The Atkins Diet and Exercise: Taking Your Body Shape to a New Level

ate dieting and dread going to the gym? If you do, the Atkins diet and exercise must sound like a sinister and depressing way to get in shape. The good news is, it isn’t.

If your goal is to enhance your quality of life after a long sedentary lifestyle, then it is imperative that you start an exercise program along with following Dr. Atkins’ diet plan. If you have been enjoying workouts for years, but you are still overweight, then this is the perfect time to analyze and improve a failing fitness plan.

As you know, exercise helps you to lose weight all that much faster, so think of it as complimentary to your diet. After just two weeks of Atkins diet and exercise, you will feel better than you’ve felt in a long time and will be motivated to change the way you live.

Your Stomach No Longer Rules You

Even though couch potatoes don’t exercise, their bodies are calling for just as much fuel (food) as if they were working out. How can that be? You aren’t moving, you aren’t expending energy, you aren’t burning calories ...yet you are “starving” just sitting on the couch. The reason for that is interesting. It’s because your stomach and digestive system are consuming the bulk of the nutrients from your oxygen-rich blood, even though your limbs are at rest and in no immediate need of energy. The stomach is active and wants to stay active, so the brain makes you think you are hungry and in need of another snack or three.

However, during exercise, your muscles receive the largest share of the blood supply and energy, and the digestive system has to shut down. Thus, with no signal to the brain that you feel hungry, you don’t feel the need to eat. This is why you don’t feel hungry after a workout. A period of exercise, or even going for a walk for half an hour, is a wonderful way to help control hunger as well as boost metabolism.

Finding the Desire to Exercise

If you have been sedentary all your life, it is possible to develop a love of exercise? The Atkins diet is certainly a dramatic change in your eating habits – isn’t it asking for trouble to demand that your former couch potato self transform into a fitness junkie too?

Exercise need not be a bad word, or a terrifying notion of spending three hours a week jogging, riding a bike, lifting weights, or doing anything physical that you have no interest in.

The basic exercise is walking and it is both the best and the least you can do if you want to combine the Atkins diet and exercise. It is easy, free, and can be done before work, during lunch, or after dinner. Go for a set period of time, and not for the miles. Start at half an hour, and build up to an hour or more. Give it some gas, don’t just stroll. Before you know it, you’ll easily walk three, four, or five miles a day if you do 60 to 90 minutes.

You may also find that if you try swimming, bike riding, or weight lifting, that something about those exercises might appeal to you. Exercise should be fun and should be something you look forward to doing. Once workouts and/or walking becomes a habit, you won’t want to miss it; in fact, you would no more miss a daily swim or a walk than you would skip brushing your teeth or checking the mail. Habit is a powerful method of weight control, and the Atkins diet and exercise are the perfect habit for changing the way you eat and motivating you to workout.

Ideally, the best exercise plan includes resistance training and aerobic activity. Resistance training or weight lifting helps build muscles and bones, and burn calories. It need only be done a few times a week for about 20 to 30 minutes per session. Aerobics is any type of cardio activity that increases your heart rate and breathing rate including activities such as the treadmill, elliptical trainer, swimming, tennis, running, biking, dancing, and so on, helps to condition your heart, lungs, and digestive system. It also burns calories.

Enjoying a Dramatic New Energy Level

The one-two punch of the Atkins Diet and an exercise program is the fastest way to lose weight and get in shape. Adding a fitness program to your new diet plan will improve your cardio health as well as give you a host of other benefits: you will feel more flexibility and less stiffness, you’ll have easier movements such as bending over, walking up stairs, etc., you’ll feel more energetic, have more mental clarity, and your metabolism will improve thanks to developing new muscle tissue. The combination of both the Atkins diet and exercise will have a dramatic impact on weight loss as well as your quality of life.