Be a “Boom 10” participant!

Being active — either through physical activity or through a formal exercise program — is an essential component to a healthy lifestyle, as well as, to a weight-loss program. When you’re active, your body uses energy you’ve supplied through the food you ‘ve eaten.  Instant energy comes from calories from the food you recently ate and stored energy comes from the reserves you have saved from the calories that you have not used, better described as fat. When you are active you burn calories, at first the instant energy is burned, but the longer you workout, the more stored energy burns that is when weight loss can happen! There are also different calories for different types of food, but let’s just stick to the basics here.

Ok, so now you get it! Weight maintenance is when the calories consumed in a day are equal to those burned off with that day’s activity. Weight loss is when you burn more calories than you take in during that day. If you need 1,500 calories to function during your normal day but you eat 2,000 then you must burn the extra 500 calories with extra activity…if you don’t do this then, since 3,500 calories is a pound, you will gain 1 pound every 7 days! Sounds like the average American between Thanksgiving and Christmas…about 5 holiday pounds. Ugg!

• Ultimately 30 to 60 minutes of moderately intense physical activity most days of the week is the goal. Moderately intense activity or exercise should increase your heart and breathing rates and possibly lead to a light sweat. The HOME page has a link (under ‘Handy Links’) where you can find & print off a Weekly Activity Tracker distributed by the Center for Disease Control.
• Make it Fun some folks just love to exercise, the rest of us need inspiration or just plain fun when it comes to activity. Moderate activity is not that hard to come by! A simple example, it’s half time at your kid’s (nephew, nieces are like your kids too) game, during the 10 minute halftime grab another sidelined fan & get out on the field or court and move around…shoot baskets, or play goalie , throw a football with someone, bump a volleyball against the wall if you have to…just make those 10 minutes more full of activity than sitting on the bleachers! Boom 10 moderately active minutes!

You can find minutes like these all week long, if you are looking! But you HAVE TO LOOK!

CHALLENGE: Find 10 minutes a day of new activity! Let’s call it Boom 10

So if 30-60 minutes seems like a big daily commitment then scale back and simply add as much activity as possible everyday. Report on these pages where you found your Boom 10 activity, keep it clean, but remember, if it works for you then it will work for others!

Simple examples: stretch while you are waiting for your coffee to brew, jog in place during commercials instead of just sitting there, you’ll discover just how much time you waste watching those ads, and my favorite, do arm strength repetition exercises- CURLS & more- with the grocery bags as you bring them into the house. Now come up with your own & share!