As I was thinking about the relationship of muscle to weight loss, I came across excellent information about the subject, including the idea that just cutting calories and getting aerobic exercise to burn excess body fat was not enough. Since I personally wanted to build some muscle but using simple muscle building exercises, I started to include a few pushups and some leg exercises in my daily routine.
However, when I went even further into the idea of getting into great shape, I came across some ideas that seemed to be backwards. Let me explain, one of the suggestions found was to “take it easy.” To me, that seemed like the very thing I wanted to avoid doing. In fact, I thought that taking it easy would lead to laziness, as well as the opposite of weight loss and body shaping. However, this suggestion actually turned out quite helpful because I was trying to do too much too fast.
Apparently, the body actually needs time to adjust to the change in activity and food intake. Therefore, adding anything new to your normal regimen means taking a gradual approach. It took more discipline for me to do it this way, but I found it works very well. One of my downfalls is pastries and coffee in the morning. I tried giving this up cold turkey but it did not work well. Instead, I cut down on my pastry intake, making sure the process of elimination or reduction was gradual. In other words, I took it easy.
What eventually happened was that some of the healthy snacks I looked at began to look good. In fact, not only did I become accustomed to eating grapes and other less sugary items, but also, I found that I enjoyed them most of the time. This gradual process worked well with food so I incorporated it into my exercise program as well. Again, I found the gradual approach got a much better reaction from my body than diving in full throttle.