DIVORCE FITNESS
While going through divorce, or any other emotional trauma, the best thing you can do for yourself is to incorporate a little fitness into your life every day. The pumping of blood through your system with the cleansing sweat will help flush out the toxins that are giving you that depressed feeling. There is nothing better than the post workout feeling of relaxation to change your attitude about your day and your outlook on life.
Time and time again, people say they are just too depressed, tried, or distracted to even start to exercise. Starting is the hard part. But once you are even 5 minutes in, it becomes easy. But if you want to delay it one more day, read this article, and then plan to start your divorce fitness plan tomorrow.
So, let’ start with the basics: cardio and/or strength training. If you want to lose weight, get trim, increase your strength, and tone your body, you need a combination of both cardio and strength training. However, let’s start with a couple definitions:
Cardio – involves the heart, blood, and lungs – ie breathing hard. When you are doing cardio exercise, you are involving your heart, blood vessels and lungs, and using oxygen to get in shape and improve your health. There are many benefits of cardio exercise:
- Weight loss
- Improved cardio heath
- Increased metabolism (ongoing calorie burn all day long)
- Reduced stress
- Reduced depression
- Improved immune system (very impt when going through divorce)
Aerobic – Often used to describe hard breathing exercise as it needs oxygen. This is contrasted to anaerobic exercise or without so much oxygen/hard breathing.
Strength Training – Using your body’s muscles via exertion and endurance to burn calories and reshape your body. Although, usually considered anaerobic exercise, that does not mean you will not be breathing hard if you are really working.
- Better posture
- Reduced fatigue
- Stronger
- Increased metabolism (ongoing calorie burn all day long)
- Increased bone density
- Lower risk of injury
- Increased range of motion, flexibility and stability
- Reduced stress and depression.
A good routine to produce solid results is simple: a combination of aerobic exercise (cardio) and strength training to see results. A regular workout 5 days a week of at least 30 minutes of aerobic (run, bike, swim) at a moderate pace, followed by some medium intensity strength training 3 of those days will produce good results. The key in the strength training portion is to do more repetitions in each exercise set (ie: 3 sets of 12, 16, 20 repetitions). And do not forget about healthy nutrition: if you eat back the calories you burned, you won’t lose weight.
So, start tomorrow. Then every Sunday, look at your schedule for the next 7 days and schedule in your exercise. Within a week or two, as the pounds disappear, you will be hooked, and HEALTHY.