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Post-Holiday Tips to Make Exercise Feel Easy
. . . do you know how and when to exercise to maximize its effectiveness?
You’ve heard countless times that exercise is a key component of good health. In fact, the benefits of regular physical activity are staggering. Exercise has been shown to promote healing…enhance mood…boost immunity…improve sex…control weight…prevent disease…boost energy…improve circulation…promote restful sleep…reduce stress, and much more.
Despite the many benefits, it’s hard enough to exercise on normal days. Throw in a holiday like Thanksgiving, and that’s reason enough for most people to demote their workout routine to the bottom of a long to-do list.
Here’s how to make exercise feel easy
If you struggle getting back into the workout routine after a holiday of excess and inactivity, we’d like to offer a few tips for getting back on track. Even better, you’ll discover how to maximize your efforts so you’ll feel—and notice—results fast.
So here ya go…some post-holiday exercise tips to make exercise feel easy.
1. Create an exercise routine. In essence, schedule a time of day when you’ll commit to exercising. And keep it consistent. When you carve out a specific time frame for the days you choose to exercise, you are more likely to hold yourself accountable. And, it’ll be less likely you’ll get distracted by others who mean well, yet assist in sabotaging your workout goals.
2. Make exercise fun. Having fun simply ensures you stay motivated to stick to a weekly routine. So, pick an exercise or activity that you enjoy enough to get you into your workout shoes.
While we consider rebounding an exceptionally healthy form of physical activity, many others have shared their enjoyment of activities like any number of anaerobic indoor/outdoor sports, salsa dancing, canoeing, martial arts, hoola-hooping—even watching a good movie or listening to enjoyable music while on their favorite exercise machine. Left to your imagination, the choices are numerous.
3. Exercise in short bursts. Recently, experts began emphasizing the health advantages of working out using short, high-intensity bursts followed by longer recovery periods—called interval training. This differs from the conventional cardio workouts you’re probably more familiar with. Think in terms of running a short sprint versus a long marathon.
Science is now showing that endurance training (marathon) can actually damage your heart and significantly increase your cardiovascular risk. But low-risk, high-intensity interval training (sprint) is more efficient…requires a lot less time…and produces greater health benefits. You can better understand this newer, more healthful exercise regimen by watching this high-intensity workout video.
Remember, feel free to substitute your favorite type of exercise—like rebounding—into this high-intensity workout routine. If you’re new to rebounding, we reveal the simple science behind the benefits of rebounding and show you how you can get started today. And remember, give yourself some time to get used to your new workout routine. Your body will thank you shortly.
4. Exercise in the morning. Specifically, exercise on an empty stomach. Case in point. One study compared three groups of healthy males eating a high-calorie, high-fat diet for six weeks. One group—which did not exercise—acted as the control. Two other groups trained hard 4 times a week. One abstained from eating until after exercising (fasted group), the other ate before and during exercising (fed group).
The results indicated both the control (> 6 lbs. ave.) and fed groups (3 lbs. ave.) gained considerable weight and developed insulin resistance—the precursor to type-2 diabetes. Yet the fasted group gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance.
This is good news. It proves you can even offset an occasional overindulgence—like during the holidays—timed well with the right amount and type of exercise.
Excited yet? Well, we saved the best for last…
5. Use exercise to reduce your dependency on medications. We repeatedly warn our readers about the dangers of prescription drugs. And how simply choosing safer, more effective alternatives can improve health. Now, science is showing exercise to be one of the safest, most effective ways to prevent—even treat—chronic diseases.
In fact, researchers at both Harvard and Stanford Universities recently conducted a large-scale review of dozens of randomized controlled trials. They compared the effectiveness of exercise versus drug interventions on mortality outcomes for diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke. As published in the British Medical Journal, the researchers found “no statistically detectable differences” between physical activity and medications for prediabetes and heart disease. And, exercise was found to be more effective than prescription drugs after you’ve had a stroke.
You can see just how significant exercise is in maintaining or regaining your health. But remember, you don’t have to wait for your doctor to prescribe exercise to help you get well and stay well. Take back control of your health today by using these simple post-holiday tips to make exercise feel easy.
Got any additional science-based or real-life benefits of exercise to share with our readers? Please let us know in the comments section below.