Wellness Gift Recommedation #4

If you exercise you belong to a small elite group.  If you exercise regularly, then your group is even smaller and more elite.  More and more people around the world are becoming overweight (BMI above 24.9) or obese (BMI above 30).  To reverse this trend, exercise is necessary along with modifying the diet.  Reduced calories and increased activity are the formula for increased healthy longevity.

I recommended a pedometer for tracking your lifestyle exercise previously.  Another thing you can do to benefit your weight control plan is to increase the intensity of your exercise.  The way to measure this and to get a picture of your improving fitness is to keep track of your heart rate.  The beats per minute are a measure of work intensity.  As your fitness improves, your heart rate will be lower at rest and not increase as much when you exercise.

Reasonably priced and accurate Heart Rate Monitors are available from Amazon.  I don’t have one yet but plan on adding one to my workout monitoring.  I want to know if I am making progress in my overall fitness. Even if I do not lose weight, it is better to be fit and overweight than thin and out of shape.  Of course, thin and in shape are best.

Want to assess your fitness level?  Try the 12 minute test as described in this article in the Washington Post.

Then click on the next page or go here to see how you did. These were published in 1999, so these links should be accurate for a while if you find this long after I published it. If the links do not work, search for 12 minute fitness test results to find the answer to your test result.

I will have a challenge for all those who subscribe to my email updates via this blog.  It will begin next year and will allow you to win prizes for improving your fitness.  What kind of a prize would you like to win?  What do yo think you should have to do to win one.  Let me know in the comments section.

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