Women's Health

When you notice one of your girlfriends is losing weight or looking physically fit in some other way, there is always one question you always ask her, "How did you do it?". Something in our psyche tries to convince us that this gal discovered some easy and quick way to great health and vitality that maybe she will share with us.

The idea that there is a shortcut to weight loss and good health is certainly what drives the multibillion dollar weight loss chemical industry. How many commercials have you seen for shortcut weight loss programs that promise you don't have to exercise or change a thing about how you eat and the weight will just melt off?

Isn't amazing we ever believe these pitches? As women, we pride ourselves on being the thinkers of the genders. And yet we are the ones most prone to buy into that marketing pitch that they found some magic chemical in the jungles of Bolivia that will make us skinny without any change to our lifestyles.

Women's health is too important to experiment with by buying snake oil treatments that just won't work and may make you sick in trying to find a shortcut to a healthier you. But there is a shortcut to outstanding women's health if we will put the same investment of time and giving it priority in our lives that those expensive diet pill people demand from our budget.

But the shortcut to great health hides in the things we are tying to run away from. The short cut to vibrant women's health is diet and exercise. The reasons this is a "short cut" is that if you get up tomorrow morning and put into effect a new lifestyle of healthy diet and moderate but routine exercise, you will start losing weight within a few weeks. Then if you are devoted to the program, keep cooking and eating right and keep bringing your heart rate up each day with regular and ambitious exercise, you will keep losing weight week after week until you hit your goal weight.

The snake oil treatments say you can lose 20 pounds in a month. You can lose 4 pounds in that same month with a well designed program of diet and exercise and it will be 4 pounds that stay off. This is the other secret of this "short cut" to great health for women. A shortcut is no shortcut if you have to keep going back and going through it over and over again for the same results. You might lose a few pounds with chemicals of some magic program. But because those programs don't change your lifestyle, you will be going back over and over losing the same weight each year, maybe for decades. This is no shortcut, its torture for you to see that weight come right back on only for you to try a new magic diet program the next year.

Give yourself a challenge to try a program of great diet and exercise for six months. Work with your doctor and people you know who know their stuff about nutritional eating and you will find you can train your stomach to enjoy the foods you are giving it and you will stay full all the time.

Then as the pounds melt off, notice how they don't come back. You can reach a goal weight, stay there and then start a new program and eventually get to that dress size you were at in college. And with this shortcut diet program, you will stay there. And that is a shortcut worth investing in.

Exercise top Tip #1

Build up slowly. I know that most of us leave our exercise to the last minute, you leave it until you only have one month until that huge party and you need to lose some weight and get in shape for it fast. You then rush into it, doing nothing properly and pushing yourself too hard which inevitably leads to you getting injured and/or giving up. You need to ease into the routine and build the level up over time.

Exercise top Tip #2

Don't be self conscious. This is the hardest tip to follow! When you first start off you are probably not in the best shape, so you body and the amount of exercise you can do may leave you slightly self conscious. This is dangerous as it can kill your fitness ambition before you even start. Put a big smug smile on your face when you get there and just remember, in a month or two you will be exactly as fit and trim as them if you work hard, then you can lose your worries, but if you let your doubts get the better of you and give up then you won't ever get to be the slim trim star of the gym!

Exercise top Tip #3

Each workout aim to improve ever so slightly. If you improve by staying on the exercise bike for just 10 seconds longer each time you go then after just 6 visits that will be a whole extra minute that you are on there for but you only have to deal with it 10 seconds at a time! This way you push yourself every time, have goals to aim for and will be constantly improving - go for it!