The month of May is National Physical Fitness Month. So, to recognize this, we thought that we might give you some tips on easy methods of working out, that won’t take a bite out of your daily schedule.

Current physical activity guidelines state that 150 minutes of physical activity a week is required to keep you fit and healthy. To put it plainly, a half an hour for five days out of the week, while paired with a healthy diet, is usually enough to keep you away from becoming overweight.

Fitness and physical activity are important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and it doesn’t always have to get in the way of your everyday life. By separating those workout periods into ten minutes, or even five minute blocks, you can spread out your physical activity enough to make the time easy to find.

But, fitness doesn’t happen overnight, and more than one of us have made a New Year’s resolution, only to watch it fade away within a month or two. Taking things gradually can help maintain a healthy lifestyle, and one way to partition your fitness into manageable chunks, is to set goals.

A few tips to follow when setting goals for yourself:

• Make the goal challenging, but achievable. Too easy and you’ll become unmotivated, too hard and the same thing will happen.
• Make it a variation of short-term and long-term goals. Being able to hit marks along the way to your bigger goals can be just as rewarding as the bigger goals themselves.
• Have progression in your goals. Whether adding time or intensity, having progression built into your goals makes it more achievable and positively enforcing.
• Set your exercises according to your lifestyle and what you’re comfortable with. Getting outside of your comfort zone is basic, to a point. If you don’t like it to start, you never will.
• Reward yourself when you reach your goals. Avoid using food as a reward though. And make sure that the reward matches the goal. If it’s a big goal, give yourself a big reward!

These tips and more, along with short, easy-to-do exercises can be found in the book, “Fit In 5” by Greg Whyte.  This book, and many more can be found at www.ncescatalog.com and in our catalog.