We know it's all about calories in and calories out, right? You consume calories while eating, your body burns calories while "being". It's simple math. Consume many more than we burn and our body saves those calories for future hunting and gathering expeditions. The only problem is that we are no longer walking for hours gathering nuts and berries or jogging across the plains in search of mammoths or even sloths. Times have changed!
We sit. And we sit alot! Turns out that sitting is about the worst thing we can be doing for our health. Especially as we age, sitting is a reward for all of our years of work! Heck, I'm retired. I just want to sit down for awhile! Sit down for long and you may not get up again!
Our bodies are made for movement. Back to the calories in, calories out formula. So that we don't store too many calories (that end up around our middles or our hips), we have to make the ratio of in:out more equal. This is all stuff we know. It's in the doing that we have problems. Well, Denise Austin has put together a great book called "The Daily Dozen" and no, it's not about donut consumption. She has laid out three weeks of reasonably easy to prepare meals as well as twelve one-minute exercises to do daily. One minute! Even better, is the Get Fit Daily Dozen exercise DVD! She advertises that you can lose 12 pounds in three weeks, which I didn't...BUT...in doing the twelve minutes of daily movement, it got me off my - well you know what I'm saying here!
This is a perfect combination for me. After following three weeks of her recipes, I was trained well enough to know what a healthy daily intake of food is for me. I've added some interesting foods to my repertoire and replaced some higher calorie options with healthy, (buzz word coming) "real" foods. In addition, I was enjoying my daily dozen exercises enough that I started wanting a little more. Like taking a walk in the morning before it got too hot. You know, early mornings are very pleasant! It's quiet, the birds are all talking about the worms they caught, the problems of the world are still sleeping...I'm feeling a bit righteous. Yep. I can do this.
