The only true test of fitness is how much exercise you can do. As your fitness improves,
you will have greater stamina and be able to do more exercise. And as your fitness increases you will almost certainly start to lose weight.
If your goal is to not only lose weight, but to keep that weight off, and to keep it off in a natural way – not using some fad diet – then you should look at increasing your overall fitness level, and the level of exercise you get everyday. Diet and exercise go hand in hand, diet will not be truly effective without exercise.
If you start with exercise, then you’ll begin to build and tone muscle in your entire body first, instead of just trying to burn away fat. In fact, the worst thing you can do is to start on a diet first without exercise. Instead of burning away your fat, in that case, the chances are good that your body will burn muscle tissue instead. That is something that you definitely don’t want to happen, since it will make exercising harder for you in the future.
If you exercise regularly you will be more fit than somebody who gets no exercise, this holds true no matter what your respective weights are. So no matter what diet plan you begin you should accompany it with extra exercise.
Of course if you want to really increase your fitness then you will need to do more than a casual bit of exercise. You will need to be more methodical in your approach to exercise and do more than one type of exercise. You will need to be doing some cardiovascular exercise and some basic strength exercises.
For your cardiovascular exercise – which is basically any type of exercise that increases your heart rate by considerable amounts – you should work on being able to exercise for a longer period of time than you could before.
This will enable you to build up some stamina.
Strength training will tone your body and increase your strength. While it won’t necessarily make you fitter, it will make you look and feel better and give you visible, confidence-building results.
This strength training does not necessarily mean lifting weights or hanging around a gym, you can do a really effective strength training workout in the comfort of your own home with little or no equipment. A small amount of training like this can make all the differnce in your fitness program.
Regardless of your weight, you can be at a suitable fitness level just by adding a suitable amount and type of exercise to your daily life.
