Staying Active

Weight Loss: Day 4

Choosing to train for a race, whether it be a 5k, 10k, half-marathon, or a whole marathon, is a great way to stay motivated and get in shape.  Most new runners choose to train for a 5k race. The time it takes to build up endurance and get prepared for a 5k varies from person to person. For some people, training for a 5k can take as little as one month; for others, it can take several months. When I began training to run distance, it took me about two and a half months to be able to run 3 miles without stopping. No matter how long it takes, it is always worth the time. Plus, once you’ve run a few 5ks, you can move up to training for a 10k, then a half-marathon, and maybe, eventually, a marathon.

When training for a race of any distance, it is helpful to add challenges into your workouts. One way to do this is by adding hills to your runs. You can either choose a route with more hills, or you can go to a park and run hill repeats. Running up and down the hills will help you build up your strength and can even increase your speed. Another way to increase your speed is to do some “strength training” every once in a while. By strength training, you can build up the muscles in you upper and lower legs, as well as your glutes and abdominal muscles. Some helpful exercises for building leg and abdominal muscles are: jump roping, lunges, squats, squat jumps, crunches, planks, mountain climbers, etc.

While it is important to get in your daily training, it is also important to stay active as much as possible throughout the day. Simple decisions can make a difference in how many calories you burn every day. For example, walking to and from the back of a parking lot will burn more calories than walking from the front of the lot. Rather than taking an elevator to the third floor of the building, you can take the stairs to burn even more calories. Whatever you do, make sure you stay moving because chances are, you will only actually work out once a day. These small amounts of calories burned may seem insignificant, but after a while, these few extra calories really start to add up. Say you burn an extra 300 calories a day. This does not seem like a large amount, right? Well let’s say you burn the same extra 300 calories every day for one week. That is now 2,100 calories. Now let’s pretend you burn the same amount for one month (4 weeks). You have now burned 8,400 calories! One pound of fat is only 3,500 calories. This means that you lost an extra 2.4 pounds simply by making a few small, healthier choices.

Stay Moving!

Danielle ♥