to like it.
Another part of your easy-fitness week is being active when previously you were sedentary. So for instance, you'll add a little yoga to your morning routine, or some dancing to your weekend plans, or you'll walk around the mall two times fast instead of sitting in the food court.
Your Fitness Schedule
In order to add more activity into your life, you'll need to schedule your workouts and always make sure your workouts count. You're not going to have to rearrange your entire life to be fit. But the reality is, if you don't schedule your workouts, you probably won't ever get around to exercising or being active. Therefore, you will need to schedule at least three, and hopefully four, 40-minute workout sessions into your week. But don't groan yet! The good news is that you choose what you'll do during those workouts. So take out your planner or your calendar, or even a blank piece of paper or a napkin, and write down when you're going to exercise.
Don't limit yourself when scheduling your workouts. Be honest about how much time it actually takes you to get ready, travel to the facility (if you're using one), work out, and return home. If you have to drive to the gym or change clothes, then give yourself an hour even if you're only planning to exercise for 40 minutes. The last thing you want is to feel rushed by your own schedule.
In Chapter 1, you learned a little bit about how to make your workouts count by using the overload principle and FITT. In the following sections, you'll learn more about interval workouts, which turn fast workouts into powerhouse programs.
