How to Get Fit in 4 Weeks

Series Summary

Everyone wants to live a fit and healthy life, but sometimes beginning a new low-fat diet can be daunting and even challenging. Changing eating habits and learning to prepare low-calorie, low-fat food might be difficult to acclimate to at first, but having a solid knowledge base about the healthy types of foods and some inspiration towards creating a delicious menu full of diet-friendly meals is a great start. Healthy snacks, exercise and a refrigerator makeover are great steps for diet beginners. In this free video series, a registered and licensed dietitian provides advice for losing weight and staying healthy through a good diet and proper nutrition. Discover how to lose 10 pounds quickly, how to lose a double chin and how to build up an immune system. Learn about vitamins as well, and when the best time is to take vitamin B complex. Lose weight and promote general health with this nutrition information.

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I am a Registered and Licensed Dietitian with The Austin Regional Clinic and I am going to talk to you about how to get fit in four weeks. The thing to keep in mind is fitness really is a lifelong process. Most people are not going to achieve a certain level of fitness at four weeks, that is going to be it. Usually for the majority of people fitness is something that you are working on all of the time. You are not ever going to achieve any one particular level, it is something that is basically a journey you are always working on. Four weeks is a very good starting point especially if you've been very inactive or you haven't really been eating a very healthy diet. You can definitely see some major improvements in your overall level of fitness in four weeks so we'll talk about a few things to actually help get you started. One of the first things to keep in mind as far as your eating is concerned is making sure that you are getting plenty of plain water. Your body really is like a machine and water is really in your body similar to oil in a car even though food is your fuel the water that you are drinking is basically what helps your body filter all of the things that it is going through on a daily basis. Without enough water your kidneys have a very hard time actually filtering things and they can experience a lot of fatigue so make sure you get plenty of plain water as in a car if you don't put enough clean oil in your car even though it may have gasoline that engine is eventually going to burn up so it is a similar concept with your body. You want to make sure you are getting plenty of water. The other thing is to make sure that you are eating a balanced diet and make sure you are getting plenty of fruits and vegetables every single day, plenty of your whole grains, that is going to be your carbohydrate sources such as wheat breads, brown rice, whole grain pastas, whole grain cereals, those are all good healthy sources of complex carbohydrates and good lean sources of protein whether that comes from nuts, seeds, or beans or lean meats, fish, poultry without the skin on, all of those foods will help provide you with the energy that you need to actually start a fitness program. As far as your physical activity goes the best thing to do is make sure you are incorporating all three major aspects of physical activity. One is stretching, another one is some type of cardiovascular activity such as walking or swimming and another is strength training, that could be using your own body weight or it can be actually using weights at home or at the gym but you really need all three aspects of physical activity for your overall health to make sure that your muscles are strong, that your tends are flexible and that your bones are strong as well so try to include all of those aspects in your fitness routine. If you start working on all of these aspects and take it a step at a time each week you'll see an improvement and at the end of four weeks you will be well on your way to achieving life long fitness."