A while back we talked about finding what works for you in terms of getting motivated, then we got on to the subject of sugar, and now we are up to 3 on our list:

1. There is no off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all, easy answer. So, you have to know enough about yourself to find what works for you.
2. Sugar is not your friend.
3. Limiting your food intake might be the ‘easiest’ way to lose weight, but exercise has it’s own rewards – for your health and wellbeing, and to build and maintain muscle that will increase your burning power.
4. Losing the weight is not so much the trick as keeping it off.
5. Tracking. You don’t wanna, but you’ll learn a lot from keeping track of your eating and activity, and, research suggests, be more successful at reaching your goals too.

The benefits of exercise:

• It can help you lose weight. You just can’t outrun bad food choices. A half hour bike ride for every slice of pizza? You’d run out of hours in the day depending on what you’re munching! But combined with mostly nourishing fare, absolutely.
• It’s great for your health. Yes, it helps with disease prevention blah blah blah. Mostly not immediately affecting us so we don’t really care, but it works even so!
• It improves your mental health. Getting your blood circulating and your heart beating even a little more than usual can really lift your mood from the release of endorphins; can help to reduce stress by burning up stress hormones; and can increase energy by increasing the oxygenation of body tissues. Plus it can help you to sleep better so you feel improved the next day too.
• But for me, the biggest and best benefit of exercise is that it makes you feel like such a fantastic person. You know that feeling you get when you say you’re going to get moving with something but you don’t? That guilty, slack, I’m-so-hopeless and I’ve failed again feeling? Well, not only do you not have that, but you do have a ‘wow! look what I’ve done, even when I wasn’t really sure I wanted to!’ feeling, the feeling of being an awesomely high-functioning, successful adult. It’s this pride and boost and feeling of self-efficacy (I did it! I can do it!) that can really be the spark of change in many areas of life. It only takes one time to start building a new habit, one time to start being an improved you. Yeah baby!