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Health/Nutrition
Something that most people don't realise is that physically there is little correlation between fitness and weight. Your weight does not define how fit you are. Obviously if your weight is too high it has an effect on how fit you are, and it certainly has an effect on your health but the relation between weight and fitness is nowhere near as strong as most people believe.
The only things that will really affect whether or not you are fit are all related to how much exercise you can do.
(Of course, if you begin to really improve your fitness and get in shape, you'll probably begin to slim down).
Diet, although it is important, is often not the most important path to losing weight. If your goal is to slim down and avoid putting on weight again, you should examine how much exercise you get. Obviously you should look at your diet also, but often the most effective treatment is to work off the food you are eating. Making time for exercise in your day and making sensible choices on food are not two different ways to lose weight - they should be done together.
If you start with exercise, then you'll begin to build and tone muscle in your entire body first, instead of just trying to burn away fat. In fact, the worst thing you can do is to start on a diet first without exercise. Instead of burning away your fat, in that case, the chances are good that your body will burn muscle tissue instead. That is something that you definitely don't want to happen, since it will make exercising harder for you in the future.
If you get exercise on a regular basis the fact is you will be fitter than someone who gets no regular exercise, regardless of your weight. Taking this into account you should start exercising more when starting any new diet plan, this will get the most from your new diet.
Of course if you want to really increase your fitness then you will need to do more than a casual bit of exercise. You will need to be more methodical in your approach to exercise and do more than one type of exercise. You will need to be doing some cardiovascular exercise and some basic strength exercises.
Cardiovasular exercise is exercise that increases your heart rate. When doing this form of exercise your goal should be to increase the amount of time you can exercise for. This will increase your stamina and fitness.
Strength training will tone your body and increase your strength. While it won't necessarily make you fitter, it will make you look and feel better and give you visible, confidence-building results.
This strength training does not necessarily mean lifting weights or hanging around a gym, you can do a really effective strength training workout in the comfort of your own home with little or no equipment. A small amount of training like this can make all the differnce in your fitness program.
In short, you can be fit regardless of how much you weigh just so long as you are able to exercise as much as you'd like to.
Britannia Findlay is the Webmaster of FOCAL Fitness There are a lot of interesting articles and great resources at her site. For all the information you want, visit:
http://www.focalfitness.com
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