Illness As an Excuse Not to Exercise is a Weight Loss Success Killer

If you find that you don't workout when you aren't feeling good you may find that you are limiting your weight loss success. Using illness or fatigue as an excuse to not move your body can sabotage your best intentions and your health, fitness and weight loss goals. It might not be in your best interest to exercise at 100% on days when you don't feel well, but there are good reasons to keep your body moving even on off days.

Give yourself an alternative workout that is gentler on your body-and stop beating the drum of not feeling well. Even if you decide to go for a short stroll around the block or focus on gentle stretching you are helping your body and you break the pattern of making illness an excuse for not exercising.

You may be surprised that some days you actually feel physically better because you are moving your body and changing your mental focus from illness to fitness. Even if you don't feel better, you can congratulate yourself for moving forward with your goal of exercising for weight loss and fitness.

On the days where you begin to feel better you may decide to keep working out. Either at that same gentle pace or you may feel energized enough that you can step up the pace a bit. Or, you may decide to stop with that shorter routine see how you feel later in the day... at which point you might go for another stroll for example.

If however you do the mini workout and still feel bad, then listen to your body and stop.

One of the reasons so many of us have gained weight in the past is because we didn't listen to our bodies. Listening to your body is very important for weight loss success-that includes listening to it about how it feels with the food we eat and the exercises we do-but we have to learn to correctly interpret the messages our body is sending to us.

I f you normally exercise for 15 minutes you may choose to cut back the time and/or the intensity depending on how you feel. Let's say you determine you are going to stroll for 5 minutes today...you go outside and focus on the beauty there. After 5 minutes you are drained and so you come back inside. You have had a success! You kept your commitment to doing the 5 minutes and that is awesome!

However, if you are feeling better after the 5 minutes it may be that you were experiencing more of a psychological block and so you decide to continue walking. In this instance perhaps you walk for 15 minutes-your normal workout duration, but at a less intense level. This too, is something to celebrate!