Lianhe Wanbao Health Wellness Feature – Lose Weight For The New Year

With Chinese New Year less than a month away, I was asked to share in today’s Lianhe Wanbao suitable fitness tips for everyone who needed to shed that extra kilo before ushering in the year of the snake.

Wanting to lose weight is one thing. Actually losing it is another thing altogether. Let’s face the hard truth – there are many excuses people give for not exercising. Some say it’s difficult, while others say they do not know how to start…and even feel overwhelmed when they step into a gym.

But…but who told you that you need to be at the gym in order to exercise? Shouldn’t exercise be fun and easily accessible to all, regardless of age, gender or fitness level?

With this premise in mind, I suggested introducing a series of bodyweight exercises for the Lianhe Wanbao readers. In my last two Wanbao features, I demonstrated the benefits of exercises using the resistance tube and the fitness ball respectively.

As its name suggests, bodyweight exercises are essentially strength training exercises that do not require free weights. Instead, you use your own body weight to exercise and it provides the resistance for the movement.

The advantages of bodyweight are multifold. These include being able to exercise anytime, anywhere and in the comfort of your own home. More importantly, as compared to weights, you can increase the difficulty level of bodyweight exercises once you are familiar with its workings. That’s the true beauty of it.

So in this exercise series, I chose to demonstrate three exercises which I deemed manageable by people of various fitness levels.

First up was the push-ups. Widely regarded as the staple of any chest and triceps training programme, I upped the difficulty of it by adding a twist literally at the end of the each upward move as this would directly target the obliques. For ladies trying push-ups for the first time, you may wish to do them on bent knees…until you build up enough strength in your upper body. Never under-estimate the effect of the humble push-up. It can be just as lethal if not more as compared to other chest exercises.

If oblique push-ups target the upper body, then this next exercise was chosen as it worked the leg muscles, in particular the quadriceps. I particularly love lunges as not only are they effective in toning, accurate execution of them are bound to make you perspire a lot. It is an open secret that when you work your legs, you tend to perspire buckets more than any other muscle group. So if you are already comfortable with stationary lunges, then challenge yourself with alternating lunges.

This third exercise must certainly rank as an old-time friend of all able-bodied males in Singapore. Yes, you got it – jumping jacks. Jumping jacks are the perfect choice for an easy and quick cardio if you are working out without much open space.

Just like a stool derives its stability from all three legs, the other two components of a fitness programme cannot be omitted.

Exercise is good. But if you do not watch what you eat, your efforts will be wasted. Having a sensible nutrition plan is the natural complement to exercising. In addition, knowing what foods to choose and when to eat are equally vital to successful weight loss.

Similarly, you also need to do some form of cardio exercises…think running, stair machines, rowing, skipping etc so as to shed that extra kilo.

All the best readers on your weight loss journey. If ever you need help, feel free to email me.