What is Better – Extreme or Moderate Exercise?
January 16th, 2012
When it comes to getting in shape we have basically two options, and they depend on what kind of person you are. You can take the slow and steady approach, making sure that you make your changes incrementally, keeping a long term point of view, or you can try to make everything change all at once, doing extreme amounts of dietary and physical changes so as to get as many results as you can all at once, with no breaks, no rest, trying and doing anything and everything to get healthy and look good. With these two options before you, which should you do? Everybody has their own preference, but do you prefer the right option? Because trust me, there is a right option, and in today’s article we are going to make an argument as to which you should take, and show you how wrong you might be to take the other approach, and how doing so might in fact doom your attempts to get healthy right from the start.
The wrong approach is to go extreme. I can hear you groaning already because you didn’t want to hear that. You want, like everybody wants, results now, today. You don’t want to wait. We have become a nation of immediate gratification specialists, demanding that we be served now and not tomorrow. That is the appeal of the short term extreme approach, the false belief that we can make long term changes through short term extreme measures. Not so. Your body will respond to your long term plan, and short term extremism will only guarantee that you either get injured, burn out, or get bored and overwhelmed.
Instead let’s get incremental, let’s respect our bodies and observe that any long term change will only take effect if we plan carefully for it in a manner that might seem boring and stale but that will ultimately guarantee success. What does this mean? This means losing a pound a week instead of six. This means changing your meal plans slowly and item by item instead of going straight away to the most hardcore health items. This means easing into an exercise routine instead of throwing yourself into the worst of the worst, the most extreme. Instead of boot camp, think training. You need to love and respect your body, not abuse it, and doing so will result in your success.
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Entry Filed under: Health and Fitness