Active living is a major part of a healthy lifestyle

On this page I would to explain active living and its role in a healthy lifestyle.

There is a common misconception that the only way to lose weight is to exercise. Many (actually, most) of my personal training clients have implied, during our initial evaluation, that they don't really want to change their eating habits to achieve weight loss, they want to get active!




While it's great that they want to get active, that alone is not going to do the trick! Exercise and being phyically active are important factors, but its the overall, all round approach that is going to achieve the best results. The analogy I give to these clients is that you can exercise yourself to a stand-still everyday and still remain over weight if you insist on making unhealthy food choices. Eating healthy and exercising as part of a plan is the way to go.

One client actually stopped at MacDonald's for a burger and fries on the way to a session with me one day. To say I was a little "put out" would be an understatement. Needless to say we had a nice little chat about calorie deficits...no to mention a little sidebar about fats, sodium and empty calories.

So, its vitally important to follow and healthy eating plan, but just as vital for that all round healthy feeling is getting mobile!

It quite simply means incorporating physical activity into your daily life. Exercise doesn't need to mean going to the gym. There are many groups out there that have great ideas on getting active and getting fit, or you could go it alone...the options to getting mobile and active are endless. Just a few examples of outdoor and gym work outs are:

• Walking
• Boot Camp Workouts
• Hiking
• Moutain biking
• Park work outs
• Beach work outs
• Swimming
• I even know of a group of ladies that hit the mall early in the morning and do some power walking in a safe and temperature controlled environment
• Or you could, indeed, join they gym and hire a Personal trainer
• Pilates

Have a good look on the Internet, there are fitness groups all over the world, to suit every fitness level. Just as with healthy eating, its starts with a decision from you! You need to decide you're going to do it, and then act on that decision.

In terms of weight loss, you need to look at your Body Mass Index (BMI) . If is high and you need to lose weight, then your goal is to create a calorie deficit through a healthy eating weight loss plan and to help achieve that deficit by burning calories through exercise and general active living, but there are of course other benefits to exercise and active living apart from weight loss:

• Muscle strength
• Cardio vascular health
• Flexibility