There are many ways to exercise, and we all need variety but don't always have daily time blocked out for exercise. Here are a few tips to get exercise incorporated into your lifestyle instead of starting for a month and losing your momentum.



Yoga can provide a lot of variety to combat boredom, because there are literally thousands of postures you can try and learn. Power Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga (same thing, basically) is the very best form of exercise around, if done on a daily basis. Power Yoga gives you strengthening, stretching, and aerobic exercise all in one, but it doesn't provide a lot of variety.

In reality, scrubbing the floor is exercise; raking leaves is exercise. Shoveling snow or climbing 7 flights of stairs is exercise. Of course, you have to put effort into these activities to make them worthy of being called exercise. So, if you've accomplished something like this during the day, chalk it up!

Next, set your goal to exercise every other day, at least. So, if you know you didn't get any exercise yesterday, be sure to do something today. Preferably, exercise should be done in the morning before breakfast, or the afternoon before supper.

Another way of getting exercise is to do something with the kids, whether it's swimming, biking, rollerblading, skating, or playing football in the yard. And yes, you can chalk this up as your exercise for the day, as well. This also helps foster relationships with your kids and sets a good example for them to exercise, too.

In this way, you can smoothly incorporate exercise into your life without really trying.

The key is to do some form of exercise, even though you don't really feel like doing it! Many of us rarely feel like exercising, but once we get started, we feel great! Remember, it's just getting started! Force yourself to get moving.

Here is another of the exercise routines that really is the most simple to incorporate into your life ? it's weight-lifting. Following is an amazing program of weight-lifting that takes about 20 minutes, once a week. Anyone, including you, can make time for this. Set aside one day a week when you absolutely must do this routine before breakfast.

Here's what you do. You are going to work your major muscle groups all over your body: Biceps, Triceps, Quads, Calves, Lats, and Chest. Six exercises. You can add more later, once you get the concept.

The aim of this workout is to lift very slowly and lower very slowly, doing repetitions until the muscle is totally spent. Count to 7 going up and count to 7 going down. This is a very slow, controlled lift, both up and down.

You should be lifting enough weight that you are only able to complete between 4 and 10 reps. At the end of your last rep, when you can lift no more (it will be in the middle of a rep that your muscle fails), you are supposed to hold that position for an extra 10 seconds. This is hard!

All the time that you are raising and lowering the weight, you are breathing as much as you need to. You'll start out with one or two breaths per lift up and the same going down. As the reps become more difficult, your breathing becomes faster, until at the end of your reps, you are breathing very rapidly.

The exercise ball, which can be easily added to this routine, is very effective for abdominals, because you are using muscles to keep your balance as well as using the muscles during the crunches.

At the end of your workout, you should be breathing hard. You will have sore muscles for a few days afterwards. This is why it is a once/week program, so that your muscles have time to repair. It's during this recovery period that your muscles become stronger.

Some experts say that during the above workout, you are getting an aerobic workout along with the muscle-building workout because the muscles are using air while working, just like jogging.

Normal weight lifting is said to be anaerobic (without oxygen) because you are exhaling on the exertion portion of the repetition.

Experts recommend you get three aerobic exercise sessions during a week, to support your heart muscle, plus weight-bearing exercise. So you need at least a couple other sessions of aerobic exercise besides the above routine. Do something fun! Or get a chore out of the way and give the floor a good old-fashioned scrubbing. Just get moving!

Anyway, those are just some suggestions for an exercise routine that's really easy to stick with. Be creative and incorporate what works for you.

And remember that muscle burns more energy than fat, so your muscle to fat ratio will improve, too. Muscle weighs more than fat, so you need to go by how you look, not by what the scale says. Here's to Good, Fun Exercise for You!