Just Dance

Now that its Spring, I've been gradually working on getting my diet in order again. It's seems to have become a cycle of sorts these last few years. In the late Autumn and Winter I crave cooked foods, so the proportion of raw fruits and vegetables I eat goes down, and I gain some weight (and let's not forget the holidays).

Then Spring comes and I start eating less cooked food and more raw food and do a few gentle cleanses, and the weight comes back off again. In the last few weeks I've moved from mostly having oatmeal or eggs in the morning back to fruit and fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. My lunch time salads have more vegetables, and dinner is becoming more centered around raw ingredients again.

But just as importantly, I'm moving around more again. With the sunshine beckoning, I head outside and putter around in the yard for an hour or two. Instead of a one hour work-out on the treadmill, I'll take a two or three hour hike with a girlfriend. Instead of huddling inside with a cup of tea, I'll venture outside in the yard just to see what blooms are popping up in the garden.

I think we tend to focus too much on "work-out" when we're trying to lose weight, and forget that just moving around in general is probably even important then scheduling time at the gym. Getting into the habit of taking a short stroll to the sandwich shop to get your lunch instead of driving there, or walking out to your mailbox to get the mail instead of waiting until you drive by your mailbox will probably do more to jump start your weight loss/maintenance then any high octane gym work-out you won't stick with. If you make a concerted effort to just move more you could easily burn an additional 200 calories a day which can add up to close to an additional 1 to 1 1/2 pounds lost monthly.

Even just dancing can help. If you go to that wedding or Bar Mitzvah, get out on the dance floor and just dance. Or put on some music you like and just dance around the house. Dancing can burn 300 to 500 calories an hour depending on how vigorously you do it.

Just dance, and don't think about how uncoordinated you look to the rest of the world, but think about how much trimmer you'll be for getting out on the dance floor.