Five Simple Steps for a Stronger Body
We have turned from hunter gatherers who were always on the move, into a species who struggle to get up from the couch to get drink from the fridge. We’ve gone from nomadic to sedentary. Obviously, that isn’t exactly healthy for us. We were simply not built to live this way.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Even for those of us who have to sit down and work for a living, there are plenty of options for getting in our exercise – and we don’t even need to get an expensive gym membership to do it!
Let’s look at some simple steps that you can start taking today which will make your body stronger, healthier and sexier besides!
Get yourself out of breath every day
You know that 10,000 step thing that you keep hearing about? It turns out, that isn’t actually a scientifically supported thing. It just sounded good to the guy who created the movement. And yeah, it does have a certain ring to it. But we shouldn’t just do exercises because they sound good. Instead, it’s far more helpful if we do ones that actually help us!
So, rather than going for the 10k steps – which is a lot of work – the goal is to find some way to get yourself to be out of breath for 15 minutes a day. This has been shown to have a lot of health benefits and as an extra bonus, it’s easy to do! We can all find 15 minutes to something that’s physically tiring.
You can:
- Climb several sets of steps
- Have sex
- Do squats
- Go all out for a few minutes on one of those bicycles
- Shadow box
- Jump rope
Or anything else, really. As long as it gets your heart pumping and your breath flowing, you’re doing it right.
Bicycle to work
You don’t have to do it every day. Especially to begin with, that’s going to be very tiring. But you can certainly do it some of the days. Maybe on the Friday, for example.
You don’t even have to go all the way, either. Find out what part of your route is easy to do with public transport and then bike the rest. As long as you know when and where you can switch from one mode of transport to the other, you can make your bike ride as long or as short as you want to.
Do note, not all public transport systems will just let you take your bike onto them, so make sure that you check that it’s actually possible. Otherwise, you might find that you have to leave your bike behind somewhere – and not having your bike is not conducive to getting your work on.
Try that standing work thing
Those standing tables you’ve heard about actually work really well. They’ve been shown to boost productivity significantly. Even better, the effect gets more pronounced over time. So even if you weren’t trying to get healthy, they would be a great tool to use. But as you’re trying to get healthy as well, they might in fact be perfect for you.
And yeah, they might initially be a bit intimidating if you’re always used to sitting, but then there are some different varieties which allow to you to stand sometimes and sit at other times. In that way, you can get used to using them standing and do so more and more as your legs get stronger.
Diet is more important for weight loss
You can build muscle and be healthier if you exercise regularly, but unfortunately the only real way to lose weight is to change your diet. The good news is that often small changes can already have big effects.
So, aim at steering your diet into a healthier direction, by avoiding trans-fats and processed foods and replacing them with healthier alternatives, for example. Another great way forward is to make yourself healthier snacks when you have the time, so you can immediately grab for them when you don’t.
After all, one of the big reason we eat those unhealthy snacks is often because they’re far easier than having to make something right there and then and we’ve got a busy schedule. Having healthy snack alternatives nicely sidesteps that problem.
Another good way to avoid snacking and bad foods is to make sure that the food that you’re eating gives you slow release energy. This is the type of stuff that leaves you feeling full for a couple of hours instead of only filling you up for an hour or so. The advantage of this kind of food is obviously that it will make it much easier to resist snacking later on. This will both mean you eat more healthily and will even reduce the money you spend on meals because though you might pay more per meal, you’ll end up having less of them per day.
What is best is what you’ll keep doing
The big problem that a lot of people who are trying to get stronger have is that they start out full of enthusiasm, only for their enthusiasm to wane after a few months and their exercises to fall by the wayside.
Obviously, that’s not going to be terribly effective.
The solution is to not try to be the hare but the tortoise. You don’t start of like a nutter, spending five hours in the gym on the first day and then spending the next four days moaning on the couch. A much better idea is to go to the gym everyday and train a little less when you’re there.
The best advice is to push yourself beyond what you find comfortable, but to only push yourself a little bit beyond that. As long as you keep that up, what you find comfortable expands even as what you’re capable of expands.
Even better, this is the kind of behavior that you can keep up over the long run and thereby can become a part of your lifestyle. That’s going to be far more meaningful than those unused exercise machines taking up space in your garage.
This guest post was authored by Angela Baker
Angela Baker is a team member at OkDissertations writing company interested in improving herself in the blogging career. She loves to discover new trends in her field and is a big enthusiast for reading and writing latest news. She is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons that`s why she develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help and inspire people.
