5 Things To Improve Your Fitness Now

Everyone wants to find the easy way to achieve goals. There are no quick fixes in fitness. Despite what the infomercial at 3:00 a.m. says you can't have a bikini body in 5 minutes a day or build 5 pounds of muscle in 2 weeks. However there are things you can implement into your life today that will lead you to a better level of fitness and overall health. Not only can you implement them now, but they will require little effort and yield greater results.

• Set a realistic goal and a process to obtain it. "I want to lose weight" is not a goal. Instead plan to lose two pounds a week for the next four weeks. This is more obtainable and way less broad. At the end of the four weeks you can make a new goal. Think of goals like a staircase, not like an elevator. You must take one stair at a time.
• Going right back to the stair example, implement that into your every day life. Next time you go to an appointment on the third floor or work on the fifth floor, take the stairs. When you go to the store don't waste ten minutes searching for a spot. Park at the far end of the lot and walk in to the store. Instead of getting in the car to run to the corner store, walk it. The simple point here is to not take the easy way. Put out a little more effort.
• This one is sure to get some people outraged, but ditch the morning coffee stops. The average coffee house drink can cost $3.00-5.00, take 5-10 minutes to buy, and add anywhere from 200-800 calories to your diet. This is assuming you only go once a day. Try skipping that and save the money, use the 5-10 minutes to have a good breakfast, and save the calorie bomb from your waistline.
• Ditch the DIET, drink that is. In the past I have worked in offices and witnessed people literally drown themselves in diet soft drinks. Diet drinks may cut out the calories in theory, however they do you no favors. Non caloric sweeteners are considered "generally safe" by the FDA, however they have no health benefits and it is unclear of the overall effect they can have. Additionally some research indicates that the sweet taste combined with the negative calorie intake convinces the brain to tell you that you're hungry and can lead to overeating. You can still enjoy them once in a while, but better alternatives are water and tea.
• Breakfast is a word that defines itself. BREAK - FAST. Fasting is the process of going without food for a period of time. Well the 8 hours you sleep at night is a fast. The first meal you eat breaks that. Make sense? Way too many Americans skip breakfast. Big mistake. This will lead your metabolism to slow down, your body to hold on to fat, and cause over eating later in the day. Eat breakfast everyday.

Parting thought...What is the worst word you can say? Here is a hint, it doesn't start with F and rhyme with duck. It doesn't start with S and rhyme with hit. Ready for it....The word is CAN'T. I can't lose weight because...I can't eat right because...Those are all excuses. Can't is a word, not a reality. Can't is a limit and an excuse. Take the word out of your vocabulary. People have used can't as an escape for centuries. If everyone let can't define them we'd still be living in caves and marveling at fire. Next time you say "I can't..." try to come up with 5 reasons to support that. These days we have bodybuilders in wheelchairs. We have Olympic track stars without legs. We even have millionaires who grew up homeless. What if they let any of those situations be their CAN'T?