DISCOVER YOUR ZEN
Making Exercise a Part of Your Everyday Life
When you make exercise a part of your daily life, you will reap many benefits. You will be more physically fit, feel better, as well as have a happier attitude and outlook. Once you start reaping the many benefits of exercising and being active, you won’t ever want to neglect this part of your healthy lifestyle.
Depending on your current activity level, you may experience one or more of these benefits:
- Weight Control — Engaging in physical activity helps you burn calories. This will help prevent weight gain and enable you to control your weight. When you pair the exercise or activity with eating healthy, you can lose extra weight and build more muscle.
- Lower Risks — Regular exercise reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes, and as a bonus, increases your good cholesterol.
- Increase Strength and Energy — Exercise increases the amount of oxygen and nutrients that go to your cells and tissues. When you get more oxygen, you have more energy.
- Mental Health and Mood Improvement — During and after each exercise session, your brain releases brain chemicals that are designed to make you feel happier. This helps to decrease depression, anxiety, and These “feel good” chemicals increase your self-esteem and give you a boost of confidence.
- Better Sleep — If you avoid exercising close to bedtime, you will notice improved and deeper sleep. This is because your body is stronger, healthier, and less stressed. Note: Exercising gives you energy so you don’t want to do it close to bedtime.
Don’t let the idea of daily exercise overwhelm you. It may seem difficult at first but it’s not as daunting as you might think. Set clear goals. Include daily activities that you enjoy and challenge you a little. You may want to alter your activity, every other day to allow you to build up to your potential slowly and avoid injury.
Setting Goals and Making an Action Plan
When you want to make a change, the first things you should do are set your goals and create an action plan. Goal setting involves identifying what you want to achieve. Action planning is what you do to achieve your goals, including who, what, when, where, why, and how.
This is extremely important because it gives you a clear path to your destination. It sets you up for success from the start. You know exactly what you need to do each day. To set the right goals and create a good action plan consider the following.
Be Realistic
Know what your health level is at this moment and work with it. Set goals that you can realistically reach, given any limitations or issues. If you haven’t been exercising regularly, you need to start slowly and work up to your goal. You have to be realistic and honest with yourself if you want to achieve your goals. If you couldn’t break the four-minute-mile barrier when you were at your peak, you aren’t going to do it now, without a lot of practice and training. Keep goals and expectations real. It’s better to go slowly than to risk an injury that can derail your progress. In itself, steady progress is a success.
Work With What You Have
Analyze your overall physical health. If you are obese or have other physical problems, you must work with them to prevent injuries. If you are not sure where to start, contact your doctor. Set up a physical and ask for advice. Seek the assistance of a physical therapist or personal trainer, who has experience dealing with your issues. You’ll delay reaching your goal if you injure yourself and delays can be very discouraging.
Start Small
Identify the overall goal for your exercise and fitness plan. Break this down into smaller monthly, weekly, and daily goals. For example, if you want to walk two miles every day, start by finding out what you can do. Let’s say that you discover you can only make it to the road. Do that for a few days. Then, increase your distance by 20 steps each day, until you reach your goal. If you feel you can do more, go for it, even if it’s just one more step each day. Every small step gets you closer to your daily, weekly, monthly, and ultimate goals.
Be healthy and realistic. Don’t overdo things what you can do at this moment. You don’t need to be an expert when you are first starting out so be proud of every day you get out and exercise because you are accomplishing those goals and will get there.
Create Your Action Plan
Once you have broken the overall goal into monthly, weekly, and daily goals, use these smaller goals to create your plans. An action plan is a detailed step-by-step guide to how and when you plan to achieve each goal. Add as much detail as you can. Put everything on your calendar to help you keep track.
If you are not sure at any point what you will do to achieve that goal then you are not done creating your plan. Everything should be very specific and straight to the point. Write down when, where, how, and why. Reaffirming the “why” portion helps to keep you focused on success and motivated.
Things to think about:
- When are you going to exercise each day?
- Where are you going to perform the exercises?
- Exactly, what exercise are you going to do?
- Why do you want to do these exercises?
- Do you have all the equipment you need?
Setting your goals and planning the actions needed to achieve your goals can really motivate you. A clear plan of action makes it easy to get started, as well as follow through. When creating your plans, make each activity and exercise session is enjoyable and fun for you.
TODAY’S ACTION STEPS:
1) When are you going to exercise? If you know that finding the time to exercise regularly has been a problem for you, let’s start working on making it a habit. Choose a time that might work, something that happens every day. Perhaps it’s after dinner, once you’ve finished washing the dishes. Or maybe it’s first thing in the morning after you wake up. So figure out one thing that you know you have to do before you workout. Maybe it’s putting on your workout/running shoes. Now the next time that time you’ve chosen rolls around, just go put on your shoes. that’s all. After you’ve washed your dishes, or right after you wake up…put on your shoes. Trust me. Just do it…every time. Don’t worry about getting the workout in. Just put on your shoes. Then go on with the rest of your day.
2) If you have any questions about the meal plan, or anything else, let me know in the Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/TeamDrVenus/
Previous ACTION STEPS: (Not a complete list, but some important highlights.)
1) Log in to the Fitness App on your COMPUTER – https://doctorvenus.com/app-login/ – and go to the FORMS tab. If you haven’t completed the Client Agreement form and the PAR-Q form from Day 1’s ACTION STEPS, do that today and sign them. Be sure to click SAVE when you’re done. (You can not receive the meal plan and workout plan when they are released until we have those completed forms on file.)
2) If you haven’t done so yet, send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and state whether you want a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal plan. It will be sent to your Fitness App by this evening…JUST for you to review, if you’re interested. You don’t have to worry about getting everything ready to start the diet by tomorrow. I’ll take you through this whole process, step-by-step, in the upcoming week.
3) Send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and let me know whether you want an exercise plan for weight loss (focused on burning calories) or for building/maintaining your mass. So you just need to indicate whether you want a BURN or BUILD program.
4) Download the Set Your Goals Checklist and complete it. CLICK HERE to download.
5) Download the Program Planner that you can start using, if you wish. CLICK HERE to download.
6) Download the Kitchen Clean Out handout and use it to guide the clean out of your kitchen BEFORE you start your meal plan. CLICK HERE to download.