There Are Skinny Couch-Potatoes
The Adkins Diet, The Southbeach Diet, The Pritikin Diet, Weight-Watchers, Jenny Craig, grapefruit diet, low-fat diet, whatever-the-current-fad diet, all these programs and more have a common element. Their goals are all weight loss, shape altering or lifestyle changes and all of them work well, some of them even for longer periods of time. The common element that really makes them work is that they all recommend exercise as an important part of their program. Without exercise, the results are varied; from so-so weight loss, yo-yoing body weight, and slack and flabby flesh. Exercise is what makes any diet program work.
Exercise by itself will result in fitness and health. Resistance training with machines or free weights in a health club, body-weight exercises, treadmills at home or in the fitness club, cardio aerobics classes, sports walking, running and sports of all types . . . all forms of exercise will condition the muscles and improve cardio-vascular health. All the health and fitness books will tell the reader that a fit, muscular body consumes more energy, even at rest. A fit body isn’t necessarily a skinny body, though, nor is it even trim and lean. There are trim-slim people who are not fit but are skinny couch-potatoes. Exercise, when coupled with a properly balanced diet is what will help to achieve the “fit look” as well as good health and fitness.
One of the best means of incorporating a continuing exercise program into daily life is to acquire a health and fitness club membership. It requires less self-discipline to “go to the club” than it does to train alone. There are many health-fitness-gym options fitting all budgets, from which to choose. At one end of the spectrum are the posh, chrome-plated palaces with perfumed air, and on the other end are the fitness gyms with free weights and the aroma of perspiration filling the room, accompanied by the grunts and groans of serious bodybuilders. In between are the family fitness centers, Nautilus clubs, the local YMCAs and the health clubs with a room full of machines and some free-weights. Fitness may be achieved at any of these.
Health is a balance of proper nutrition, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. All of these elements are necessary. This isn’t to say that one must live like a monk who pumps iron and runs marathons, but to be moderate in all things that may affect your life; diet, workout routine and personal indulgences.
A healthy diet will always be composed of high fiber frutis and veggies, low sugar, low carb and rich in protein.~,`