Keeping fit doesn’t automatically mean being slim, sometimes slim is not healthy. The shape of our body is a product of our habitual actions. Our everyday dealing with the world shapes both our mind and body. If we deal with it in an unhealthy manner, it will reflect on our thinking and our body’s movement.

Most people think that staying fit means by eating foods that they like to eat. For some, staying fit is skipping meals, or depriving themselves with food. These are all myths. Staying or keeping fit is a lifestyle – a series of different healthy small things done eventually tantamount to a new whole way of living.

Achieving fit and healthy body requires holistic change in the lifestyle. However, diet and physical exercise are perfect places to start the shifting to a healthier lifestyle.

Diet is an important area that needs to be monitored for those wanting to lose weight. Often, even though people know the importance of eating healthy food and the implication of improper food intake, people still find it hard to follow the suggested healthy ways. There are the people who are living and working to eat.

They get pleasure from eating, and by feeding the insatiable desires of their palate. People should understand that people should eat in order to live and not the other way around.

People who are living and working to eat have higher probability of dying from heart attack and other serious diseases. In addition, people who have bad eating attitudes usually feel uneasy, and get easily irritated. Also, these people usually lack the energy to perform well physically and mentally.

On the other hand, as important as diet is exercise or physical activity. Exercise is a requirement of our body. It needs to work and burn excessive calories and fats. It helps in the unloading of stress for our psychological wellbeing.

For at least 45 to 1 hours daily, our body needs to perform sustained physical exercise. Also it helps in the circulation and distribution of blood and oxygen to different parts of the body that will result to healthy and efficient mind and body performance.

Weight loss and fitness are not easy to do. It requires a whole system cooperation of mind and body. A fit and healthy body is not a product of overnight sacrifices. It is a series of consistent small works that result into greatness.

Apart from exercise and diet, achieving and keeping healthy and fit body requires all the body systems’ synchronization. The mind should work with the body and vice versa. A body is a product of our everyday habits – bad habits will reflect through the body, and so as good and healthy habits.

Keep in mind that people’s attitude, thinking and lifestyle have an effect on the body. Better make a shift to a healthier lifestyle for that healthy, comfortable, and fit looking body.

Exercise and diet can be much to think about but the effective weight loss they bring can make good health last for a longer time.

People nowadays are too busy working and doing every kind of activity that they seem to have no time to cook food at home. Especially on working days, they leave the house, eat out at lunch, and when they get home, order something to eat from the nearest fast food restaurant. This all seems convenient to them because they get to sleep and rest right after. But one thing they usually pay no heed to is their fitness. Fast foods are processed foods and contain higher amounts of calories compared to when meals from fresh produce are prepared at home. So they are actually exposing themselves to probable diseases that are associated with having too much cholesterol, sugar, and fat.

So to avoid this from happening and if we notice that our weight is not anymore normal for our age, we should learn how to exercise well. A strenuous physical activity can help us to be in good shape, may it be doing sports, working out in the gym or just in the house doing some lawn work. We should be able to give time for these kinds of activities in our daily schedule. Although some would refuse to make it a daily habit because they can always go to the gym in the weekend, making it a daily routine would still be beneficial than that a weekly one. A good reason for that is when people do exercise on a weekly basis, they tend to be lazy and postpone the activity to the following week but if they make it a daily one, then the idea of moving it to another day would be unlikely. Fitness training involves self discipline. Because of the unhealthy food that we eat and all that fat that we take in, we should expel them from our bodies by burning excessive calories that are preventing us to have a healthy body. And because being obese can sometimes have an effect on our self esteem, discipline is the way to achieve our goal to not just having good physical health but a stable emotional being as well.

Apart from exercising, we should also be concerned about what we eat. A balanced diet is the best way to living a good healthy life. If we work out but we still eat the same fatty foods and the same amount of it then we are just making a fool out of ourselves. We are just wasting efforts in trying to eliminate fat and all the excess weight in our body. We should know what to eat because being aware means that we are taking care of ourselves and our family and we don’t want illnesses taking our loved ones away. It may not be as convenient as going to fast food joints but it surely secures our health for the future. Diet plans are a good way of keeping our family from eating the wrong food and making sure that they eat what is good. We should get fresh produce from the market and try to avoid processed ones like food in cans and those with preservatives. Home made food doesn’t just assure that they are healthy but they can make the family closer.

A very good reason why we do this is because we should not take life for granted. We avoid being obese and fat because we don’t want life to be taken away from us. We should embrace life and share its goodness. This is a good reason to stay fit.

A study came out a while back that discovered a key difference with people who are successful at losing weight and those who are not. The simple act of keeping a food diary was found to be responsible for losing twice as much weight as not keeping one. These findings will be will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and were funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

The more food records people kept, the more weight they were lost, said lead Jack Hollis Ph.D

This should come as no surprise to owners of my Weight Loss Hypnosis System CDs. I include a food journal along with an Action Item Form, Personal Weight Loss Contract, Monthly Recap Form, and other support documents. If you own this CD system and arent using the Food Journal, then the results of this study should inspire you to print it out and put it to use.

I just did a search for food diaries online and found a very popular site thats selling access to them for $9 a month! That’s just plain crazy. This stuff is not complicated. Its food. Its your body. Its not necessary to get lost in the minutia of doing a statistical analysis of your eating habits. It is important however to know what you eat. Thats why I provide all those tracking forms with my weight loss CD system.

These forms are going to be included as a bonus with my weight loss book when it comes out next month, but since keeping a food journal is such a great way to start the process of losing weight I thought Id provide one to you right now as a bonus for reading this blog

Heres the idea behind keeping a food journal: by writing down everything you eat on a daily basis, you will begin to become objectively aware of the calories you are consuming and the source of those calories. The key here is that its objective. Youre not relying on your own selective memory to determine your current eating habits, its all written out there in black and white.

Print out the food journal provided below. Make 7 copies of it. For the next week fill one out day by day and make sure to include what you drink too. Then, at the end of the week, take a look back and notice the patterns. This is your starting point.

When you want to change your life, its important to know where you are now, where you want to get to, and then start taking the necessary steps to get there.

In next weeks article I’ll show you how to use the results of your food journal to start making the changes that leads to permanent weight loss.

Heres the link to get your free food journal: Food Journal PDF

Print it out now and start using it today so you’ll be able to take advantage of next weeks followup article when it comes out. Dont put this off. I may take this link down once the book comes because out the food journal will be provided as one of the books bonuses.

Regardless of your age, there is probably some interest in learning how to tone up your abs. If that wasn’t the case, then you probably wouldn’t be reading this article now. But getting rid of that stubborn belly fat in order to tone up your abs is probably one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. The key is to continuously perform abdominal exercises everyday and eat the proper diet.

Some individuals are blessed with toned abs while others are too conscious about their stomach bulges. If you have excess body fats, the muscles in your abdomen area become invisible. According to experts, if you want to tone your ab muscles, you need to give particular attention to you diet. 75% of your effort should be dedicated to improving your diet and the other 25% is for the ab exercises.

The diet plays the largest role in toning ab muscles. However, with so many diet programs out there, you might find it hard to pick the best one that might work for you. The secret is to eat certain foods that can help in decreasing the body fat. Most of the diet programs help individuals in cutting down their calorie intake. If your body cant get enough calories from the foods you eat, then the fat stored in your body (particularly in your stomach area) will be used. If you start eating properly, you can surely shed those unwanted fats.

It is advised that you consult your doctor first before trying to select an eating or dieting plan. Doing this will ensure that you get meal plans that are perfectly suitable for your health conditions. Also, you need to learn which foods provide fewer calories. Remember, the less calories your body intakes, the more fat that is naturally burned by the body. This is why you need to change unhealthy eating habits that force you to intake large amounts of calories per day.

Exercise is also vital, especially abdominal exercises. The most common is the abdominal crunch and it is highly effective when done properly. The exercise is straight forward and very simple. Even if the exercise is obscure or weird, many people perform them. Having an exercise ball at home is also a good idea so that you can use it when doing your ab exercises. There are helpful DVDs and videos on how to use the exercise ball; watch the videos at home and follow the instructions carefully and properly. Another exercise is the sit up. Make sure that your feet remain flat on the floor when doing the exercise. Just bend your body as high as you can. Leg lifts, jackknife sit ups, and v-ups are effective exercises as well.

Please note that abdominal muscles are really stubborn. It requires a lot of patience in order to see your stomach muscles come in. But if you consistently exercise your abs and eat right for the next few months, you should be able to build strong toned abdominal muscles. Once you get rid of the stomach flab, you must continue with toning and strengthening your ab muscles so that they can show.

To get the most from your workout, health professionals advise working out for half an hour to an hour every day. But what if your work schedule or other factors don’t leave you that much time to devote to exercise?

Identify New Opportunities

Exercising is always possible provided you just squeeze it into your schedules in a more resourceful manner. Get off your couch and start moving around, advises fitness guru Ann Grandjean. Every bit of chore inside your house is an opportunity to get fit. The trick is to get yourself moving – clear out the attic, do some gardening, walk to the grocery store. Any activity that expends energy also burns up calories.

Don’t Waste Your Mini-breaks on Coffee

If you are thinking that short spurts of exercise wouldn’t affect your fitness level, you’re in for a surprise. One recent study showed that participants who spread out their exercise throughout the day into 10-minute blocks are disposed to exercise regularly, and shed more pounds in 5 months, compared to most women who’d rather work out straight for an hour.

The Professional Consensus

In Virginia, exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser recently conducted a study in which subjects exercised for 10 minutes at a time. He determined that 15 sets of 10-minute workouts caused those who did them to essentially turn back time. Participants who followed this regimen were rewarded after one month when Gaesser found that their levels of fitness matched those of men and women 20 years their junior.

Split up your normal hour-long routine into more manageable periods in order to feel more confident and motivated, advises time management consultant Harold Taylor. It’s easy to give up if you never have time to make it to the gym, but a quick workout, however small, will keep your doubts in check and your motivation strong.

Not a replacement

Remember, however, that short exercise blocks are intended to make use of available free time; it should not take the place of your existing fitness program. Here are some practical tips to squeeze exercise in your daily routine even if you “don’t have the time.” Don’t tackle all of them in one day; simply choose the ones that work for you.

* When you pick up the morning paper, take a quick 5-minute walk up the street and back again.

* If you work from home or take a day off because your child is sick, take a ride on the exercise bike or make use of the treadmill.

* Set aside a few minutes to do jumping jacks. You can burn 90 calories in just 10 minutes this way.

* Do a few sets of upright push-ups while standing at the kitchen counter. This works your arms and shoulders.

* Shoot hoops with your kids or play baseball in the backyard.

* Take a moment to do a few dumbbell exercises before going to bed each night. Sheila Cluff, a professional exercise instructor at The Palms in Palm Springs, CA, leaves a set of dumbbells in her bathroom.

* Take your kid to baseball practice and walk around the field while you wait.