A dozen ways to improve your fitness this year …

Last year a story caught my attention regarding changes that could be anticipated for the fashion industry. One of the items mentioned was dropping the phrase “athleisure,” a newer word already in the dictionary referring to the fashion style of wearing athletic apparel for leisurewear because of its comfort.

It’s become common to see people wearing as their regular, casual outfits clothes that in years past you would only see in a gym. It’s not because they’re active or about to go exercise, it’s only because modern workout gear is comfortable.

The same for shoes. It’s estimated that 87 percent of Americans who own running shoes … don’t run!

We’re looking like active people, but we aren’t.

It’s not just that we lack personal fitness (we do), the percentage of Americans who are obese — not just out of shape, not just overweight, not just fat, but obese — is skyrocketing, and with that has followed the dramatic increase in poor health diagnoses that goes hand-in-hand with failing to maintain one’s own fitness.

It isn’t just that we’re a very sedentary people, the problem is most of us are terrible stewards of our bodies.

Being fit — whether physically, spiritually, mentally, or emotionally — is a choice, one we fail to make because we’re just too lazy to exercise each day the personal discipline it takes to be fit. And yet, we’re enabled by God to have the necessary self-discipline to be good stewards of our bodies …

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline,” 2 Timothy 1:7.

Christians, including many church leaders, can be quick to dismiss physical fitness with a faux piety, noting spiritual fitness is more important. It’s true that nothing is as or more important than our personal relaitonships with Jesus Christ, but God does consider the stewardship of our bodies to be important:

“You say, ‘I am allowed to do anything’ — but not everything is good for you. And even though ‘I am allowed to do anything,’ I must not become a slave to anything. You say, ‘Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.’ (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies,” 1 Corinthians 6:12-13.

The Apostles John and Paul also believed our health and fitness is important …

“Dear friend, I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit,” 3 John 1:2.

“Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified,” 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.

Our bodies are important to God, and considering they are our “transportation” through this life, they need to be important to us! That means we need to be good stewards of our bodies by taking responsibility to maintain our health and personal physical fitness.

Losing weight and getting healthy are the number one New Year resolutions people make each year, resolutions that will quickly fail within the first month of attempting. It doesn’t have to be that way. For all of you who would like to get fit and/or stay fit this year, let me give you a dozen ways you can improve your physical fitness in the coming months …

1. Make a decision to be a good steward of your body. The problem with resolutions are most of them aren’t real, deeply and wholly made decisions, they often are little more than wishes. You’ll never be fit, and you will not maintain your health, just by wishing for either. To be fit and healthy requires a lifestyle committed to doing every day what is necessary to get fit and stay fit. In other words, you have to make a decision that being fit is important to you and that you WILL exercise your God-given self-discipline to get fit and stay that way.

2. Eat healthy. This should be a no-brainer, but it’s at the core of why so many people are anything but fit. We make food outlets of our emotions, or we become indulgent about food as “foodies.” But the truth of the matter is that food is first and foremost FUEL for our bodies. You wouldn’t pour sugar into the gas tank of a Maserati, but it’s amazing (and wildly foolish) what we’re willing to dump into our bodies, which are far more priceless than an expensive car. Simply put, your nutrition is the quality of physical life; it can keep you healthy or directly contribute to illness and disease, even death. It’s time we stop laughing about how life is too short and so we should enjoy food — because we know we’re really making an excuse to eat junk, to overeat, and to eat for the wrong reasons. It’s time we apply self-discipline and stop telling ourselves we’re too tired after a busy day, it won’t hurt to swing into a fast food joint for dinner. Yes it will, because you’ll continually use the same excuse over and over and over and over instead of pushing through, tired or not, to feed yourself AND YOUR CHILDREN the fuel your bodies NEED for health and fitness.

There’s a vast array of information easily and readily available to help you understand what “eat healthy” means. it will include things like emphasizing fruits and vegetables in your daily nutrition, cutting out the junk, exercising portion control, and learning to drink lots of water. Our bodies are dependent on water intake, yet so many Americans go days drinking little to no water, instead choosing to drink surgary sodas, coffee, “power” or “energy” drinks — anything other than what their bodies NEED, which is water. if you’re serious about getting and staying fit, you must be serious about a daily regimen of eating healthy.

3. Maintain your weight. With attempts to educate the public that obesity is a serious and skyrocketing problem, there has been push back by some who argue that “healthy” doesn’t mean “skinny.” In a very narrow way, that is true; but healthy almost always doesn’t mean fat, and it certainly does not mean obese. While any of us can tell anecdotes of people we know who were obese, ate horribly, and never exercised yet lived to be 85, the fact is that is NOT the norm — and we all know it. There’s now a deluge of medical research that clearly establish the importance of maintaining a reasonable weight in order to be fit and healthy. Yes, fit people can still get diseases and even die young. But overweight people disproportionately become unhealthy. If you want to be fit and maintain your health, maintain your weight.

4. Exercise every day. Like the need to “eat healthy,” exercising every day should also be a no-brainer. As food is FUEL for the body, exercise is strength, endurance, and MAINTENANCE of our bodies. Without proper exercise our bodies atrophy, and we do not have the strength and endurance needed each day. Instead of guzzling “energy” drinks, enslaving yourself to caffeine for energy, or just surrendering to a life of Netflix marathons, you’ll have to exercise your body to keep it fit and healthy.

Let’s clarify something – “exercise” doesn’t equate to going to a gym, although that’s a great option. Exercise means being active with your body in such a way that provides maintenance of your body. You may never walk into a gym but stay fit by regularly walking, hiking, biking, swimming, or participating in a favorite sport. Maybe you like to stay active working in your yard, or keep yourself exercised with a mix of several of these things. What activities you choose for exercise isn’t as important as making sure you DO exercise. For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends these exercise guidelines:

• • Aerobic activity. Get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity. The guidelines suggest that you spread out this exercise during the course of a week.
  • Strength training. Do strength training exercises for all major muscle groups at least two times a week, using a weight or resistance level heavy enough to tire your muscles after about 12 to 15 repetitions.
  • Moderate aerobic exercise includes activities such as brisk walking, swimming and mowing the lawn. Vigorous aerobic exercise includes activities such as running and aerobic dancing. Strength training can include use of weight machines, your own body weight, resistance tubing, resistance paddles in the water, or activities such as rock climbing.
  • As a general goal, aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day. If you want to lose weight or meet specific fitness goals, you may need to exercise more. Want to aim even higher? You can achieve more health benefits, including increased weight loss, if you ramp up your exercise to 300 minutes a week.
  • Reducing sitting time is important, too. The more hours you sit each day, the higher your risk of metabolic problems, even if you achieve the recommended amount of daily physical activity.
  • Short on long chunks of time? Even brief bouts of activity offer benefits. For instance, if you can’t fit in one 30-minute walk, try three 10-minute walks instead. What’s most important is making regular physical activity part of your lifestyle.

There is a vast array of information about exercise and some of it contradicts itself. Being a fitness professional who has trained hundreds of people in a gym, let me suggest that spending the money to hire an experienced, qualified, and professional Personal Trainer can be a wise and beneficial investment in your personal physical fitness.

5. Move! Closely connected to our need for daily exercise is understanding our need to NOT be sedentary people — we need to MOVE! New research has determined that a lifestyle of sitting has “become the new cancer” …

Researchers from Toronto came to this conclusion after analyzing 47 studies of sedentary behavior. They adjusted their data to incorporate the amount someone exercises and found that the sitting we typically do in a day still outweighs the benefit we get from exercise. Of course, the more you exercise, the lower the impact of sedentary behavior.

The studies showed sedentary behavior can lead to death from cardiovascular issues and cancer as well as cause chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes.

Physical inactivity has been identified as the fourth-leading risk factor for death for people all around the world, according to the World Health Organization.

Prolonged sitting, meaning sitting for eight to 12 hours or more a day, increased your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 90%.

Let’s add in some statistics from research. As soon as you sit …

• • Electrical activity in the leg muscles shut off.
  • Calorie burning drops to 1 per minute.
  • Enzymes that help break down fat drop by 90%.
  • After two hours, good cholesterol drops 20%.
  • After 24 hours, insulin effectiveness drops 24% and risk of diabetes rises.
  • Those who sit three hours or more per day watching TV are 64% more likely to die from heart disease. Each extra hour of watching TV equals 11% higher death risk.

Researchers suggest a variety of solutions to our sitting all day long at work or living a sedentary life, from using stand-up desks, “wiggling” in our seats, and using exercise balls as chairs, but there seems to be a single, simple answer: Stand up and move. One researcher notes that we should stand up and move approximately every 10 minutes to overcome the negative, dangerous effects of sitting and being sedentary.

For more information on the negative physical effects of sitting, check out the book, “Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It,” by James Levine, who is an expert on the subject.

6. Play. Recreation is important for the physical, psychological, and even the spiritual well-being of people. If a person doesn’t take time out from work, stress, anxiety, depression, and other health problems are likely to arise. One researcher noted concisely, “Recreation is an important process that helps refresh and reinvigorate both the body and mind.” Recreation — making time to play — also contributes directly to our quality of life. If you want to get or stay fit this year, make regular time for play!

7. Rest. Our culture has so skewed what is important that for many rest makes them restless!

But we desperately need rest!

God has designed us in such a way that rest is an important means to repairing and revitalizing us in body, mind, and spirit. Some of the reasons rest is important include:

• • It moderates physical stressors to allow for the body to repair itself.
  • It moderates mental stressors, helping to alleviate stress, anxiety, and even depression.

And Writer, Kristen Welch, points out how rest provides these spiritual benefits:

God made rest a priority. He rested after He worked. Jesus sought [rest in] solitude and so should we. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. When we take time to rest and seek God, we are acknowledging that we need His help. We weren’t meant to carry the weight of the world, but we often don’t realize how badly we need rest until we take it. Respite gives us the opportunity to hear God. More than anything, I want to hear God. But in order to lean in and listen close, I have to be still and quiet.

You’ll help improve your personal fitness this year by making rest an important part of your life.

8. Keep yourself mentally stimulated. We live in a culture that has become addicted to being titillated rather than mentally stimulated. Instead of feeling well by keeping ourselves fit mentally, physically, and spiritually, we opt for artificial titillators like coffee, energy drinks, sugary drinks, junk food, illicit sex,and movie marathons in an unheathly attempt to “feel.”

Instead, we need to keep ourselves mentally stimulated. Writer Bill Birnbaum notes:

Just as we all need physical exercise, so too we all need mental exercise. Just as our body becomes flabby from lack of physical exercise, so too our mind becomes “flabby” from lack of mental exercise. Absent mental exercise, we’re likely to become bored or even depressed. The good news is that we have many ways of exercising our mind.

Some of the ways Birnbaum notes we can keep ourselves mentally stimulated include working, volunteer opportunities [serving others], reading, engaging with friends, attending a class, writing, learning new technologies, and participating in hobbies or cultural events. There are a myriad of ways we can keep ourselves mentally stimulated. Doing so helps alleviate any temptation for “emotional eating,” and reduces stress and anxiety. Simply put, by keeping ourselves mentally stimulated in positive ways helps our body to better function as it should, which directly contributes to our fitness and health.

9. Develop a robust spiritual life. The single reason we live, breathe, and have our being is to worship, glorify, and enjoy God. When we live life for the purpose it was given to us, and how God instructs us to live (including caring for our bodies, minds, and spiritual lives), we function at our peak. Turning from God’s will and God’s way to sin corrupts us in every way …

“When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat,” Psalm 32:3-4.

Sin doesn’t just corrupt us spiritually, but physically, mentally, and emotionally as well. To truly be fit and healthy, it is vital you develop a robust faith in Christ.

10. Sleep well. There is a plethora of research data that has been conducted, and is ongoing, on the critical need for human beings to get an adequate amount of sleep, which most of us don’t. Without wading through a slew of data, here’s a simple statement from the National Sleep Foundation about the importance of sleep:

We tend to think of sleep as a time when the mind and body shut down. But this is not the case; sleep is an active period in which a lot of important processing, restoration, and strengthening occurs. Exactly how this happens and why our bodies are programmed for such a long period of slumber is still somewhat of a mystery. But scientists do understand some of sleep’s critical functions, and the reasons we need it for optimal health and well-being.

One of the vital roles of sleep is to help us solidify and consolidate memories. As we go about our day, our brains take in an incredible amount of information. Rather than being directly logged and recorded, however, these facts and experiences first need to be processed and stored; and many of these steps happen while we sleep. Overnight, bits and pieces of information are transferred from more tentative, short-term memory to stronger, long-term memory—a process called “consolidation.” Researchers have also shown that after people sleep, they tend to retain information and perform better on memory tasks. Our bodies all require long periods of sleep in order to restore and rejuvenate, to grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesize hormones.

A lack of sleep directly impairs our physical, mental, and spiritual function. For example, a lack of sleep can result in slowing our metabolism, resulting in weight gain. Lack of sleep also impairs mental processes and sharpness. All of this challenges us spiritually! If you want to get fit and stay fit, you’ll need to make sure you’re routinely getting enough sleep.

11. Stray outside your box. Living life so habitualized that nothing is new, fresh, or different can directly impede your personal fitness. For example, in exercising the body, it is important to mix up your exercises to avoid plateauing. The same is true in the bigger picture of our lives. We can keep ourselves in such a small box of habits that we fail to exercise, to grow, or to thrive. Have the courage to stray outside your box and routinely try new and different things.

12. Follow your passion. Bruce Larson conveyed the following in his book, “There’s a Lot More to Health Than Not Being Sick”:

Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychotherapist … concluded that when there is a driving passion or a great purpose in life, the physical body is more likely to survive. When he was imprisoned at Auschwitz during the Second World War, he and a number of other doctors observed a strange phenomenon in that physically intolerable, life-suffocating camp. Survival did not appear to depend on the health of the inmates. Often the young, the healthy and the strong would die, while the old and frail and sick would survive. Those who did survive had a common sense of purpose and hope for the future.

We know our purpose for existing, but that is most demonstrated in our being passionate about something. Whether it’s art or music, teaching or writing, athletics or physical pursuits, there’s something we all have a passion for. When we live life according to God’s purpose, and pursue the passion He has gifted into us, we thrive!

And that is a perfect template for achieving fitness and health.

We’ve quickly skimmed just a dozen ways you can become and/or stay fit this year. There’s much, much, much more detail to what has been noted, and more to fitness and health than identified in this single post. I encourage you to learn more about physical fitness, and I hope to provide more detailed, practical, and helpful information more often through this blog. For further reading, let me recommend to you the book, “Body by God,” by Dr. Ben Lerner (you can find it on Amazon.com by clicking here).

May the remainder of the year be a time of robust fitness and health for you!

Scotty