There really are no valid excuses for not exercising.
If you have an injury, a weakness or an illness like arthritis or osteoporosis, consult your physio/osteopath/chiropractor/specialist about a type of exercise that would be safe for you to try. Pilates and yoga teachers are trained to work with people who have injuries, and they both help to strengthen the core muscles of the abdomen and back to prevent injury in future. Swimming is often a good option because your joints don’t have to support your body weight. In general, if you have an injury in one place, such as a leg, there’s nothing to stop you exercising your stomach, arms, back and other leg – except lethargy.
Don’t have time? At the very least, we can all manage to squeeze lifestyle exercises into our day because they are things we’d be doing anyway – you just have to do them more energetically. If you watch TV in the evening, do some sit-ups during the soaps, or swap one half-hour programme for an exercise video. Don’t tell yourself you’ll get up an hour earlier in the morning to go for a run, because you know it won’t happen more than a couple of times. Research shows that those who exercise at home are more likely to stick to it long term so figure out how you’re going to fit it into your routine.
Too stressed when you finish work and all you feel like is a large glass of chilled Chardonnay to take the edge off the day? You should know that while alcohol has a temporary relaxant effect, as soon as the high wears off you’ll be more anxious than you were before. You’re also more likely to wake up at 3am while your liver works overtime to process the alcohol, and this is precisely when it’s easiest to start stressing about such things as whether your company is about to go bust, how you’re going to meet your mortgage payments and whether your partner is being unfaithful. Alcohol creates stress and exercise relieves it by filling your system with lovely, happy hormones called endorphins. To maximise the endorphin effect when the boss has been obnoxious, do an exercise session of at least 45 minutes.
Got your period, or PMT? Choose something gentler than usual, but don’t just sit on the sofa and veg out with a kingsize chocolate bar. Pilates and yoga are both good for toning the pelvic and abdominal muscles, thus helping to relieve cramp, and once you’ve learned the moves you can do them yourself at home. Some women think you can’t swim during a period but if you use a tampon that should stop you attracting sharks. Exercise of any kind that promotes the good old endorphin response can stop you being quite so grumpy so it’s definitely a good thing for you – and all those in the vicinity.
WARNING
If you have more than 10 per cent of your body weight to lose, or you’re over 35 and haven’t exercised since you hung up your school blazer, arrange for some kind of supervision by a qualified trainer to ensure that you don’t come to any harm. This needn’t be in a gym; if you can afford to pay for it a personal trainer will come and see you at home. These guys tend to be serious eye candy, giving you extra motivation to keep up the calorie-burning.
Too shy to be seen in public wearing Lycra? This is more common than you might think, even for those who don’t work as a body double for the Michelin man, but don’t let it stop you. Wear a baggy T-shirt over loose leggings so that you are comfortable. Once in the gym or class, no one will give you a second glance because they will all be too busy looking at themselves and worrying about whether anyone is judging them. Either that or they’ll be admiring themselves in the mirrored walls and will have eyes for nothing but their own sculpted biceps and pecs.
Too lazy to exercise? It’s a question of laziness versus vanity so if you are more lazy than you are vain, feel free to stay on the sofa picking your nose and flicking fag ash into the nearest beer can, or into the ketchup on top of your leftover burger. Just put this book down, though; it’s not designed for slobs.
This book is for people who like to look their best while living life to the full; people who want to say, ‘Yes’ to that last cocktail or slice of choccie cake yet still be able to squeeze into their skinny jeans; it’s for people who want to attract their ideal choice of partner and then be able to eat and drink whatever they feel like on glamorous dinner dates.
So if this sounds like you, start flicking through and choose the activities you fancy to help burn your calories. Eat, drink and be energetic, for tomorrow there will be another party.
CONVERSION CHART
Some of us think in kilos and some think in pounds and stones. Use this handy conversion chart to help you skip blithely from one to the other without batting an eyelid (… although batting an eyelid could, of course, burn as much as 0.07 kcal a time).
METRIC TO IMPERIAL
1 kilogram (kg) = 2.2 pounds (lb)
1 metre (m) = 3 feet 3
IMPERIAL TO METRIC
1 pound (lb) = 0.45 kilos (kg)
1 stone = 6.35 kilos (kg)
1 foot (ft) = 0.31 metres (m)
AN A-Z OF CALORIE-BURNING ACTIVITIES
The tables underneath each activity work as follows. Choose the nearest weight to yours in the left-hand column; follow along to the middle column where you will learn how many calories you would burn from a set amount of time spent doing that activity; then the right-hand column tells you how long you would have to keep doing it to burn off the calories of a designated type of food. Easy-peasy.
Any exercise that gets your heart beating faster and makes you out of breath is aerobic – the term is a technical one to do with the fact that your heart needs extra oxygen to help the muscles keep up. However, aerobics classes are a masochistic form of keep-fit, run by a special type of gym instructor who is bred for bossiness and intolerance and who has a particularly irritating voice. If you leave their classes without feeling as though you’ve gone five rounds with Mike Tyson and then been knocked over by a 4 × 4 on the way home, they’ll think they’ve failed. ‘No pain, no gain,’ said Jane Fonda, one of the original devotees, little knowing what she was starting.
For all this effort you’d expect a decent calorie-burning payoff, yet a two-hour aerobics class would barely deal with a large portion of Black Forest gateau (840 kcal), and leave no room at all for a skoosh of double cream on top (149 kcal).
| Your weight | Calories burned in 1 hr of high-impact aerobics | Time needed to burn off a portion of Black Forest gateau |
|---|---|---|
| 9 stone (57 kg) 10 stone (64 kg) 11 stone (70 kg) 12 stone (77 kg) | 352 394 450 506 | 2 hrs 23 mins 2 hrs 8 mins 1 hr 52 mins 1 hr 40 mins |
Put a bit of Latin gusto into your arguments. Wild arm movements and petulant stomping will get your point across much more clearly than calm, quiet discussion – and you’ll burn an extra 30 to 60 kcal an hour in the process.
Try not to resort to Boxing, Martial Arts or Wrestling (q.v.) though; outside the sports arena they could get you arrested. Instead, think like a toddler and be prepared to have a full-blown tantrum, writhing around