Fashion comes and goes but exercise should not be treated like fashion trends, as just a fad or a trend in your life. It should be a constant activity that you engage in. I have noticed that once summer ends, many people stop exercising or going to the gym. This seems to be more noticeable during the months of November and December and more so for women. Usually they return to exercising or to the gym by mid-January or early February. Maybe it’s because many women feel that since summer is over, nobody will see them in a bathing suit or wearing a bikini in the colder winter months, that it is no longer necessary for them to exercise and stay in shape. This cannot be further from the truth because our bodies require regular exercise in any form all year long for the following reasons: to stay healthy both physically and mentally, to maintain ideal body weight, keep the bones strong and to look the best one can. For many people, exercise is just a get-ready-for-summer activity and it should not be looked at in this manner as a temporary activity.
Helps to Lose Weight and Maintain Ideal Body Weight
Regular exercise is fantastic in maintaining your ideal body weight based on your height and weight for the following 2 reasons.
First of all, regular exercise helps to maintain your body weight by regulating the amount of cortisol in your body. If excessive amounts of cortisol are released into your body, it will result in weight gain. Cortisol is basically a hormone that is released by the body in times of stress. It cannot differentiate between various types of stress so any level of sudden unexpected exercise will be interpreted by the body as stressful and result in the release of more cortisol. It is only through regular exercise and conditioning that cortisol levels will be normal because the body will no longer see this exercise activity as a stressful event, since it happens on a regular and ongoing basis.
Secondly, brown fat cells in the body burn fat. They are more commonly found in women and thin people than in men or overweight people. Despite the number of brown fat cells that an individual has, exercise can help to convert white fat cells into brown fat cells and thus burn more fat, one more great reason to exercise.
May Prevent Disease and Illness
Regular exercise and being active in life no matter what type of physical activity: walking, gardening, cleaning the house... may help to prevent cardio vascular disease, cancer, dementia and generally keep your immune system strong. Of course, it's not an absolute guarantee because other factors also come into play like proper nutrition, eating healthy, avoiding stress in life, getting enough sleep, staying positive and hereditary factors but anything that is positive and is applied in one's lifestyle, will generally aid the human body towards a long and healthy life.
My recommendation is that you supplement regular exercise be it weight training, cardio exercises... 2 to 3 times per week with other day-to-day physical activiites.
My Simple Approach to Exercising All Year Long
For many people it may be difficult to exercise all year long for various reasons such as their busy lives, work or motivation. But, if exercise is an on-going and regular event in your life, there are no excuses not to do it. You can incorporate exercise with all the other important things in your life and this can be done in the following manner:
- Commit yourself to going to the gym 3 times per week on a regular basis.
- Pick a set number of days that you are going to work out during the week. This can be for example Monday, Wednesday and Saturday or every second day of the week or Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. In this manner your exercise days are set. Of course you may not be able to always work out every week on these set days, so in those weeks, feel free to change your workout days to alternate days or do a back-to-back workout, perhaps a little shorter on the second back-to-back workout.
- It is almost impossible to exercise at peak !00% effort each and every workout day. On those days, do what you can. At least you got in a decent workout. If you skipped it entirely, it could become a habit and an excuse for missing more workout days just because you are tired or not in the mood.
I weight train all year round and rollerblade 6 months of the year. This is how I do it and keep myself motivated. From January to October I will workout hard and generally longer depending on my energy levels. Of course there will be days I cannot and I will do what I can. During the months of November and December I will do short and intense workouts or short and moderate workouts. These two months I like to tone it down a bit and just do maintenance workouts. In this manner, I will easily reach peak conditioning for the summer. As added motivation, I suggest you vary your workouts continuously and maybe add in different exercise activities throughout the year to keep yourself motivated and interested.
Alternatively, other people like to work out or work out hard for two or three months at a time and then take a week off. I don’t do this. I prefer to maybe take a day or two off when I absolutely need to.
Another reason to resist from ceasing your exercise activities entirely just because summer is over and the weather is colder is that it affects your conditioning and any gains in muscle or tone that you will have achieved when you did exercise will be lost. Your muscles will experience atrophy, muscle size loss and when you do resume exercising, it is like beginning all over again. You want exercise and the benefits derived from it to be like a continuous process with accumulating gains.
Conclusion
Before you quit working out once summer ends, look at ways to modify your yearly workouts so that you can continue to exercise continuously throughout the year.
