Sweat365 » Exercise is the New Diet!
Post by:Brad Hefta-Gaub
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am | 8 Comments
We all know that America is facing a health crisis. Over one third of our population is obese and almost 65% of Americans are overweight. If you’re trying to get healthy and lose weight you know how hard it can be. The sad thing about this epidemic is that most people focus on diet alone. We’ve become a society so obsessed with eating food that when we focus on weight loss we only focus on eating less.
But there is a better way. We believe that if you move your body every day, you can reach your health and fitness goals more easily. At Sweat365 we believe that Exercise is the new diet!
Most experts agree, the key to success is realistic goals, regular exercise, healthy eating habits, and support from a community that helps you stay accountable to your goals. These fundamental concepts are the key to Sweat365. We’ve developed this website and community to help you reach your goals and achieve your dreams. To best take advantage of this system, you should follow these simple steps:
- Pick a goal other than weight loss. How many times have you heard this one? Oh, I know exactly what you’re thinking… Weight loss is my goal, how can I not pick that as a goal? Well, It’s best to focus not on a weight goal because frankly, weight is too often associated with diet, and diet is unfortunately focused on restricting what you eat, and when you focus on restricting what you eat it’s too easy to lose sight of how great exercise feels… and how much your body really wants to keep moving.No… Pick a goal like a half marathon, or a triathlon, or if that feels too ambitious, then pick a “fun run” or a 5K walk. It doesn’t matter so much what your goal is, it matters more that you pick an event, a deadline, out in the future, that you can set your long term sights on.
Having this goal will make all the difference! Trust me… you’ll have hard days, and when you have a hard day, it is much easier to get going when you have a deadline looming.
- Get a training plan.“What? A training plan? I’m not an athlete! Athletes train, I just want to exercise and lose weight.”Correction! You are an athlete! To quote Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike, and the inventor of Jogging, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.”
A training plan is not a tool just for athletes, no, a training plan really is a guide, a recipe, a “to do list”. And although it’s important to pick a plan that is right for your skill and fitness level, and right for your goal, it’s much much more important to have a plan (any plan), than to have the perfect plan.
Having a plan will make your day, week, month easier… You have less to worry about, to wonder about. It will tell you when to exercise, how much to exercise, how hard to push, how far to run, and most importantly, when to REST. Resting is part of fitness and healthy living too.
- Track your progress! It is amazing what you learn when you measure things. I meet so many people who have exercised off and on throughout their life, who join Sweat365.com and start tracking their workouts, and end up discovering something amazing about themselves. They discover that they actually exercise a lot more than they imagined. This is an amazing experience. It will shatter your preconceptions about whether or not you are athletic.Tracking your progress and results has several benefits. But the key is, you will only discover those benefits if you track your results. I know, it sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how the obvious things in life tend to be the ones we overlook.
- Find an Accountability Group! There is no denying it, we are social creatures. Even the most introverted of us thrive on feedback from others. We had this in mind when we developed Sweat365’s integrated training log/blogging/social network. We designed the system to help you publish your goals, find similar people with similar goals, and hold each other accountable.Joining a fitness community will give you a great deal of confidence in achieving your goals. The biggest benefit is discovering that you are not alone… there are millions of people across the world just like you, trying to achieve the exact same goals you are. They have similar experiences, fears, weaknesses, and strengths. Together you can support and inspire each other to reach your goals.
Good luck on reaching your fitness goals. You can do it!
Filed under: Marathon, Marathons, News, Nutrition and Wellbeing, Sweat365, diet, exercise, fitness, weight-loss |
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8 Comments: :
Exercise is the New Diet!
May 1st, 2008 12:00 pm
jscmorrow says:
Good article!!
May 1st, 2008 5:30 pm
Bill Anders says:
Excellent article, Brad.
I do find it amusing at some level that by all medical accounts, I’m still overweight. Sure, I have some I can lose, but I certainly know it’s not due to lack of fitness.
May 1st, 2008 6:09 pm
Brad Hefta-Gaub says:
Fit people who are clincally overweight, is just one good example of why it is a good idea to not focus on Weight as a goal… because it turns out that if if you are more fit, you will probably be more muscular, and you are more muscular, you will probably weigh more. The classic comment you hear is, “Poud for pound, muscle weighs more than fat.” To which most people respond “but I don’t want more pounds even if they are muscle”…
It deserves a whole aricle on why being “leaner” which means a higher percentage of body weight from muscle as opposed to fat is healthier.. but one of the more obvious benefits is that being more muscular means your body simply burns more calories to stay alive. Which means you are less likely to be eating more calories than you need.
Some say the key to weight loss is to stay away from the scale… although I’m not sure I’d go that far… there certainly is some merit to the idea.
May 2nd, 2008 8:39 am
Gary’s Fitness Blog » Have a compelling story! » Sweat365 » Fitness Community says:
[...] I am about half way through a book titled “Beyond Booked Solid” by Michael Port. The book is a business read, but I just read through a section that seemed to apply very well to an athlete’s attempt at a new fitness goal (Remember - Brad says we are all athletes!). [...]
May 3rd, 2008 3:26 pm
Mia Harney says:
True that “exercise is the new diet”, because I have friends who restrict their calorie intake to lose weight, but that does not work. A person will lose lean muscle before fat. Exercise also has the benefit of making you feel good, while at the same time helping you look good.
May 3rd, 2008 6:21 pm
nutritionexpert says:
I totally agree with having a goal i.e. 5K or marathon, other than just weight loss. This is what will help keep you motivated. There were many early mornings at 4:45am when i didn’t want to get out of my warm bed, but then I realized that I needed to push myself hard to do well in my swim meets and triathlon. If I didn’t have those goals to aim for, I would have missed my workout many times. People who just restrict their calories can and will lose weight, but it is a heck of a lot easier to lose it when combined with exercise.
May 7th, 2008 7:55 am
Karl McCracken says:
Now here’s something to throw into the mix - most people don’t end up overweight as a result of a few weeks over-eating / under-exercising. True, we all put on a few pounds over Christmas, but to get properly overweight takes years. It’s the product of a little too much fuel, and a little too little exercise that’s become a habit.
This is actually really good news, because what it means is that if you can develop a new habit (like, training for a 5k / 10k / 50 miles on a bike / triathlon / duathlon / swimathon / whatever) that increases your exercise by even a small amount, and take some steps to reduce your calorie intake (small things - like cutting the sugar from your coffee, having no butter / spread on your sandwiches, or missing one night a week of the after-the-office beers), then the chances are that you will lose weight.
This sort of weight loss is sustainable - unlike most diets, which focus on a short term goal of losing weight and nothing else. The only thing is that losing weight this way tends to be quite slow, and THAT’S why you need another thing to focus on as the goal.
So if you’re 50lb, or 100lb overweight, start with small things - go for a walk a few times a week. Then try to walk 100 miles in a month (that’s only 3 miles a day - nothing to it really!), maybe a 5k fun run after that, or learn to swim properly & swim a mile in your local pool, get a bike and start riding to the office, ride a metric century (62-ish miles), run a 10k race, enter a half marathon, start thinking that doing a triathlon would be cool, end up becoming an IronMan (or woman!).
There are people on this site who have followed pretty much that exact route (give or take a couple of other steps along the way), and although their ultimate achievements are amazing, its the first step that’s the biggest one to take. So the question for you (yes, YOU), if you’ve stumbled across this page as part of a Gooooogle search for a new diet is, “What are you going to DO for your first step?”
June 6th, 2008 5:20 am
crector says:
Karl,
Very good advice. I would have to agree that the first step is the hardest. I’ve always been pretty active, but I think I got into a slump doing the same ole routine every day. I would get on the elliptical for about 30 minutes, lift a few weights, count my “points” for about 2 years. I was burnout on that and I ran across this website. Of course I would read some people’s blogs and be amazed at what they would do, but it also inspired me that I could do the same thing. I’m thirty years old, work a full time job, and have two kids, so finding the time was hard at first. I’ve gotten used to getting up early, and signing up for 5ks. I think if you know you have a race coming up, you will definitely work harder at it.