I think the most common phrase that I have seen is "health and fitness". Since I already wrote a post about health, I want to write a post about fitness and how it fits in the whole scheme of my weight loss and lifestyle. I often wonder what does fitness really mean, and by breaking down the word: fit-ness. It seems to say it is a state of "perfection" of the body. According to Merriam Webster online dictionary, the second entry of the word Fit means: sound physically and mentally. The word -ness means: state : condition : quality : degree. It only makes sense that combination of the definitions to make the word Fitness would be that it is a state of sound physically and mentally.

Being fit is important because it contributes to good and long life, as well as continues to have good quality of life. I do believe that being fit will allow me to live my life to the fullest and really enjoy life the way I should enjoy life. The plan of action to get me in this state of fit includes three parts: aerobics, weight lifting and changing my eating habits. In this post, I will cover two parts, aerobics and weight lifting. The eating habits has been discussed in the past and probably will continue to be discussed in the future.

What is Aerobics? It basically means to exercise with oxygen, a great way to strengthen my heart and my lungs. Right now what I have been doing is lot of walking. I have not really done power walk or really force myself to walk faster. I should because I have been walking a lot lately and I rarely get exhausted from it. I need to walk faster so that I can raise my heart rate and maintain it. Two things that I really want to do in the future, it is running/jogging and riding a bike. Those two things I have been wanting to do for so long because it looks so freeing. The last time I rode a bike, I hurted my tailbone so bad that I couldn't really sit down for a few days. I realized that I was pretty heavy to be sitting on a little bitty seat. I hope some day within 2 years or so, I will be light enough to ride a bike and not hurt any part of my body. Once I do that I want to ride my bike as much as I can, maybe do a tour or two for AIDS Ride. We will see how that goes in the future.

The 2nd part is anaerobic, which means that I will exercise without oxygen. Yeah, it sounds a bit strange but anaerobic does not exercise or strengthen your heart or your lungs. Weight lifting is mainly anaerobic, there are other stuff that are anaerobic as well but I will concentrate on weight lifting because I have been doing that for 4 months steady now and I am really noticing change in my body. From Jan to middle of April, I have been following Bob Greene's Total Body Makeover plan and then last week I switched to Body for Life plan so that my body doesn't get used to the routine. I plan on keep changing the plan every three months. I will explain more about Body for Life plan in detail in tomorrow's post.