This amazing body of yours 2

As we are getting thru the winter blues and our New Year Resolutions are slowly winding down, I just want to remind you of a few tidbits about fitness that may help you stay the course: our body is amazing and can adapt to almost everything.

Movement creates energy: When you are too tired, the best thing to do is to move your body, and you will instantly start to feel better.  So instead of saying “I am too tired to exercise”, say: “I am so tired that I need to exercise”.  How often have you been on a brisk walk and felt recharged afterwards?  How many times have you said to your teammate that you did not feel like going to practice but you were so glad you did because you are feeling so much better after?  Your body is amazing and will create energy, just by moving, like a self-charging battery.

As you start exercising and eating better, you increase the number and strength of the fat-burning enzymes that utilize fat for fuel.  You are becoming a fat-burning machine, which makes it much easier to achieve your ideal physique.  This of course is not the fast crash diet, but it is the sure way to burn fat in the long run.  When you first start exercising, remember that if your body isn’t changing substantially yet, you are building your fat burning enzymes, which is going to make it a lot easier to burn fat in the long run.  Your body is amazing and will use your excess fat for energy.

Once you are exercising consistently, you increase the size and number of your mitochondria (where energy is produced) so you can go farther and harder without getting tired.  Most of us don’t even remember how hard it was to just go across the pool when we learned how to swim.  But everybody knows how hard and how slow we are if we have not been in the pool for a while.  How hard it is to get back in shape.  Remember when you first start exercising and it feels really challenging, it will get easier to endure.  Your body is amazing and will adapt.

As you get more fit, your cardiovascular system improves, your heart gets stronger and you develop more capillaries, making it easier to extract oxygen from your blood so you don’t get so winded and can work out harder.  Get through that initial phase.  Your body is amazing and will be able to go harder and longer without getting tired.

As you keep getting fit, lactic acid (the byproduct of high intensity exercise) instead of being toxic to your system and making you feel nauseous and dizzy, starts to be used as fuel, enabling you to go harder and faster without feeling like you are going to die.  Your body is amazing and will become efficient at using lactic acid as fuel!

When you accomplish one goal, no matter how small or insignificant, it will give you the belief and the confidence to achieve the next goal, and the next goal and so on.  It is called Results Momentum, you don’t have to worry about the big, monstrous goal, just take one step at a time!  Your body is an amazing machine which will adapt to almost anything and will help you reach up to the stars.

If you keep at it, 2020 will be your best year ever.