The One New Year Resolution You Must Make

If you want to gain health, lose weight, build muscle, and/or improve stamina, then there is one new year's resolution you absolutely must make.

Write it down and say it out loud. "I will exercise for 30 to 60 minutes a day, 5 or 6 days a week."
Repeat this phrase to yourself often until it becomes a part of you.

Exercise really is the key to gaining maximum health. Exercise makes everything else work. Without exercise, nothing works.

The basics: exercise makes you breath more deeply, exercise gets you to drink more water, exercise makes you want to eat better food, exercise tones and strengthens muscles, exercise helps your body eliminate toxins, exercise helps blood to circulate more effectively and efficiently, exercise improves metabolism allowing you attain the correct body weight, exercise helps the immune system fight off disease.

Now that you know you are going to exercise every day, put it into a plan. Decide what you will do each day, and at what time. Be sure to vary the exercises from day to day, so that you work all the different muscle groups in full range of motion. If you do the same thing everyday, it can wear the body down. But doing different things helps to build the body up.

For instance, if you are into running, go short and fast one day, then long and slow the next. Integrate yoga into your routine one day and aerobic dance the next. There are many other things to choose from as well. Bicycling, swimming, dancing, ball playing, ultimate Frisbee, skiing, hiking, climbing, body weight exercises, etc.

One very important thing to remember is to take a rest day each week. The Lord gave us the Sabbath for a very good reason. It allows the necessary rest for the body (and spirit) to recover and grow stronger.

Happy New Year with your new life of exercise and health!