Call it what you want; trimming the fat, slimming down, dieting, taking off some pounds…whatever. One thing that all successful weight loss programs need to include is a journal. Unfortunately most of them gloss right over this step. If you can’t easily find out where you are going wrong (or right) changing your habits is going to be very hard.

Basically, anything that can’t be measured (and you need records to measure) can’t be improved upon. The idea is that you have to know what is causing your weight gains before you can find the most successful weight loss programs to take it off.

Losing weight is a step by step process. To get the fastest, healthiest and safest results, we need to start with the absolute basics. We can’t change what we’re doing wrong and improve on what we’re doing right until we know what they are!

When attempting to lose weight, the first, smartest and easiest step you can take is to start keeping a daily food journal. A food journal is basically what it sounds like…a record of your daily food intake. Your journal can be as simple or complex as you wish. You can record lots of details or just keep it clean and basic. But either way, a journal is a terrific way to help yourself stick to your successful weight loss programs.

Your food journal could record a wide variety of useful data. Most basic, just write down everything you eat every day. This quick and easy step will give you unexpected data – guaranteed. You’ll soon start to see patterns in the way you eat. You’ll discover – never before noticed – bad eating habits that you hadn’t even considered.

It’s our habits and daily patterns that make us succeed (or fail) in any aspect of our lives. We habitually do things without even noticing. Your good as well as your bad habits and patterns will quickly emerge once you begin writing everything down in your food journal. After your habits have been exposed, it’s a simple matter to find the successful weight loss programs to counteract them.

Many people find it valuable to record calories, protein, fiber, fat, and other nutrients. Portion sizes could be recorded as well. This is a lot of work, but it is definitely worth the effort. You won’t have to do it very long before you start to find HUGE gaping mistakes in what, when, why, how much and the way you eat.

If you want to make it more of a diary type format, you could include your inner feelings about your weight loss efforts. How your program is affecting you on a daily basis. What triggers make you have cravings or make you want to eat for reasons other than hunger. The bottom line is, there are many formats you could follow, but keep in mind, the journal is yours and only for you. You can record anything YOU find useful.

Your food journal isn’t something you have to worry about anyone else reading. It’s not like a traditional diary that you keep by the bed with a lock and key. Face it, reading a list of what you ate that day isn’t exactly tabloid fodder. (Unless your life actually IS tabloid fodder. Then you should hide your journal.)

Save your money, you don’t have to go out and buy some fancy leather bound journal. Use whatever tools work best for you when creating your food journal. A pad of paper and a pen work just fine. You could make an Excel type spreadsheet on your computer – or any other type of word processing program. Keep the icon on your desktop for easy access and so you don’t forget where it is in your computer.

You could keep your food journal on a laptop or palm pilot, you could use a voice recorder or slip a notebook into your bag during the day…whatever works best for your lifestyle. The key is to make it something that you will keep up on a daily basis.

Keeping up with your journaling (and reviewing it every week) is the key to keeping track of your progress and finding the reasons for when you get off track. As a weight loss tool, your journal is far more valuable than your scale could ever be.

Hitting certain weight loss goals and plateaus deserves a reward. (No, not an ice cream bar.) Buy some of those little gold star stickers – the ones that first graders are so fond of. Award yourself one whenever you reach a goal. Seems dumb, but looking through your journal and seeing all those stickers can become pretty important to you. You deserve a big “ATTABOY” or “ATTAGIRL” and your journal will prove it! Set some sort of goal that can be attained every day. Soon your journal will be filled with – highly motivating – gold stars. Try it, it works.

If you back slide, study your journal and find out what went wrong! It’s all there! You can fix your mistakes and move on to the next gold star.

The next time you go to your doctor for a physical, take along your journal. Let them see it and offer any helpful suggestions. They can help to make sure that what you are doing is not only working, but is healthy. Always check with your doctor before beginning any weight loss or exercise program.

Though it requires some extra effort, a food journal works wonders for the people that take the time to make one. As a major weight loss shortcut, it can’t be beat. Start keeping your food journal today.

We all know that the best ways to lose weight all involve some form of exercising. But knowing this is true doesn’t make it any easier to get started on and maintain an exercise regimen. So, do YOU dread exercising? Here are some pointers that will help.

Particularly at first, we all hate exercising, but that changes. Before you know it, you start looking forward to your workouts! You start feeling like something is wrong or missing if you skip a day. You can stop giggling now. It happens, (yes, even to you).

Like anything else, the challenge is in the beginning. We understand we have to do it, so we plow through our daily regimen. At least we do for a little while, most end up quitting in frustration after about a month. They never realize how close they were to a – learning to love exercise – breakthrough. Once you learn to look forward to your daily exercise routine, weight loss is not much of an issue. It will usually just go away with only minor dieting effort.

If your snooze alarm gets more of a workout than you do, simply because you can’t face another day of mindless sit-ups, leg lifts or endless miles around the track, hang in there! Have hope!

Crunches may strengthen the core, but there’s other ways too. Did you ever stop to realize that swimming is every bit as good an aerobic exercise as jogging? Most people think it’s better, and not as hard on the joints! Try dancing! Get some cd’s and dance your heart out in the privacy of your own home. Get a bicycle and tour your community. It’s fun and you’ll get a little sun too. The point is, that for every dreaded, mind numbing exercise you do, there is a fun alternative. If you are having fun, you will stick with the program and you will be well on the way to losing weight and keeping it lost.

True, some of the alternatives may not be as ideal as the old boring standbys. They exist for a reason. But that’s ok. Remember, actually doing a slightly less effective exercise that you enjoy and will continue doing, is far better than quitting and NOT DOING an exercise that may be perfect. As your muscles get in shape, they will crave the daily exercise. At that point, it’s a simple matter to start slowly trading out the lesser routines for the better ones. Now that you are in shape and like working out, they won’t seem so bad any longer.

You can even use your workout as a home beautification project! Park the power mower and buy a push mower. Make it a personal challenge to mow the lawn faster every week. Vigorously rake the grass and all those leaves – dump the blower. Try to work in some heavy lifting gardening.

Do you live where it gets cold? Why suffer another jog when sledding and ice skating with friends is such a good workout – and fun too! (Beware of the dreaded after skating hot chocolate.) The new Wii games can give you an aerobic tennis or dance workout. You could even entice the kids to get off the couch and join in! Just be sure they think it’s a game and not that you’ve gotten them to turn off the tv and exercise.

Get a partner! A workout buddy can help immensely. We all need a little extra motivation from time to time and a gentle push from our friends can get us over the hump. As you each get in better and better shape, you can graduate from tennis on the Wii to an actual tennis court. In this case, being a bad player is a bonus! You’d be running all over chasing tennis balls. You can each set personal goals and challenges and you could make it a competition.

Once you get back in the gym, talk to a trainer. They can help you design an effective yet safe program. Plus, keeping you motivated and on track is their whole reason for being there. Your trainer is an expert at helping you get past the hurdles of feeling boredom, injury and getting overwhelmed. Use them.

Don’t do it alone, take some exercise classes. Most gyms offer them at a very reasonable rate or even free with membership. Who knows, maybe the best friend you will ever have is taking a class right now. Classes help with motivation, you learn new exercises and you’ll get to meet your new best friend! A little tight on cash? Most community centers offer a free or extremely low cost exercise class. Check it out!

Try these ideas and soon (faster than you think) your workouts will no longer be a dreaded task that you have to struggle through. They will be the highlight of your day! You will have found one of the best ways to lose weight and will have mastered your body. Above all else, never quit.

Though we know it’s important to excercise to lose weight, most of us dislike working out. Add to that the fact that the seemingly endless hours involved are stolen from things we’d rather be doing – and it quickly becomes a chore that we want to get through as quickly as possible.

Everyone feels that way from time to time – particularly in the beginning of our weight loss efforts. So, we are in good company. The problem is when – in our efforts to rush through our workouts – we gloss over or completely skip our warm-up.

Warning – don’t do it! Skipping your warm-up is a disaster just waiting to happen! It puts your body at serious risk for injury. But, you knew that. “It can’t happen to me” or “I’ll skip it just this once” are rationalizations that we all have no trouble with using.

Even when we know it is bad for us, or even dangerous, evidence of this sort of rationalization is everywhere. Every pack of cigarettes has had a printed cancer warning for more than thirty years – but there are still tens of millions of smokers! Lung cancer is one of the most prevalent forms of cancer. Just look at the illicit drug industry. It’s one of if not THE biggest industry in the world, yet we all know that drug abuse will eventually kill us. Not to mention that it is addictive, illegal, expensive and so on…

The point is, the thought that you can skip the warm-up “just this once” WILL occur to you. Saving some time when you excercise to lose weight is very tempting but – resist. It’s extremely worthwhile to allow just a few extra minutes to warm-up and a couple minutes to cool down afterward.

Here’s a little good news – by properly warming up, the rest of your workout will actually be a little easier and will be more effective! So skipping the warm up routine doesn’t really save you anything. To get the most benefit and avoid injury, make it a practice to warm up every time you excercise to lose weight.

Fortunately your warm up doesn’t have to take long or involve much effort. You can adequately do the job in a quick five minutes. It doesn’t have to be boring…you can avoid falling into a rut by mixing up your moves. There are quite a few moves that work very well.

Be sure to do a complete warm up and get all of your muscles stretched and moving, even if you don’t plan on working on a particular set of muscles during any given session. For example, if you’re scheduled to do some weightlifting to increase your upper body strength, be sure to stretch and warm up your legs as well. Warming up is vital in any excercise to lose weight routine, whether you are working with weights or aerobic exercises.

Jumping Jacks, lunges, skipping rope and jogging are all very good options. The idea is to get the blood flowing, get moving and stretched. It doesn’t need to be hard.

Many people think of stretching as more of a cooling down move, but there are a lot of good reasons to include stretches as part of your warm up routine. Why not, it can’t hurt to do a little extra stretching. Who knows maybe it CAN hurt – literally – not to.

If you really object to spending the time, why not try warming up before you even get to the gym? Park several blocks away from the gym and power walk the rest of the way. When given a choice, take the stairs instead of an elevator. That way, once you are ready to get going, you are well on your way to being warmed up.

Here’s a sad tale…I once saw around fifteen people waiting for an elevator to take them up to the gym! ONE floor – about twenty steps – AND they had to walk right past the stairs to get to the elevator. (I thought they were there to get a workout! BTW – half of them went straight from the elevator to the Stairmaster.)

It doesn’t matter if you want to lose a few pounds, or lose quite a few pounds any excercise to lose weight routine will start out easy and build in intensity. This can be risky if you skip the warm up. To be safe and maintain good levels of health, take the few extra minutes.

Strength training is an important element of fitness and exercise. If you are trying to lose weight then it is essential that you incorporate some strength training activities into your routine. Losing weight is about burning calories. It is about burning fat and one way to do that is to build your muscles. Basically the more muscle you develop the more energy you burn, resulting in greater weight loss success.

Strength training does not have to be a daily grind of lifting weights in the gym. There are many classes or exercise programs you can follow that will help with building your muscles. Most gyms have classes like total body fitness or group power lifting. Typically these types of classes use many types of weight training equipment including barbells, hand weights and resistance bands. The typical class lasts for about an hour.

Over all it seems to be women seem to enjoy these types of strength training classes more than men. Men typically enjoy working out the muscle groups by adding bulk. Strength training classes help to shape and tone your muscles into lean mass without the bulk. In addition, since the instructor pushes you along during the class at a very rapid pace, there is a bit of cardiovascular benefit as well. If your goal is to have both strength training as well as muscle endurance, then you should consider a “cross fit” type class that can focus on both of those areas. Keep in mind that those types of classes not only build strength…but they melt away the love handles much faster.

So you do not care for classes. Thats ok, there are many exercises that you can do from home using just simple hand weights will do just fine, and there are many strength exercises that require no equipment like the simple pushup. Find a DVD to follow along to help you with your exercise. A good program to follow will help keep you on track, motivated and more likely to do the exercises correctly.

Many people go to the gym to lift weights. Typical regimens include alternating days of upper body work with lower body work. For example, on Monday and Thursday you might work your upper body, while on Tuesday and Friday you might work your lower body. This gives the muscles time to repair and grow between workouts. Most weight lifting programs involve lifting in sets. For instance you might do three sets of ten repetitions of the exercise of your choice that has a focus on the target are you wish to improve on.

Circuit training is a key factor in getting in shape fast.

Circuit training is an intensive form of fitness training that combines cardio and strength training in which a set of exercises is completed one right after the other. Each exercise is performed for a specified number of repetitions or a prescribed period of time before you move on to the next exercise. Pace and constant motion are what make this such a different workout routine.

Most athletes and fitness buffs, find circuit training is a great way to give yourself a total body workout (both aerobic and strength training) in a short time period. Most of the time when you see the dramatic physical condition of your favorite actor or sports person..those results are a product of good diet and circuit training.

Most people feel that if they don’t spend at least an hour working out at the gym that they won’t see results.Nothing could be farther from the truth. Intense short circuit training workouts can give you an even better session than you might get from from a slow workout for an hour and a half at the gym. In most cases when you get it set in your mind that you only have a short period of time…you actually push yourself more to get your exercise in…this increases the cardio effect of your training.

For a circuit training workout you do your exercises quickly and you don’t rest a lot (if at all) between sets of exercises.Circuit training is a workout that puts together lifting weights and aerobics. The combination of constant movement and varied exercises forces the body to adapt by burning more calories and increasing the muscle endurance.

Circuit training can be really tough but is also very effective. Some people avoid circuit training because it is such a challenge. Others love circuit training because even though it can push you really hard – it is much shorter than a traditional workout and many feel that they can do anything for a short period of time especially when they see the results of this type of workout. Circuit training has been found to burn fat faster and build shapely muscle more quickly than almost any other type of workout for the amount of time invested.

To engage in a circuit training workout that will really get you results, you want to start with a three to five minute warm up and then do five minutes of cardio that builds in intensity – this gets your heart and body ready for the circuit. A sample circuit training workout could have two to three complete circuits with each circuit containing six strength training exercises and six cardio exercises that are completed one right after the other with little or no rest in between. You could complete a workout like this in as little as twenty to thirty minutes while burning hundreds of calories.

Circuit training is a GREAT option for getting a total body workout if you are short on time. You just can’t beat circuit training for an intense workout! Plus the options of the different types of routines are up to you.

How frequently, how long and how intensely you exercise, and what kinds of workouts you do should be determined by what you are attempting to achieve. Your goals, and other factors should also be considered.

For example most people would assume that an athlete training for high-level competition would follow a different program than a person whose goals are general health and fitness.

Did you know that it is possible for top athletes and a novices to exercise together. How? Simple, boot camp fitness workouts.

Boot camp includes something from each of the four basic fitness components. And boot camp workouts usually begin warm up moves and end with a good cool down.

Did you know that because camps often use time based, not performance based intervals, both high level athletes and novices both benefit from the program?

Included below are the minimum time requirements to maintain a minimum level of health and fitness. We’ve also included some of the best moves from each category of fitness.

1. DYNAMIC WARMUP – 5-10 minutes of exercise such as walking lunges, slow jogging, arm circles or trunk rotations. Low intensity movements that simulate movements to be used in the activity can also be included in the warmup.

2. MUSCULAR STRENGTH – a bare minimum of two 20-minute sessions per week that include exercises for all the major muscle groups. Strength training is the most effective way to improve strength.

3. MUSCULAR ENDURANCE TRAINING- at least three 40-minute workouts a week that include exercises such as stretching, pushups, pilates, rowing, and strength training for all the large muscle groups.

4. CARDIORESPIRATORY ENDURANCE TRAIING – at least 3 30-minute sessiosn of non-stop aerobic (moves requiring oxygen) exercise a week. Popular aerobic conditioning activities include walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, cross-country skiing.

5. FLEXIBILITY – 10 minutes of stretching movements performed without a bouncing motion.

6. COOL DOWN – 5-10 minutes of slow walking, easy exercises, combined with static stretching.

SAVE TIME WITH BOOT CAMP WORKOUTS

Did you know that boot camp workouts improve muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiorespiratory endurance and flexibility?

4-in-1 results are the top reason why people have been signing up for boot camp all over the world. Great boot camp programs will save time and improve your life in every way.

Your final step is to find a program near you now!

Choosing the best elliptical machine for you can be a daunting task it seems as nearly all companies claim to have the best machine. However what’s best for one person may not be what is best for another. Fitness today is essential to survival and whatever you can do to secure your survival is a good thing.

The best elliptical machines on the market today should have all the similar functions and schematics. All the machines should vary in prices depending on the brand, but the overall effect of the machines should be the same.

Some machines offer an exceptionally sturdy frame, meant for the larger individuals, while others offer more in line of programming and features. A truly great machine will be comprehensive in both areas and will not charge you an arm and a leg for it.

A truly great machine is the Precor EFX 5 17i. It has the patented Cross Ramp feature which gives you the ability to adjust the angle of the pedals. This enables you to have a complete work out, getting deep into the muscle tissue. Tracking and designing your own personal workout is simple with the state of the art LED display which has some truly amazing graphics.

The Smooth CE2 gives you ergonomic foot pedals which help to eliminate strain on your body. It comes with a wireless heart rate monitor and nine user profiles which are fully programmable. It is a very quiet machine and will cost you roughly 1700 dollars that is the best value you will find on a machine like this. You will experience many of the same benefits as some high end elliptical machines. Making this one of the best elliptical machines there are.

The Schwinn 418 elliptical trainer is less than the aforementioned machined with a price tag of 1.100 and eight levels of resistance for your work out. Many people feel this machine is just as wonderful as the Smooth CE2 as it offers many of the same great features. Schwinn Ellipticals have a strong reputation for being considerably well built. They can take a beating and keep on delivering the same great workout options.

The best elliptical machines will primarily be determined by the user. What may be a great feature and benefit for one person may not be so at all for another. If you are looking for something more cost effective, then the Eclipse 1100HR/A is just under $500, making it truly one of the most inexpensive machines on the market today.

The Eclipse 1100HR/A is a lot lighter in weight than the other machines out. It is not recommended for heavier people. With the Orbital linkage system, it will give you a smooth ride. However this machine does not offer a lot of features. Apparently that doesn’t matter to most people since it’s one of the best elliptical machines on the market today. If it’s limited space you have in your home, then it’s this unit you would want!

Choosing the best elliptical machine for you can be a daunting task it seems as nearly all companies claim to have the best machine. However what’s best for one person may not be what is best for another. Fitness today is essential to survival and whatever you can do to secure your survival is a good thing.

All of today’s best elliptical machines will have the same functions and schematics. The over all effect will be the same for each machine, but the prices will vary depending on the machine.

Some machine brands target the line of programming and its features, while other brands offer sturdy frames meant for larger people with simple features. The key to picking the right machine for you is picking one that’s well rounded in both areas and isn’t that expensive.

A truly great machine is the Precor EFX 5 17i. It has the patented Cross Ramp feature which gives you the ability to adjust the angle of the pedals. This enables you to have a complete work out, getting deep into the muscle tissue. Tracking and designing your own personal workout is simple with the state of the art LED display which has some truly amazing graphics.

The Smooth CE2 gives you ergonomic foot pedals which help to eliminate strain on your body. It comes with a wireless heart rate monitor and nine user profiles which are fully programmable. It is a very quiet machine and will cost you roughly 1700 dollars that is the best value you will find on a machine like this. You will experience many of the same benefits as some high end elliptical machines. Making this one of the best elliptical machines there are.

The Schwinn 418 elliptical trainer is less than the aforementioned machined with a price tag of 1.100 and eight levels of resistance for your work out. Many people feel this machine is just as wonderful as the Smooth CE2 as it offers many of the same great features. Schwinn Ellipticals have a strong reputation for being considerably well built. They can take a beating and keep on delivering the same great workout options.

The best elliptical machines will primarily be determined by the user. What may be a great feature and benefit for one person may not be so at all for another. If you are looking for something more cost effective, then the Eclipse 1100HR/A is just under $500, making it truly one of the most inexpensive machines on the market today.

The Eclipse 1100HR/A is a lot lighter in weight than the other machines out. It is not recommended for heavier people. With the Orbital linkage system, it will give you a smooth ride. However this machine does not offer a lot of features. Apparently that doesn’t matter to most people since it’s one of the best elliptical machines on the market today. If it’s limited space you have in your home, then it’s this unit you would want!

Though we know it’s important to excercise to lose weight, most of us dislike working out. Add to that the fact that the seemingly endless hours involved are stolen from things we’d rather be doing – and it quickly becomes a chore that we want to get through as quickly as possible.

Ok, no problem. We all feel that way from time to time. (By the way, over time our workouts DO become more enjoyable!) Anyway, in our efforts to rush through our routine and get it over with we are tempted to gloss over or even completely skip our warm-up.

Warning – don’t do it! Skipping your warm-up is a disaster just waiting to happen! It puts your body at serious risk for injury. But, you knew that. “It can’t happen to me” or “I’ll skip it just this once” are rationalizations that we all have no trouble with using.

Don’t believe it? Evidence of rationalization – even though we know it’s bad for us – is all around. Over thirty years ago the surgeon general put a cancer warning on every pack of cigarettes. Yet there are still tens of millions of smokers out there. Lung cancer is one of if not THE most prevalent cancer. We all know abusing illegal drugs is dangerous, addictive, VERY expensive, illegal and so on…yet illicit drug sales is a multi-billion dollar industry.

So the thought – that you can “get away with it” and can save a little time by skipping your warm up – WILL occur to you. Fight it. When you excercise to lose weight, allow a couple extra minutes to warm up and cool down afterwards. It’s worth it.

Great news! Properly warming-up makes the rest of your session more effective and a little easier as well. So you don’t really save anything by skipping it. When you excercise to lose weight, you’ll get more benefit from each session, it’ll be easier and you’ll avoid injury by making it a rule to never skip the warm-up.

Fortunately your warm up doesn’t have to take long or involve much effort. You can adequately do the job in a quick five minutes. It doesn’t have to be boring…you can avoid falling into a rut by mixing up your moves. There are quite a few moves that work very well.

If you aren’t planning on working out a certain set of muscles…for example you want to work on upper body strength and not your legs, be sure to warm up and stretch your legs too. A complete warm up should include getting ALL your muscles stretched and moving. Any excercise to lose weight routine whether it is using weights or aerobics requires a warm up. It’s vital.

The whole idea of the warm up is just to get your muscles moving and stretched out. It doesn’t have to be hard just get the blood flowing. Lunges, jumping Jacks, jogging and skipping rope are all possible options.

Stretching your various muscle groups is frequently considered as more of a cooling down strategy, but there is good reason to include stretching in your warm up as well. Plus, it can’t hurt do a little extra, it can hurt not to do it at all.

If you really resent spending the few minutes it takes to warm up, try warming up before you get to the gym. For example, when you can take the elevator or you have the option of using stairs, take the stairs. Or, why fight for a decent parking space? Park a few blocks away and easy jog or take a fast walk the rest of the way. You can be stretched and ready to go by the time you get inside.

I once went to a gym and saw more than 15 people waiting for an elevator to go up ONE floor! And the stairs (about 20 steps) were right next to the elevator! It boggles the mind. After all, they were ALL there to get a workout. Heck, half of them got off the elevator and went right over to the Stairmaster.

It doesn’t matter if you want to lose a few pounds, or lose quite a few pounds any excercise to lose weight routine will start out easy and build in intensity. This can be risky if you skip the warm up. To be safe and maintain good levels of health, take the few extra minutes.

It’s no secret that the best ways to lose weight all require that we dig deep and actually do some exercising. Just knowing this is true, doesn’t make it any more fun or make us more eager to get started. Maintaining an exercise regimen is a chore for even the most ambitious among us and if YOU don’t look forward to your morning workout, here’s a few pointers that will help.

I would think it’s an understatement to say that almost everyone hates to exercise – at least in the beginning. But, it can have a way of sneaking up on you. Before you know it, you start liking exercise and you actually find yourself looking forward to that daily workout. Ok, stop laughing. It happens. Even for YOU.

Like anything else, the challenge is in the beginning. We understand we have to do it, so we plow through our daily regimen. At least we do for a little while, most end up quitting in frustration after about a month. They never realize how close they were to a – learning to love exercise – breakthrough. Once you learn to look forward to your daily exercise routine, weight loss is not much of an issue. It will usually just go away with only minor dieting effort.

If another endless round of stomach crunches, lunges, or mindlessly jogging in circles around a track has you hitting the snooze alarm – just because you can’t face it for another day – take heart. There’s hope!

Crunches may strengthen the core, but there’s other ways too. Did you ever stop to realize that swimming is every bit as good an aerobic exercise as jogging? Most people think it’s better, and not as hard on the joints! Try dancing! Get some cd’s and dance your heart out in the privacy of your own home. Get a bicycle and tour your community. It’s fun and you’ll get a little sun too. The point is, that for every dreaded, mind numbing exercise you do, there is a fun alternative. If you are having fun, you will stick with the program and you will be well on the way to losing weight and keeping it lost.

Clearly some of the replacements are not as ideal as their more boring alternatives. But, if you are more likely to stick with it, you’re ahead. Actually DOING an exercise that is pretty good, is far better than NOT DOING an exercise that is perfect. As you get more and more into shape and your body starts to crave the daily workout, you can slowly start adding in the more ideal exercises. You will find they aren’t so bad anymore.

Consider working up a sweat by doing some vigorous gardening around the yard. Rake up all those leaves! Park the power mower and get one of the old push mowers. Try to mow your grass a little faster each week. Make it a personal competition.

Do you live where it gets cold? Why suffer another jog when sledding and ice skating with friends is such a good workout – and fun too! (Beware of the dreaded after skating hot chocolate.) The new Wii games can give you an aerobic tennis or dance workout. You could even entice the kids to get off the couch and join in! Just be sure they think it’s a game and not that you’ve gotten them to turn off the tv and exercise.

It can help quite a bit if you get a workout partner. All of us have off days and need a little motivational push. Your workout buddy can get you past the rough patches. And, you will do the same for them. As you both get in better shape, you’ll be able to go from playing tennis on your Wii, to chasing balls all over a real court. As far as your workout is concerned, being a bad player would be a bonus! You can each set personal goals and make it a competition.

Once you get back in the gym, talk to a trainer. They can help you design an effective yet safe program. Plus, keeping you motivated and on track is their whole reason for being there. Your trainer is an expert at helping you get past the hurdles of feeling boredom, injury and getting overwhelmed. Use them.

Don’t try to tough it out on your own. Most gyms offer exercise classes at a very reasonable rate or even free with membership. Take one! You never can tell, maybe the best friend you will ever have is taking that class right now and is just waiting to meet you. The classes help keep you motivated, they push you a little harder than you may do on your own and you’ll learn some new exercises. If cash is a little skimpy right now, most community centers offer a free or low cost exercise class. Check into it today!

The bottom line is – don’t give up! Stick with your program, find a way to make it fun and enjoyable. Before long, it won’t seem like a chore. Working out will be the high point of your day. Then, you will be the master of your body and will have found one of the best ways of losing weight.