You only need 30 minutes of exercise a day, three days a week to reap long-term benefits. So shake off that winter dust, stretch those muscles and spring into fitness!

• Get an attitude cheek. Your muscles may do all the work when you exercise, but your mind provides the incentive. A positive attitude gets you off on the right foot to fitness and keeps you there. Get your mind primed for fitness by visualizing how good your body will look and feel. Set realistic goals and reward yourself when you reach them. Be patient and forgiving. Change will come, but it takes time. Remember, losers fall down and stay down. Winners fall down, but get up. Remind yourself that you are a winner.
• Gear up. It may seem trivial, but what you wear really can make a difference in your workout. If your shoes pinch or your clothes cut off your circulation, your workout will undoubtedly suffer. Comfortable and stylish athletic wear, especially well-cushioned shoes with plenty of arch support, not only feel good on your body, but inspire you to work out in a way that worn-out sweats and sneakers just can’t match.
  

  Wearing The Correct Clothing Can Make All The Difference

• Go easy. Working out too hard, too soon increases your risk of strains and sprains. And if you injure yourself badly enough, you won’t be able or willing to exercise. If you’re just starting out, fitness experts say do low- to moderate-level activities and slowly increase the duration and intensity of your activities as you become more fit. A good workout should leave you a little sore the next day or two, not incapacitated.
• Keep fitness fun and fresh. If exercise is a chore or a bore, you won’t be exercising very long. Stay psyched for fitness by linking exercise with a fun activity or pastime. And add variety. If you like sightseeing, walk, bike, jog or skate your way around town. If you enjoy picnics in the park, round up the family for a game of tag or football before you feast. Go swimming, dancing or hiking. Learn a new sport or revisit a childhood favourite.
• Recruit a good cheerleader. It’s easy to stay focused on fitness if you have help. A fitness partner provides company and can push you when you need that extra motivation. If you can’t find a regular partner or if you prefer to workout solo, you still can surround yourself with fitness cheerleaders–people who will congratulate you on your successes, offer encouragement and wisdom and keep tabs on you to make sure you stay on track.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_15_101/ai_84645570/

Use these top 10 fitness tips to get your workout routine started today. As always, talk with your doctor before starting a new fitness or nutrition program.

Tip #1- Set Realistic and Tangible Goals

Simply stating that you want to lose weight is not effective. Be specific. For example, I want to lose 5 kilgramsof fat by February 14th.

Tip #2- Measure Your Progress

Take your base measurements and then re-take them on a regular basis. You cannot measure your progress if you have no idea where you started from.

Tip #3- Log Your Workouts

Each and every workout session should be logged. Keep all of your fitness logs in a binder and create your very own success journal.

Tip #4- Mix Up Your Cardio Workouts

Cardio sessions should vary in intensity and in length. Try new cardio activities and keep things fresh.

Tip #5- Strength Training Is Not Just for Men

Everyone should strength train. Strength training builds muscle and increases bone density. Train all major muscle groups 1-3 times per week.

Tip #6- Rest

Get 7-9 hours of deep sleep each and every night. Also rest your muscles by not working out 1-2 days each week. Your muscles actually get stronger and repair when you are resting, not when working out.

Tip #7- Warm Up

Warm up for 5-10 minutes before every workout session. You should feel a rise in your body temperature. You should be starting to sweat after your warm up. Once you are warm you will be able to perfume a better.

Tip #8- Cool Down

Cool down by stretching out your entire body. This helps increase flexibility and decrease muscle soreness the next day. Psychologically it also gives closure to the session and lets you relax.

Tip #9- Nutrition Is Half the Battle

This should almost be #1 if I had to rate all of these out of importance. If you work your butt off by exercising well but let yourself down with poor eating, you will not see a lot of change on the scales. Eating small meals throughout the day complements your fitness routine. Learn to eat healthy and kick diets out of your life forever.

Tip #10- Stay Motivated

Find a workout partner. Sign up for a marathon. Work with a personal trainer. Do whatever it takes to remain committed. If you falter, let go of guilt and get back on your routine as soon as possible.

These top10 fitness tips build the foundation of a safe and effective fitness program. Anyone can drop body fat and gain lean muscle mass by following a realistic workout and nutrition plan. Stay the course and you will be healthier and happier for it.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lynn_VanDyke

A lot of cardio is the most efficient way to lose body fat. FALSE!

Excessive cardio will strip muscle mass and body fat. This is definitely not the most efficient method for losing body fat. Once you begin stripping muscle mass, your body becomes less efficient at burning body fat. Muscle is metabolically active, which simply means it stimulates the metabolism. For each kilogram of muscle you put on, you will burn up to 100 additional calories per day. If you strip muscle mass, all you accomplish is sabotaging your efforts to efficiently reduce body fat.

You can gain 10kg of muscle in a few months.FALSE!

All the claims that you read about certain routines or supplements that can help you gain “5kg of muscle in a month” are big fat lies. They’re marketing scams to get you to buy a product. It takes diligent weight training using sufficient overload, consistency and patience to build significant muscle mass. Except for initial muscular gains which happen quickly when one begins a weight training program, it can take up to a year to gain 5kg of muscle mass.

Calories are the only thing that counts when trying to lose fat or gain muscle. FALSE!

Ratios of protein, carbohydrate and fats are also important. The key to losing fat and gaining muscle is controlling and manipulating insulin levels. In simple terms, when we consume excessive calories or excessive amounts of high glycemic carbohydrates at one meal, the body’s blood sugar rises. When this happens, the pancreas secretes insulin to lower blood sugar levels. One of the many drawbacks of this happening excessively is, along with putting you at risk for diabetes, the body also holds onto stored fat! A balance of protein, carbohydrate and fats works most efficiently in losing fat and gaining muscle.

A woman will get muscles as big as a guy if she lifts heavier weight (8-12 reps). FALSE!

This myth never seems to die. A woman has approximately one third of the testosterone of a man. Unless she is on anabolic steroids, growth hormones or other chemicals, a woman will never achieve the muscular size of a man. However, she can get a degree of muscularity that makes her lean, firm and tight. You can put on a lot of muscle and lose a lot of fat at the same time. FALSE! You can put on muscle and lose some fat in minimal amounts. However, the body functions best when it has one goal at a time. If your goal is to put on a lot of muscle, then make that your number one objective. If your goal is to lose significant body fat, then your focus should be on preserving your much earned muscle mass.

Lifting lighter weights will make your muscles more defined and cut. FALSE!

Muscle responds to overload. If you lift heavier weight with sufficient intensity, you will create more microscopic tears in the muscle. When the muscle recuperates, it will become bigger and stronger over time. However, your supplemental nutrition must support your training. Reduced body fat is what creates the “cut” look, not high (15 or more) reps. Reduced body fat is a result of efficient weight training, proper amounts of cardiovascular exercise and nutrition that places you in somewhat of a calorie deficit. That’s how you get defined.

Forget The Little Pink Dumbbells If you Want To Tone Up!

The best way to lose fat is to eat very few calories. FALSE!

Always consider your body from the inside out. Your body’s main objective is to survive. It doesn’t care if you want to lose fat. In fact, it would prefer to increase fat in case of famine. Internally, the body has no idea that it’s the year 2003. It could still be 10,000 years ago for all it cares. Survival is its number one objective. If you eat very little, the body perceives an emergency and will accommodate you by holding onto stored body fat. As well it should, because it has no idea when it will be fed again.

The best way to lose fat is to eat a lot of calories. FALSE!

Just as you don’t want to eat too little, you don’t want to eat too much. Duh. I know this is a ‘no brainer,’ but the big message in the nutrition and personal training world today is that most people need to eat more to stimulate the metabolism. The truth is you need the CORRECT AMOUNT of total calories to lose body fat, not simply more food!

One kilogram of muscle and one kilogram of fat are the same size. FALSE!

If I place one kilogram of muscle on a scale and one kilogram of fat on a scale, they will both weigh one kilogram. The difference is in total volume. One kilogram of muscle may appear to be the size of tennis ball; one kilogram of fat will be three times the size and look like a squiggly bowl of jelly.

Examples of the sizes difference between fat (yellow) and muscle (red)

The more protein I consume, the more muscle I will put on my body. FALSE!

The human body requires the correct amount of protein to put on muscle. The hardworking weight trainer requires a lot more protein than the sedentary person. However, the correct amount is key, not excessive amounts. In addition, the body uses protein, carbohydrate and a small amount of fat to build muscle, not simply excessive protein.

Most people believe that in order to lose belly fat, they only need to work on the belly. This is a big misconception and a major reason why so many people fail to lose weight successfully. This theory is called “spot reducing” and is a big fat myth (no pun intended).

Ditch The Sit Ups And Go For Full Body Exercises To Melt The Fat!

The fact remains that no matter what you do, your body will not let you lose fat in any specific region of your choice. You maybe doing abdominal crunches all day long in the hope of losing belly fat quickly, but maybe astonished to find that you have lost only a few inches after weeks of hard work. What is more, what you have lost may not be fat at all but your valuable abdominal muscles. When you exercise, your body decides in which area it should burn fat. Thus spot reduction of fat is totally impossible.

We need to understand that the body is one big energy source, not little pockets on energy (aka fat) that is kept separately all over the body. When you exercise a certain body part, it doesnt take fat from just that particular area, but from the body as a whole.

That is why it pays to do exercises that involve your body as whole, rather than specific parts. Exercises which involve your entire body offer you permanent weight loss solution. Instead of wasting money on expensive weight loss gadgets that simply sell on hype, join a gym or get a personal trainer, if you are serious about weight loss, that is.

One of the best ways to lose fat quickly is by doing a combination of weight training and cardiovascular workouts. Cardiois very helpful in helping you get rid of your fat belly while weight training will ensure your metabolism stay fired up to not only help the fat burning process, but to also ensure you are looking toned and fantastic when you shed the fat.

Along with regular workouts, it is also essential that you control your food intake. When you are looking forward to losing those extra kilos, it is essential that you eat raw fruits and vegetables instead of fried meals. When you consume fewer calories than what you burn, you will inevitably lose weight.

Now go ahead and use this plan. Take ACTION, because only people who take action succeed in life. Weight loss is not hard at all and you don’t need to spend millions of dollars to get fit and healthy.

Fitness Myth #1 – As you age you gain fat.
There’s a common myth that as you age gaining fat becomes unavoidable. This simply isn’t true – the reason you gain fat is because your metabolism has slowed down due to a lack of exercise and bad diet choices. Most people think that gaining weight and getting older go hand in hand, but the reason we gain weight isn’t just about getting older, it’s about how our habits change. Many of us gain weight because we:

• Become more sedentary
• Don’t lift weights to maintain muscle mass
• Eat more calories even as metabolism slows down

While there are some elements we can’t control, most of the weight gain that comes with aging can be avoided with a little exercise. The main reason for muscle loss (which lowers metabolism) is that we often spend way too much sitting – we sit at work, we sit when we watch TV and we sit when we play around on the computer. If we spend too much time doing that when we’re younger, it’s that much harder to stop doing that when we get older. It follows that being active (and lifting weights) will help preserve your muscle and increase your bone density while maintaining a higher metabolism. Here is a basic approach to staying or getting fit.

Staying Active Is The Best Way To Keep The Weight Off!

• Cardio Exercise: Choose any activity you enjoy (or think you might enjoy with some practice) like swimming, walking or cycling and try to do that activity at least 3 days a week. Start with what you can handle and gradually add time each week until you can do 30 minutes of continuous activity. Even a casual game or tennis our round of golf is a great way to get some extra cardio in!
• Lift weights: Strength training may be one of the most important parts of your exercise program. You’ll build muscle and strength while also working on important areas like balance, stability and flexibility – all things that tend to decline with age.  Ladies, DO NOT worry about bulking up. I promise it won’t happen and that’s something we will be going over in the coming weeks.
• Watch Your Eating Habits:  One of the most important things to watch for is your portion sizes when eating. As you age, you don’t need as much food as you did when you were young and developing. In most cases, people eat just as much as they did when they were younger (if not more!) and this leads to weight gain.
• Be realistic. As you get older, the body starts to because less responsive due to a slower metabolism and lower hormonal levels. As a result it will take longer to lose weight and improve muscle tone, so consistency is the key – getting your workouts in and eating as healthfully as possible. Do that and your body will respond in its own time.

If you find it hard to start or stick with an exercise program, motivate yourself by remembering what you do for your health when you exercise: you feel better, you look better, you reduce your chances of heart disease and diabetes and, best of all, you’re doing what your body was meant for: moving around.  If you need help to get started, feel from to fill out the consult form  on our webpage to see how we can help you!

So how on earth does this happen? How can I eat more and lose weight?

Too often we associate dieting with drastically dropping our calories but any smart person knows starvation diets never work. In fact, anyone that has tried one just ends up weighing more than they did before starting the diet. Let me explain.

Our body’s big food processing furnace is called the metabolism and if we starve ourselves, our metabolism shuts down and goes into what I call survival mode. You probably hear the word metabolism all the time but do you really know what it is/means/does?

Our metabolism is the amount of energy (calories) your body burns to maintain itself. Whether you are eating, drinking, sleeping, cleaning etc… your body is constantly burning calories to keep you going. Basically, the higher your metabolism, the more calories you burn per day. Those stick thin people who eat junk food all day have a VERY fast metabolism whereas those who put on weight just by looking at that donut have a very slow metabolism. Along with factors such as body composition (the more muscle you have, the higher it is), the way you fuel your body effects the rate of your metabolism.

As stated before, if you starve yourself your metabolism shuts down goes into starvation mode. Instead efficiently using and burning the calories we put into it, the body begins to hold onto every skerrick of food that we eat as it doesn’t know when it might be lucky enough to be fed again! This creates a world of problems as the next time you binge (and you know you will), the body will be unable to efficiently process the food and will be stored as fat.

Make Sure Your Metabolism Is Firing On All Cylinders By Eating More Frequently!

Instead, we should be eating 5-7 small meals a day which continually stokes our fat burning furnace (aka metabolism).These meals will probably end up being more food than you are eating right now. By eating these small meals throughout the day, it’s basically sending a message to our metabolism that says “hey buddy, I’m feeding you regularly so there’s no need worry about starving, just keep burning it away for energy!”. As a result we get to eat more, have more energy and believe it or not, lose weight!

Now obviously you should still be exercising and putting all those calories to good use. If you are not sure exactly how much you should be eating and when you should be eating it, we strongly suggest you looking into one of our nutrition coaching packages. So many of our clients say that they are eating wayyyy more than they were but feel amazing. We love showing people that they are allowed to eat the foods they love and shouldn’t feel guilty as long as they exercise appropriately.

CLICK HERE TO ASK US HOW WE CAN HELP YOU

Do you think its beneficial to run on an empty stomach? Does it burn more fat and fire up the metabolism to skip breakfast?

NO! This is a long held fitness and weight loss myth. While it seems like it should be true, that if you have no food to fuel your body, your body will burn fat straight away, but this is not true.

Make sure to fuel up in the morning for maximum fat burning effect!

Here’s Just a quick explanation of how it all works. The main fuel of your body during exercise is glycogen, which is carbs that have been broken down and stored in the liver and the muscles – but you cannot store much. After sleeping, your glycogen stores in your liver are depleted by as much as 80 percent. When you wake up and begin exercising, once you have burned through all the stored glycogen your body begins to use muscle tissue to fuel your movements. This is by some evolutionary trick, since muscle takes more energy to preserve and fuel compared to fat, the body uses it for fuel to create less of an energy need. So by exercising on an empty stomach you could be actually losing muscle.

If you are planning on working out, doing cardio or strength training, you MUST eat something before you do! Carbs preferably. A banana is a great option! I do understand that some of you don’t like eating breakfast, but I can’t stress to you enough how important it is that you do. You can’t run a car on an empty tank, it’s exactly the same as a person. We need our fuel so we can work to the best of our ability. Something as small as a banana or even a piece of toast in the morning before a workout can make a world of difference, and you will be able to push yourself that much more without flaking out.  Too many clients are training on empty stomachs which are leading to dizziness, not being able to finish a whole training sessions and in turn their fitness is not improving.

I never used to eat breakfast, but now I seriously cannot start the day without a huge breakfast! It is my favourite meal for the day. I know your always hearing people say “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, but it actually is the most important meal! I really believe this!

So please guys start your day off healthy with a bite to eat and plenty of water before you start your training, it won’t take long to get in the habit of having breakfast every morning before your session, in no time you won’t even think about having to eat breakfast, it will just be part of your morning routine and you will be thinking “How did I ever skip this amazing meal each day?”

My name is Cat Madden, and I’m the newest staff member at PerFit Health and Wellness.

I’ve been working at PerFit Health and Wellness for the past 4 months and loving it!! I used to be a dental technician but took a 180 in my career direction and looked towards fitness.  I have coached girls rowing crews for the last 3 years and absolutely love it! I took this job because I need to be around fun and energetic people.  So by combining my experience with coaching rowing and my love for helping people, I studied and got qualified as a Personal Trainer! The best choice I have ever made!

So, enough about the boring background stuff, here’s some random facts about me!

I have 2 sisters, one older one younger.

I LOVE music festivals.

My favorite healthy food is Golden Delicious apples

My favorite naughty food is lollies……any jube lollies!

I love watching Antique Roadshow

I laugh when I see people fall over (but not in the studio!)

People always comment on my upbeat personality

I seriously can’t touch polystyrene without getting queasy and shivering

I can’t wait to go sky diving! I’ve been booked in for 4 months but it keeps getting canceled due to bad weather!

So that’s me in a nutshell. I can’t wait to share my health and fitness tips with you (along with any other quirky stories I think you might like)

Talk to you soon!

Cat

Secret 7: Turn off the Tube
Time spent watching TV is time spent being completely sedentary (and thus expending minimal amounts of calories) and often eating as well. Most people mindlessly consume snacks while mesmerized in front of the television, not noticing the rapidly multiplying calorie intake. Case in point: The successful NWCR “losers” watched less than 10 hours of television per week.

Don’t be a couch Potato!

Secret 8: Retrain Your Brain
Interestingly, most people who have lost and kept off the most weight tend to be “lower left” brained, meaning they are organized, controlled, methodical and disciplined. This is not to say that those of us who thrive on spontaneity or embrace clutter are doomed- it’s just a matter of retraining our brains. Encourage clients to become better organized by writing a grocery shopping list and sticking to it! Before your next exercise session, plan your workout schedule for the next week and make a promise to stick to it. These efforts will help solidify their lifestyle change and make permanent weight loss more of a reality.

Secret 9: Start Today and Don’t Cheat
It’s easy to put off starting a serious lifestyle change to a later date. Likewise, it’s easy to “cheat” and eat an extra piece of cake here, a pizza there. It’s important to be diligent when attempting to lose weight, because people who don’t cheat on a regular basis are 150% more likely to maintain their weight loss. Encourage clients to adopt a “doable” healthy lifestyle they can stick with; this will reduce those compelling urges to unwittingly sabotage their weight management success.

Be strong! Don’t give in to temptation!

Secret 10: Know that Birds of a Feather stick together
A study of 12,067 people followed over 32 years concluded that obesity spreads through social ties. That
is, obese people tend to have obese friends. Pairs of friends and siblings of the same sex seem to have
the most profound effect on each others weight loss. Some researchers suspect that the spread of obesity
has a lot to do with an individual’s general perception of the social norms regarding the acceptability
of obesity. The logic works like this: If my best friend and my sister are both obese and I love and admire
them all the same, then maybe it’s not so bad that I gain a few pounds. Clients can reverse this psychological
phenomenon by inviting pals to work out at the gym or go for a bike ride with them to stay or get fit.

We hope you can implement some of these tips into your daily life to help you with your weight loss goals. If you would like further help, please fill out the consult form by clicking the link below!

“8 weeks ago I felt very lazy, unhealthy and really couldn’t be bothered doing anything. I decided to take part in the Body Balance Challenge because I was sick of feeling fat & unhealthy and not being able to muck around with my teenage kids.” Sue explained when looking back on her decision to make the most important change in her life.

“When I first started I doubted myself a great deal. I didn’t know if I could juggle a healthy lifestyle, work and kids. I started to notice my clothes had started to sit differently than before and I also had more energy. The results kept me going and knowing that, I felt better.”

During the Body Balance Contest, Sue (along with all other contestants) was guided through the 8 weeks with a combination of personalised 1-on-1 coaching sessions to address nutrition and exercise needs and group educational sessions which served as an opportunity to learn and help each other along the way.

“I loved the nutrition coaching. It definitely made eating correctly easier. The meal plans were fantastic. It was far from dieting and so easy to follow. The best thing I about it was the variety and amount of food I got to eat. We were even given a weekly shopping list. I couldn’t believe how much food I was eating yet I was losing weight. Go Figure?!” Sue exclaimed.

Sue found the group coaching sessions to be invaluable when it came to keeping her on track and focused. “The group education sessions were great, I loved it. There was no bitchiness….. which everyone believes there is in contests. It was actually the opposite. We tried to support each other and ask how the others how they had done for the week”

When asked about how she feels about winning the contest, Sue says the money really isn’t and wasn’t the motivating factor. “That (The $700 prize) was just a bonus and everyone was really a winner”

When asked how life had changed for Sue after these 8 weeks she replied with a smile “Now I walk with my head help high, especially after seeing the before and after photos….Ive got a bounce in my step now which I never had. My confidence has definitely lifted and even other people are noticing the difference and are just blown away.”

Sue passionately expressed for anyone else out there wanting to make a change in their health and fitness, getting started is the hardest part. “At the very start of the contest I thought to myself ‘I don’t know if I can be bothered (turning up to the meeting)’, and that’s the problem…you get yourself into such a rut. You just need to kick yourself up the butt and say ‘No, I’m going to do this’” Sue emotionally explained. “You may hit speed bumps along the way but the fact you’ve got the ball rolling means you’ve got your motivation and momentum up to overcome them.

In the following weeks a brand new 8-week body balance contest will be starting which Sue whole heatedly advocates all to register for. “I loved all 8 weeks of the contest with PerFit and can’t recommend it enough. If you have been looking to make a change in your health and are on the fence about it, stop finding excuses and do it now. There is no better way”.

For more information about the upcoming Body Balance Contest and to register, visit

www.BodyBalanceBallarat.com.au

and start your transformation today!