1. Use it as an excuse to get ‘me’ time. If you lead a life of chaos where it seems like every moment of your time is consumed with obligations, use a consistent exercise routine as an excuse to spend some much needed time all by yourself.
2. Put away your ‘fat’ clothes. It’s a lot easier to put off exercising when you can hide underneath clothes that make us feel like you’re not as out of shape as we really are. Take all of the clothes that allow you to hide your extra pounds and put them in a box.
3. Make yourself an irresistible offer. If you want to crank up your motivation to get in shape, promise yourself a special treat when you reach your goal such as an entire weekend of frivolity, a shopping spree, a holiday, a revamp on the wardrobe, or a new ‘toy’ like a flat-screen TV.
4. Turn it into a social experience. You have a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, or a family member who also needs to lose weight, so grab a partner and make a solemn pact to force each other to stick to it.
5. Take a good look in the mirror. When all else fails, get naked and stand in front of a full-length mirror. Take a good look from the front, turn to the side, and even turn around and look back over your shoulder at your backside. If you need to lose even a few kilos, the mirror will be more than happy to show them to you.
Exercise is the Heart's Fountain of YouthOlder people who do endurance exercise training end up with metabolically younger hearts, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. And apparently women benefit more than men from the training.
Researchers measured heart metabolism in sedentary older people both at rest and during administration of dobutamine, a drug that makes the heart race as if a person were exercising vigorously. At the start of the study, they found that the hearts of the study subjects didn't increase their uptake of glucose in response to the dobutamine.
But after endurance exercise training involving walking, running or cycling exercises three to five days a week for about an hour per session, the participants' hearts doubled their glucose uptake during high-energy demand, just as younger hearts do.
If heart muscle doesn't take in glucose in response to increased energy needs, it goes into an energy-deprived state, which can raise the risk of heart attack. But if it can increase glucose uptake, the heart is better protected against heart attack and ischemia (low oxygen).