With summer just around the corner, it is time to get ready for the season’s more revealing fashions and outdoor activities. These 10 fitness and diet tips will help you get in shape for summer.
1. Walk. Now is the time to start exercising more, and walking is one of the best exercises for women of all ages, whether you a young mother with toddlers or a retiree enjoying her golden years. Walking is good aerobic exercise that can provide significant health benefits, such as helping to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, increase bone density, strengthen muscles, reduce or maintain weight and ease stress. Also, walking is a low-impact exercise that is relatively easy on the body, especially the joints, and less likely to cause injury than higher-impact activities such as jogging, and it is easy to do and to fit into a busy schedule.
2. Boost your activity level by incorporating more exercise into your regular routines, for example, by taking the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator, parking further from the door when shopping, or walking a little further when taking the dog out for his evening stroll.
3. Take up yoga. Anyone can do it, since yoga routines can be tailored to ability and fitness. Yoga strives to integrate body, breath and mind to improve physical and mental health resulting in potential benefits in many aspects of everyday life. Among other things, it can help to reduce stress, increase energy, strengthen and shape the body, and control weight.
4. Find an exercise buddy. Exercising with a friend can be more fun than exercising alone and you can mutually motivate each other to stick with an exercise program.
5. Join an exercise class. Like exercising with a friend, participating in a regularly scheduled exercise class can provide an incentive for regular activity.
6. Work out with weights. Many fitness experts recommend an exercise program for women that includes aerobic exercise like walking, stretching to increase flexibility and help to avoid injuries, and strength or weight training. If you are a newcomer to using weights, consider a beginners weight training class, since proper technique is important to maximizing the benefit of your work out with weights and to avoiding injury.
7. Dust off your bike. Biking is great aerobic exercise, a lot of fun and it will help to shape up your legs for summer shorts and swimsuits.
8. Add more fruits and vegetables to your diet. They are good for your health and good for your figure. Visit your local farmers’ market to buy the freshest produce and support your local economy.
9. Add these heart-healthy superfoods to your diet. At breakfast, eat a bowl of oatmeal topped with blueberries, snack on almond and walnuts, have salmon in a salad at lunch or as an entrée at dinner, and cook with olive oil. Not only are all these foods great for your heart, but, eaten in moderation, they can help you to lose weight.
10. Buy yourself a new swimsuit and put it where you will see it every day. It will be a powerful incentive to for you to stick to your exercise program and diet.
