12. Fitness for Life

Exercise and overall fitness boosts your brainpower, clarity of thinking, and lowers stress, and increases your energy. If you exercise outdoors then you also get a hit of Vitamin D for added energy.

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” – John F Kennedy

“If you don’t do what’s best for your body, you’re the one who comes up on the short end.” – Julius Erving

Health is the great equalizer – you’ve only got one body, one set of genetics, and no amount of money or influence is as effective as just you looking after the one body you have – and fitness is the way to get there

When you get the body you want through exercise and proper nutrition you feel better, look better, and feel more confident.

7 Ways to Get Fit for Life

1. Make fitness your most important goal for life

2. Fit exercise into your daily routine – could be push-ups in the morning, using the stairs at work, walking the longer route to work, using a jump rope, doing zumba classes, jogging etc

3. Choose an exercise activities you like but they’ve got to both aerobic and strength based (squats and push ups are excellent exercises you can do at home)

4. Make the activity more enjoyable (use an iPod) or make it social (get a group together and do the Sierra Madre Trail run on January 11th for example)

5. Set realistic but sustainable milestone goals and make them public for motivation

6. Re-start the program if it lapses and don’t be discouraged – this is a life-long quest

7. Celebrate successes as if they were the most important achievements in life – which they are

The Final Word

It is essential to move and get some exercise but it still represents a small part of the equation of total health. What you eat and the nutrition therein is, and always will be, the most important part.

Images from Paleohacks, The Rawfoodfamily and Overfed & Undernourished.