Heartsavers - Exercise
If you embark on a program of exercise, make sure it's an
activity that you enjoy doing or you'll soon give up.
Prevention of coronary heart disease.
Exercise for fun and get healthy
How many people do you know who have started an exercise programme full of enthusiasm, perhaps having bought lots of new shiny exercise equipment or smart new sportswear only to have given up after a few weeks?
Here's how it goes: read an interesting article about the benefits of getting fit: feel guilty after a feeding and drinking frenzy: fed up at looking in the mirror at your spreading waistline.
So you resolve to do something about it, you steel yourself to get fit no matter how hard it is, no matter how boring. You're going to beat this thing. After a few exercise sessions you find it takes more effort to get going. Soon you are skipping sessions making lame excuses to yourself as you go along. Then you stop exercising.
If this has ever happened to you, the reason why is that you did not enjoy your exercise. This is vitally important. You should choose a form of physical exercise that is fun. There are many different ways of taking exercise, you have to find one right for you. If you find yourself getting bored after a few weeks you could try another exercise activity or vary your pattern of exercise. If it's not fun then you probably won't do it for very long.
Really, exercise is not very complicated, your body has evolved over millions of years to do regular physical activity, so it's natural.
Designing an exercise program is fairly easy, and in later sections we will look at how you can do this and incorporate it into your life.