It’s always good to be healthy. Being fit feels good. You gain practical advantages, such as endurance and flexibility. And, of course, you start to look good too. However, a lot of people start working out for the sole benefit of losing weight.

That’s not a bad thing. We all need motivation to get up and start moving. While getting strong is definitely a plus, very few of us start working out for that reason only. All of us are a little vain, all of us want to look a little better. However, it becomes very easy to fall into the trap of focusing too much on looking like a magazine model and not enough on safely getting into shape. Health professionals say that you shouldn’t lose more than two pounds a week (unless you’re morbidly obese, which is a completely different game when it comes to weight loss.) If you’re losing more than two pounds a week, you are probably losing water weight or muscle. What you really want to lose is the fat, and if you’re losing muscle, all you’re doing is making yourself weaker, but no more healthy or “toned.” If it’s water weight you’ve lost, then you just have a temporary fix. The weight will come back, and you may gain more than what you started with.

We, as a society, put so much pressure on being skinny. Skinny is almost synonymous  with pretty. You can be beautiful and not thin, just like you can be skinny and not healthy. If you want to shed a few inches around the waist, then by all means, make that your goal. But do it in a safe manner that will make you feel, as well as look, better.

[whohit]Exercise-to-be-Healthy[/whohit]