Here we go, December!
We got through Thanksgiving! Next up: the month of holiday parties, shopping, baking, cooking, and repeat!
This time of year can be one of the most difficult times to stay committed to working out. There is always so much to do. The days seem shorter. Good eating habits decline leaving us with less and less energy. Things that may not be priorities suddenly become prioritized and somehow working out moves lower and lower down the totem pole. But what really happens when we stop working out?
“In a study of beginners who exercised for two months, their strength increased by 46 percent, and when they
stopped training for two months, they lost 23 percent—half the gains they’d made,” says exercise scientist Wayne Westcott, Ph.D.
In a study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, “people who suddenly stop strength training will start to lose significant muscular strength within three weeks, with people over 65 suffering the greatest losses.”
Another study published in 2014 in the journal PLOS One found that soccer players who de-trained for six weeks had increases in both body fat and body weight.
Not to mention…
Remember, those benefits to working out:
Improves your chances of living longer and living healthier
Helps protect you from developing heart disease and stroke or its precursors, high blood pressure and undesirable blood lipid patterns
Helps protect you from developing certain cancers, including colon and breast cancer, and possibly lung and endometrial (uterine lining) cancer
Helps prevent type 2 diabetes (what was once called adult-onset diabetes) and metabolic syndrome (a constellation of risk factors that increases the chances of developing heart disease and diabetes; read more about simple steps to prevent diabetes)
Helps prevent the insidious loss of bone known as osteoporosis
Reduces the risk of falling and improves cognitive function among older adults
Relieves symptoms of depression and anxiety and improves mood
Prevents weight gain, promotes weight loss (when combined with a lower-calorie diet), and helps keep weight off after weight loss
Improves heart-lung and muscle fitness
Improves sleep* *According to the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans
Yep, they are gone too!
Priorities? Let’s make December our fittest month! Instead of starting the New Year feeling squishy with weight to lose, let’s start it making brand new goals and feeling good about all of the progress that has already been made! Working out is not easy. If it was, everyone would do it!
To good health today and always,
Christina
