Exercise!

Now it may not be the first thing you do every day, but you do need to schedule exercise into your day and your week - and you do need to treat each exercise session as THE most important appointment you have - then keep your appointments.

Get out your diary or your copy of the challenge...what day(s) are you going to exercise? Make an appointment with yourself - and keep it - that's essential. Imagine you are paying a personal trainer and you pay whether you turn up or not, it would be a complete waste of money if you paid and didn't go now wouldn't it... and if you do have that kind of money to waste, please send it my way :-)

One of the tricks that I use is this. I take my work out gear with me when I go to work, because I know that if I go home before I say I am planning to go out and exercise 9 times out of 10 I won't do back out again. Granted I will be doing other things, but it will be incidental exercise as opposed to specific training. So I take my gym gear into the office with me, and I get changed before I leave work for the day. Now I have made one commitment to myself. Of course I could still drive home without doing it, but that would be a little silly, so I go.

Incidental exercise is great - this is a wonderful way to up the overall number of calories you burn during a day and includes everything from dusting and vacuuming to gardening and ironing. But a weights session or sit ups or a run / power walk it isn't.

Make sure you have plenty of variety to your program. If you go to the gym 3 times a week and have a day of rest between each session you can work the same muscles. But if you do more than that you do need to think about which areas / muscle groups you are going to be working on. It's no good having great shoulders and arms if your legs are flabby or stick thin... you'd look odd.

Try and throw in a long walk on a weekend or a couple of evenings a week, take the kids to the park and throw a ball or a frisbee around, take a dancing lesson or a swim, play a game of tennis or ride your bike to work.

Before your eyes roll back in your head and you mutter - but I don't have time ... you have exactly the right amount of time each day / week to do what you want to do. If that means giving up an hour of television a day - great. If it means you have to get up half an hour earlier to go for a walk - so what. Do you have a lunch break? Then use it. I walk every lunch time - regardless of the weather. It may not be far, it may not be fast, but I go outside and I get some fresh air into my lungs. Given that most of us work in places where they recycle the air through machines it's a good thing to do.

Given that most of us could do with utilizing the calories we are consuming in a better way - please consider making exercise a priority. Not only will you begin to look toned, but your clothes will fit you better and the health benefits are enormous.