The Journey to Health and Fitness

It's very important that you begin your healthier lifestyle with an understanding that there will be days when you will stray from healthy eating and exercising. Before you begin, tell yourself that no matter what happens, rather than abandoning your new lifestyle, you'll resume your healthy habits as soon as you can; it is equally important that you feel confident, not guilty, about doing so.

Whatever the temptation or obstacle is, keep in mind that it's not wrong or bad to eat fattening foods once in a while or to miss a workout. Just remember to resume your healthy lifestyle as soon as possible afterwards. If you keep moving forward and you don't let guilt and discouragement stop your program all together, you'll eventually have improved eating and exercise habits - and good results.

With this approach, there is no such thing as "cheating." When we feel we are cheating, we often punish ourselves; we make ourselves feel guilty, frustrated and defeated. Replacing the negative concept of cheating with the idea of "straying temporarily from healthy habits" takes away the all-or-nothing emphasis of right and wrong.

If you treat every deviation from your plan as a failure, you won't get very far. Substituting the idea of a brief straying away from your plan instead of feeling guilty, and learning to return more and more quickly to healthier habits, is more realistic. It's also easier and more enjoyable - today and in the long-run.

Stay off the Scale

However you decide to measure your physical progress, do not use the scale as an indicator. Your weight does not reflect how healthy you are or the progress you've made. When you step on the scale, your weight reflects the combined total of both your lean body weight (muscle, bone, organs, fluids) and body fat weight.

Two people with identical body weights do not have the same body composition; they could have entirely different body types. For example a 170-pound man might have 60 pounds of body fat and 110 pounds of lean body mass. A healthier, more muscular man might only have 25 pounds of body fat and 145 pounds of lean body mass. Even though these two individuals weigh the same, one is in much better shape than the other.

Using the scale to measure your progress gives you no information about the body composition (fat vs. muscle) changes that are actually occurring. The scale may show that you've lost seven pounds, but it can't tell you that half of the weight was muscle and water, not fat. Similarly, people become discouraged when they haven't lost any weight, even though they have actually lost pounds of fat and replaced them with pounds of firm, fat-burning muscle.

Developing healthier eating and physical activity habits will most likely result in a loss of body fat even though the scale may indicate that you weigh the same. Learn to use other methods of determining body composition, such as body fat percentage or waist circumference, and pay more attention to improvements in how you feel, in your self-esteem, and in your physical appearance.

This article is provided by Eternity Fitness Retreat.
For more information, visit their website! www.eternity-retreat.com