News flash! The more out of shape you are, the more you had better be considering getting yourself active on a frequent basis with some sort of physical exercise. If basic physical fitness exercises make you uncomfortable, you need to find a way to work yourself through it. Just be sure to always have your physicians approval first as we do not want you to aggravate or awaken any underlying conditions you may not be aware of.

Obviously if you are overweight and in poor physcal condition, fatigue and soreness is going to be a limiting factor to you beginning and then keeping up with a regular exercise regimen. This is the reason you need to move your body, and should not be your justification for not exercising. Your goal should be to build on your ability to exercise, taking baby steps while on the path to being able to go full stride, to work your tolerance up slowly where you will not feel like giving up because it hurts too much.

If you are brand new to exercise, walking is your friend. Walking is the best restorative exercise any of us can do, even if we are in top physical condition, It is low impact and can elevate your heart rate enough to begin burning fat for fuel after about twenty minutes. Get outside in the great outdoors and walk, do a few flights of stairs until you can not do anymore. Wait until your heart rate has come down, and then do the stairs some more before walking back home or to your car if you have gone to a park or athletic field. Athletic fields are great as they usually will have a smooth track to walk on and bleachers where you can climb the stairs.

The worse your physical fitness, the more trouble you wll have getting into shape. This should be the primary reason to move your body and never the excuse to continue being a couch potato. If you can not exercise for very long at a time, you need to understand that it is still beneficial to do what you can do even if for only a few minutes at a time, If a few minutes is all you can accomplish, then increase your frequency by exercising more than once a day. For instance, if you can only last ten minutes at best, then six 10 minute sessions equal one hour of exercise for the day. Be tenacious until you can actually do a solid hour with one session. Make up your mind that is is possible, and then make it happen. Know that if you commit yourself, then as time passes, you will be able to do more as your tolerence increases. Once you can complete an hour of exercise in a single session, then you can reasonably back off to only one session per day.

Once you have developed exercise as a habit along with healthy eating, you need to begin considering the incorporation of resistance training to retain or build on your lean muscle mass. You can burn calories, lower your blood sugar and melt away fat with aerobic exercise which is great, but a problem that some experience is when your caloric intake is too low, you are going to lose lean muscle as you are losing body fat. You do not want this to happen as losing that muscle tissue actually lowers your metabolism which makes it more difficult to keep the body fat down. At David’s Way, our emphasis is always going to be on a healthy body fat percentage over a number on the scale. The path to doing this is to consume a high protein low carb diet combined with a combination of aerobic and resistance training. By incorporting resistance exercise you will increase your muscle density which is going to help your body in metabolizing more calories. It is critical to increase your muscle density in order to normalize your metabolism. Ladies, you are not going to bulk with resistance exercise unless you do so intentionally, it is not going to happen as your body does not produce the testosterone to make this happen simply. In fact, it is hard work for men to bulk. Do not let possible buliking up be an excuse for not strength training in order to retain or build lean muscle.

A mistake often made by folks attempting to lose weight is when they consume far too few calories while going at it hard with aerobic exercise. You need to know what your caloric needs are based upon your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and then make sure that you are eating enough calories to support your activity. You can find your caloric needs simply by using our easy to use Calorie Calculator which can be found in our main blog menu. This is something you can take to the bank; If you lose body fat and lean muscle, and then if you regain to your former weight with body fat alone, your body fat percentage at any given weight can be greater than it was before you intitially lost weight. This is going to lower your metabolism. Repeat this process too many times and your metabolism is just going to get slower by the continuing decrease in your lean muscle as your body fat increases. For successful weight management, you must retain and or build on your lean muscle mass, no matter who you are. Skinny fat is no more healthy than just being fat to begin with.

What is skinny fat? This is when your weight may not have you in the overweight category, but you are soft and pudgy anyhow. Just achieving a goal number on the scale in itself is simply not enough in order to be healthy, this is the fallacy of most every other weight loss program you can find. At David’s Way, we are always going to emphasize body fat percentage being the priority over a random number on the scale.

But, what if I can not exercise is a question I have been asked plenty enough. Bear this in mind, exercise is important, but if your ability to do so is legitmately impaired, there is still hope for you. If you can not exercise, then diet is going to be more critical for you. You will need to know your daily caloric needs based on your BMR and then stick to them with modifications only in order to correct any miscalculations on your part. Usually a miscalculation would be in overestimating your activity level. If you are not paralyzed from the neck down, then there is about always something you can do though. Almost everyone can do something. Even those who can not walk can still do arm, abdominal and back exercises with light weight dumbells. You can listen to your favorite music and rythmically bounce up and down for a full song even if your body does not fully lift off the ground. Move your body for health and longevity. Exercise will facilitate the loss of body fat and make you healthier. Vigorous exercise has a powerful effect on promoting quality of life as you age. If you have the will, you will find a way. Start slow and gradually work yourself up to more. Immediately, begin moving your body more in order to live a more fullfilled life. Even when it is tough to do so, you will never have any regrets from exercise and achieving a healthy body fat percentage.