Are you considering getting back into shape?

Has it been a while since you were in a gym or out of the jogging trail? Are you a couch potato at heart? Well, if you’re really serious about losing weight and getting fit then it’s critical that you find a program that will really work for you. That means one that you will continue after the first week or two of enthusiasm wears off. However, the sad truth is that the fortune building diet and fitness industry prospers because people buy a program, try it, quit, then buy another one and repeat the pattern. In other words, most programs for diet and fitness are actually designed to not work. It’s time to throw out the sacred cow ideas of diet and fitness that actually end up keeping us fat and out of shape and start thinking about the research based ideas of Easy Diet and Easy Fitness.

Isn’t it funny that exercise training programs always seem to be designed for people who are already fit? You put in the video for the first EASY exercise only to discover that you still can’t keep up with the 20 year old personal trainers in the video. Maybe your joints and muscles already hurt so much that doing the exercises on the video is impossible. That’s really discouraging so you give up. Here’s the thing… if you’re not so fit, you’ve got to focus on Easy Fitness and fun.

Isn’t it funny that diet programs tend to offer special foods that you have to buy or eat? It just doesn’t make sense because if you are overweight you got that way because of the way that you eat. If you go back to your normal eating patterns after the special diet then what can you expect other than to put the weight back on. This is not rocket science. You need to change the "fat making" ways of eating, not drink grapefruit juice or eat cabbage for a few weeks. If you really want to drop off those pounds and keep them off, then you’ve got to find a new Easy Diet strategy for eating effectively that includes easy meal preparation, the availability of healthy meals when you need them, and a simple way to control blood sugar and calorie intake without lots of measuring and lookup tables.

Here’s the bottom line. If you want to lose weight and get fit and stay that way then you have got to focus on long term results and not on young fit people and quick results. You need a health strategy that will take you past your 30’s and into your 40’s and 50’s. The research shows that the best strategy is not strenuous exercising and crash diets.

So start thinking about some new strategies for easy diet and fitness that can last a lifetime.

First, get the idea that Easy Fitness really isn’t about getting washboard abs or being able to do pushups and pull-ups like a Navy Seal. That isn’t saying those things are bad, just that they are not the reality for most people. The goals of Easy Fitness are things like moving during the day without joint and muscle pain, getting in and out of the car easily, and maintaining a good posture so that you don’t end up looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame in your later years. It’s about having the strength, flexibility, and range of motion needed to work in the yard, play with the kids or grandkids, and enjoy life to the fullest.

Easy Fitness breaks the idea that fitness is about going to the gym or to special classes or buying special exercise equipment. Instead it focuses on incorporating simple movement into your lifestyle that can be done at home, at the office, standing in the grocery line, or on the camping trip. That means that fitness becomes part of your normal everyday life.

Easy Fitness thinking isn’t about running a marathon or even a 5K race. It isn’t about being able to lift a certain amount of weight. It isn’t about doing a certain number of sit ups or lunges. The focuse of Easy Fitness is to find simple movements and activities, not EXERCISES, that are fun. What about simple random exaggerated body movements that are not so much graceful or flowing as expressive and releasing? The movements have got to be ones that anybody can do, that can be done anywhere in small amounts of time, and that can be adjusted for all ages and ability levels. Not only are those kinds of activities effective office and home exercise without equipment, but they also are great stress management strategies.

One of the biggest problems with gyms and classes is that repetitive movements are really not what the body is designed to do, and, frankly, movements like lifting weights the same way over and over are downright boring. Easy Fitness is about doing what the body feels like doing when it feels like doing it.

Easy Fitness means learning a handful of simple movement techniques that can be applied to different parts of the body. By doing slight variations you can restore strength, flexibility, range of motion, muscle tone, and pain free movement throughout your body. The movement are not about pretending you’re riding a bike or kick boxing. Instead, they include things like moving around and having fun to music… not EXERCISING. Well, that’s the whole idea. You can do a few simple movements for one or two minutes at a time without a lot of thinking or preparation required. Just do it when you feel like it and you get tremendous benefits.

This is a very different way of thinking about fitness that abandons the traditional myths of fitness like no pain no gain and you’ve got to work up a sweat. The research does not support these myths particularly if you haven’t been exercising for a while. Just throw out the old diet and exercise myths and ideas that haven’t worked for you. You Will do simple movements because they’re fun, easy fitness instead of work and your fitness WILL improve.

And as it does you just modify the movements with the small variations like holding small inexpensive dumbbells in your hand to increase your fitness, flexibility, and cardiovascular conditioning even more. What could be easier or more fun?

And speaking of fun, what about getting together with some friends and applying the four movements to dancing around? Have a few minutes to be with your friends moving around, enjoying some good music, and getting some great exercise. It doesn’t seem possible that any effective system of exercise can be this fun… but it is.

What about losing weight?

Easy Diet isn’t about buying packaged meals that look and sound great on television but end up being a lot of unappetizing dehydrated powered eggs and soups with ingredients you can even pronounce and that taste weird. It isn’t about eating some bizarre combination of foods that no sane person would actually eat normally. Easy Diet isn’t about completely eliminating the foods you like. It sure isn’t about starving yourself. In the long run, none of those things work for most people.

Easy Diet is about learning to eat healthy food. That can include organic food if you prefer. It’s about learning how to prepare healthy, good tasting food without spending half your life in the kitchen. It’s about how to control your blood sugar because that really is the scientific reason for weight gain. Easy Diet is about learning to eat intelligently, then simply adjusting portion sizes when you want to lose weight. It’s about being able to go to restaurants with your friends and still stay in "diet mode." It’s about not feeling guilty or crushed when the realities of life make you eat differently than your "diet" dictates.

Most of all, Easy Diet and Easy Fitness are about turning those little daily defeats you feel into consistent victories… and that will change your life.