Fitness involves more that just working out three to five days a week. For more on diet, you can see the food-related content on this site. But right here we’ll focus more on the exercise component to fitness. To get started, let me draw your attention to three pillars of fitness: exercise, diet and rest.
Exercise
The first pillar is exercise. If you can be disciplined to exercise faithfully, you can be disciplined in other ways. But I know that I won’t be faithful to any workout regimen that requires spending hours in the weight room or more than twenty minutes running. I just won’t do it. I hate it and there’s not enough bang for my buck, so I won’t do it. It’s like a magic bullet diet of green veggies. Who’s going to stick to that?! Boring. So, have an exercise regimen you can live with.
That’s why none of the workouts on this page will take more than thirty minutes. Most last about ten to fifteen minutes.
Diet
Everyone always says, “diet and exercise, diet and exercise, blah blah.” I think it’s the other way ‘round when it comes to practicality. Exercise is hard, but it can be fun. When it comes to eating well, it’s not even hard once you get the hang of it. So get in the habit of eating well, and the diet part -though absolutely essential – will come easy.
Recovery
This is the easiest pillar to neglect is recovery. I’ve found that over-training is as commonly related to exercising too frequently as much as it is working too hard or too long. Recovery (whether sleep, stretching, or just taking a day off) is very important to allow your body to recover so you can grow muscle, burn fat, and be able to hit your next training session hard! That’s why I recommend working out on nonconsecutive days and getting a minimum of seven hours of sleep a night. (I sure hope that’s practical for you! If not, make it so.)
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