What are some good weight loss tips that will also help me feel better?

In the world of fitness there are many things to consider, diet, weights, cardio, and flexibility. The often overlooked and saved until later activity, flexibility, is easy to put off but just as important if not more so than other areas of fitness.

As we age our bodies tend to loose flexibility naturally due to lack of movement through a joints full range of motion. We tend to sit at desks or in cars, then in front of televisions. If we manage to get out for a game of basketball or hit the weights the activity is often followed by a few days of soreness which causes us to further restrict our movement.

Your back begins to hurt because your hamstrings are tight and your knees start to hurt because of muscle imbalances related to flexibility issues. Your balance decreases because your feet hurt due to calf tightness, which you guessed it is related to the flexibility of the rest of our body. We are one big piece of interconnected physiology and if one part gets tight it effects many others.

Avoiding all pain as we age is not really practical but it is certainly possible to avoid lots of flexibility related pain which accounts for many of our aches as we get older. As you build your flexibility you will be amazed at the things you are able to do without pain and how effortlessly you can preform activities as simple as getting up off of the floor.

There are a few common areas that people really need to be aware of when dealing with flexibility. First is the hip, due to our sedentary society and our common posture of being on our butts our hips tend to loose flexibility faster than many other parts of the body. This is particularly problematic because we still use our hips to get around quite often.

The next area we need to be aware of is the hamstrings. For the same reasons as the hips and partly because of the hips the hams get very tight.

I suggest taking a 6 week period and focusing on building flexibility. We will often commit to a new workout that last that long or start a running program. We seem to shy away from things like flexibility because we think that they are a wast of time. The weight loss tip of the day is to build your flexibility, once you build it maintenance is easy and you will be able to do a larger variety of things to assist with weight loss or muscle building.