| Most diets think of exercise as a separate issue. Eat the foods we recommend and you’ll lose weight. You may, but I found adding exercise makes it easier to reach your daily weight loss goal. The exercise you do should be something you can do for life. I find that walking is ideal. You can do it anywhere. You don’t need much equipment. You’re less likely to get hurt. You can do it while at work or going to work. I attribute walking to be one of the keys that helped me lose weight. Start your weight loss program without exercising and then increase it over time as your weight tells you to. One mistake many people make is to exercise too long, too hard and too often. This is a recipe for failure. At my gym, I was watching a personal trainer take an overweight woman and push her like she was training for the Olympics or like what you see on the TV show The Biggest Loser. I’m certain she was in agony the next few days and stopped going. Difficult exercise regimens will be difficult to maintain. I’ve gone to the gym many times to lift weights but each time was temporary. A few days, weeks but I eventually stopped due to pain, boredom or habit that never took. This doesn’t mean gyms won’t work for you. Certainly, give one a try. Just remember that the most important thing is to create the habit of going at least three times a week before you try to break the bench press or squat records. An important thing to do when designing your exercise program is to make it fun and easy enough to continue until it becomes a habit. Now you don’t have to walk as your routine, but I’ve found no better, easier method to keep the exercise going without pain or effort. Today my walk was from Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, where the New York Nets basketball team plays over the Brooklyn Bridge to my office in Wall Street. Then I spent the day at work and then walked to Madison Square Garden, where the New York Knicks play for a total of six miles. When I tell people I walk from Penn Station to the Financial District they look at me like it’s an impossible task. It was for me but I built it up over time. I would walk at lunch time and eat my lunch first, walking 15 minutes out and 15 back for a 30-minute walk. Then I built it to 30 out and 30 back for an hour. |