The Three Elements Of Fitness

Fitness is the ability to perform physical activities without becoming excessively fatigued or breathless and is made up of three elements-strength, flexibility, and endurance. 

Strength-is the ability to lift, carry, push, or pull a heavy load.  There are about 400 muscles attached to your skeleton by tendons.  By contracting and relaxing, your muscles give you strength by controlling  the movements of your body.   Ideally, between one quarter and one half of your body weight should be made up of muscle tissue.  However, if your muscles are out of condition, routine lifting and carrying becomes problematic, resulting in leg aches, back aches, etc.

Flexibility-is the ability to bend, twist, and stretch and requires muscles, tendons, and joints to move easily.  Because physical exertion including sport activities frequently require agility and mobility, flexibility is important to avoid tight leg and back muscles that can cause pain and stiffness.  Elastic muscles usually can absorb the shock of sudden contractions, while tight ones may pull or tear resulting in injury and pain.

Endurance -is the ability to exercise continually without rest for a prolonged period of time.   Poor endurance leads to muscle fatigue, increasing your risk of injury.    

Your level of fitness is a reflection of how efficiently your heart and muscles can use oxygen and expend energy.  Efficiency is in turn, determined by your physical activity habits.  The type of activities and how vigorous you engage in them will determine what demands will be put on your strength, flexibility and endurance.  It's important to choose an exercise program that will benefit you the most in the pursuit of these activities.    

Why Your Body Resists Losing Weight

Man's early ancestors  faced an unpredictable food supply marked with periods of famine.  At some point a certain number of people were born with a genetic and an instinctual preference for fat rich foods.  This instinct drove them to gorge on fat whenever they could, allotting them a calorie reserve needed to survive when food became scarce.   After enduring thousands of years of food scarcity your body has also developed a physiological ability to respond to a drop in calorie consumption by slowing down the metabolic rate in order to conserve calories.  This physiological characteristic plays an important role in your attempts to lose weight.  When you start a diet, your body recognizes the drop in calories as a sign of famine, immediately slowing the metabolic rate so you can survive.  Unfortunately, one of the reasons why those last ten or twenty pounds are so difficult to lose is because the slowing of your metabolic rate causes a reduction in the rate at which you burn calories.  This means that while you suffer from food deprivation, your body is conserving the fat and calories that you're trying to burn.  

The instinct to conserve fat has three instinctual behaviors, and one physiological response: 

1. We are compelled to eat high fat and calorie rich foods. 

2. We are driven to over eat when we are hungry and to gorge on rich foods if they are available.

3. It drives us to conserve calories by encouraging us to lie around avoiding any unnecessary expenditure of energy.

4. Finally, a physiological change dramatically slows the body's metabolic rate.  Calories are conserved, resulting in a slow down or even stoppage of weight loss.            

The instinct to conserve fat is always with us though most of the time it lies unnoticed until triggered by numerous stimuli including hunger and the smell and sight of fatty or rich food.  Once triggered its presence is felt through a variety of symptoms including hunger pains and increased desire for fat and calorie rich foods.  If you continue to go without sufficient calories you may experience an array of more intense physical discomforts such as stronger hunger pains, headache, weakness, fatigue, and more powerful cravings.  These are the very discomforts that defeat dieters.  

Reduce Your Stress Level And Lose The Weight

Stress can be a major problem in our lives.  Advances in technology  have  increased the pressure we put on ourselves to stay busy, even during our leisure hours.  We watch TV while we read, talk on the phone while we drive and work on the computer while we listen to the radio.  Between cable television, computers and cell phones we can become over stimulated and overwhelmed with information.  At our current pace we have little time to relax let alone nurture relationships with our spouses, children, friends  or nature.  With all this rushing around we have created a life filled with stress.  To help  cope with elevated stress levels,  the body produces cortisol commonly known as the "Stress Hormone."  Cortisol helps regulate how proteins, fats and carbohydrates are used by the body but most notably cortisol helps the body protect itself from itself.  For example, during  strenuous  exercise, fat and body tissue is broken down to provide your body with nutrients needed to produce energy.  Once you have managed the stressful situation the body normally shuts down the production of cortisol and you soon return to normal.  The problem  arises when stress remains constant resulting in cortisol production to remain elevated.  Too much cortisol staying in the body for too long can lead to blood sugar problems, exhaustion, bone loss, and fat accumulation.  Furthermore, when you are under a lot of stress, your brain sends out signals in the form of hunger, urging you to constantly stock up on emergency fuel  and thus gain weight.     Needless to say, if you experience one major stress episode after another and you haven't come up with a way to reduce and  release that stress, it can have an adverse effect on your health.

Stress Reduction Tips:

So what can you do to break the stress-fat link?

1. Simplify and slow down

2. Practice the art of relaxation

3. Meditate

4. Exercise

5. Get more sleep

6. Drink plenty of water

7. Be positive and grateful

8. Laugh as often as possible

Although stress can overwhelm us at times,  we can make the choice to take the necessary steps to reduce the stress in our lives and learn what it means to live a more balanced life.