Health and Fitness Advice For Beginners

I know it's easy to slack off during the fall and winter seasons, but when summer rolls around it's just painful to look back and regret everything you ate and everything you could've done to stay in shape. It sounds cliche, but fitness is a lifestyle. Exercising and eating right is something that you have to do year-round, not just during the summer when you want to look good at the beach.

By tweaking your diet and exercising only a couple times a week, it is surprisingly easy to have a summer body for the rest of your life.

By doing some quick research it's easy to see that most people think that exercising is the most important part of staying in shape, but it's not. By getting your diet in check, you are 60% of the way to getting that slim, summer body; the other 40% being exercise. Personally, I find that having a good diet is the easier of the two, which is good because that is the most important part! I realize that the word "diet" is just extremely annoying in general, so don't think of it as you're "going on a diet," you're just minimizing certain types of food in your meals. Whenever you're about to order or prepare a meal, find out how much of these ingredients the meal contains:

- Cheese
- Oil
- Red meat (anything that is not fish, chicken, or turkey)
- Fried ingredients
- Creamy sauces
- White bread (bad carbohydrates)
- Candy/Desserts

From right now, if you were to eat 50% less of those ingredients, you WILL lose weight.

For me, the number one thing that makes eating healthy easy, is realizing how I would feel after I ate an unhealthy meal. It's easy to eat healthy for a couple weeks, but most people end up giving up at some point. Instead, when you feel yourself wanting to cheat, think to yourself how you will feel after you eat an unhealthy meal. It's not worth it. Not wanting to let yourself down is one of the best motivators. Be proud of yourself.

When it comes to exercising, there are two very basic goals: lose fat, and build muscle.

Losing fat goal is the most simple, all you need to do is sweat. Running, jogging, and walking will all get the job done. If you go to a gym, don't worry about which treadmill or "elliptical" machine to use, just hop on one and start sweating, it's as simple as that.

Building muscle is only slightly more difficult, however, and it too breaks down into only two categories: upper body and lower body. For women, lower body tends to be the most important, and for men, upper body tends to me the most important. Do both. I don't even need to go into detail about what workouts to do, because the most basic ones are always the best.

Squats, push-ups/bench press, pull-ups, ab crunches.

These four exercises are literally all you need. Squats will take care of your entire lower body, push-ups/bench press take care of your chest and triceps, pull-ups take care of your back and biceps, and ab crunches take care of your abdominal muscles.

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