10 Body Fat Reducing Resolutions for the New Year, By: Dave DePew
Millions of Americans begin each New Year considering a number of possible resolutions. These goals can range from finding love, to starting a family, to making a career change, to increasing personal wealth, to purchasing a home, or to simply leading a healthier lifestyle. It is the desire to lead a healthier lifestyle that catches my attention.
If your goal is to lead a healthier lifestyle, then these ten kick-off tips can help you get started on creating your own Body Fat Reducing Resolution list for 2006.
1. Find a Trainer and Get an Assessment!
A great place to start your journey is with a fitness and metabolic assessment. To create a set of goals, you should start with having a clear idea of where you are starting. For many people, locating a personal trainer and having the courage to have an assessment performed is not always the easiest thing to do. Let’s face it, no one likes to hear potentially bad news. However, the key thing to keep in mind is that this will provide you with a clearly defined starting point for your new journey of body fat reduction.
If you need help locating a personal trainer in your area, I would be happy to provide you with a referral to a personal trainer in my national network.
2. Get an Exercise Plan!
An essential element to developing an effective exercise program is having a plan before you go into the gym. Most people who are new to the gym make the mistake of grabbing whatever exercise machine is not in use. Not understanding what muscles are being worked, or if you are even training those muscles correctly, can definitely lead to frustration. This frustration, in turn, can lead to the view that exercise is unpleasant.
Over the years of working with my clients, I have seen many change their opinion about exercise after they have developed a personalized plan of action. A detailed exercise plan can turn a person from feeling intimidated into a regular gym rat. Before you know it, you’ll be exercising every day!
3. Set an Appointment to Exercise!
How many times in the last few weeks have you said you would go to the gym and start working out? Just saying that you are going to workout "sometime this week" just doesn't work. Everyday you say to yourself that “this will be the day”, but after a long day at work, you go home and just don’t seem to find the time to lace up the shoes and head out the door.
The reality is that without a plan you are likely to never get started. Start by setting an appointment each day to exercise. Identify the time that you know will be the easiest for you. When you make this appointment for yourself, KEEP IT! Exercise is not something that you can put off for later. You can’t just reschedule an appointment with your health.
4. Exercise every day!
Yes, I said every day! That is no mistake. Everyday you need to commit to doing at least 20 to 40 minutes of exercise. Don’t stop reading now, you can do this! Now I promise not to bore you with some statistics on how performing 20 to 40 minutes of combined cardio respiratory activity and resistance training is going to help you drop fat, because you already know this. You know that exercise works, but for some reason you don’t want to do it.
Typically, it is because all of us (I can also be guilty of this), make things out to be more difficult than they need be. We just need to get started. It is important to feel successful out of the gate! No person wants to feel beaten down from exercise. We want to feel energized, and exercise can give us the energy to do the things we want to do.
I’m not going to tell you that you need to love to exercise, but you do need to exercise in a way that you love how it makes you feel! Find an environment that is friendly, easily accessible, and provides plenty of moral support. Make a commitment to exercise every day because regardless of what type of exercise you chose, it will ultimately help you to create new life long habits. Habits that can take root in as little as 21 days.
5. Perform Resistance Training and Cardio respiratory Training!
In order to drop one pound of body fat per week, you will need to create a calorie deficit of 3,600 calories with exercise or nutrition. Results are great when incorporating an exercise program that includes both resistance training and cardio respiratory training. Resistance training provides the greatest long term benefit, but cardio provides the greatest initial benefit. You need both! Cardio respiratory training when performed in intervals not only helps you to tap into body fat storage, but the progressive intensity helps you continue to burn more body fat after the completion of exercise. When performing resistance training with the intent of working with progressively higher weight loads or by increasing the time the muscles are under resistance, you will begin to create more skeletal muscle that will assist you in utilizing a greater number of calories each day.
6. Share Your Goals!
Make it a point to include people in your goals. Tell everyone! If you are serious about your goals then you need to tell the world. Ok, so maybe not the world, but you should definitely tell your friends and family, and if you have a supportive work environment, tell your co-workers as well. When you share you goals, you may find that others will open up to you about their own desire to exercise and eat better. They may even join you by setting their own exercise and nutrition goals.
Be forewarned that you may run into some people who will be expecting you to fail. The whole experience may be a little demoralizing for you, but it may just be enough to keep you from quitting.
7. Reduce portion sizes!
Eating smaller portions can help you cut your body fat down as much as 4% in just a month. Not all my clients train the same way or follow the same nutrition program (I’m big on individualization) but, many of my clients who eat frequent smaller meals, about 6-8 with pre and post workout shakes, tend to drop as much as 4% body fat in the first month. While there is very little scientific research on why and how this works, many top nutritionist and trainers report similar results with their clients.
8. Cut Trans Fats!
One of your Body Fat Reducing Resolutions may be to reduce the amount of Trans Fat in your daily diet. Trans fatty acids are commonly found in frozen foods, meat and dairy. To help make your goal a bit easier, beginning January 1, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring trans fat amounts to be listed on virtually all food labels. Learn to read the label on manufactured foods, but try to keep the majority of the food you eat come from naturally accruing food sources.
For example, stay clear of margarine, once thought to be healthier than butter, is actually full of trans fatty acids. By replacing margarine with healthier fats, such as canola or soy oil, you will significantly lower the amount of unhealthy fats and toxins you are ingesting.
9. Find a Workout Partner!
Having someone to exercise with is a great way to increase motivation. Adding the whole social pressure cooker to your routine is a great way to increase accountability. You may find it difficult to skip out on someone who is waiting for you. A good workout partner is likely to fee the same way too. You have the option of either making a friend at the gym or inviting a personal friend to workout. Either way, it may take some time to hook up with someone. So in the beginning, your workout partner may just need to be someone who will show up when you do. Over time, though, it will become more important that you find a partner that shares the same goals.
10. Always Reward Yourself!
Don’t wait to reward yourself when you reach your long term goals. Every goal has a variety of checkpoints. Any time you pass or reach one of these checkpoints, you should celebrate your success. For added motivation, plan your specific rewards like a new pair of running shoes, a sports massage, an MP3 player, or a vacation ahead of time.
If in 2006 you can implement these goals each day, you can significantly increase your chances of long-term success.
