This is my friend, Dope Kid! I have known him now for close to 16 years. He is a hunk! He has also become a Gym Freak, add to that his insane vanity….lol! When I first knew DK, he had regular muscle o, chubby cheeks and small belle like your classical overfed Nigerian man. But only God knows what happened to my friend in Yankee, he found some new motivation and seems to be training to kill off all the girls! DK is one of those who helped me, and continues to help, along the way, even though he is far away in the US. Thank God for technology. We regularly chat on bbm and he provided me with tips on how to keep moving, and don’t stop until you get all that fat out of your system.

I have talked about food quite a bit mainly because it all starts there! If you don’t watch what you eat and how you eat, there is very little exercise can do in your weight loss plan. However, I dare say that a weight loss plan without moderate to intense exercise, depending on your baseline i.e. starting point, will be a futile plan. Have you ever wondered why European societies are designed to keep you on your feet almost all the time? If you are not walking or running to catch the bus, you are walking to your office, walking to the mall, walking on the streets, walking everywhere. You are constantly in motion. Every now and then, you get up for a cup of coffee, water, lunch, dinner, you need to catch the train, you climb stairs or use the escalators to take the underground, and sometimes you walk at least a mile to connect between trains. I don’t know why they originally designed their systems like that, but my own conclusion is that their systems were developed in such a way as to ensure constant movement and physical activity.

Therefore, we can’t understate the importance of physical activity and increasing your mobility.  The American Heart Association recommends at least 30 minutes of walking a day, five days a week, to maintain a healthy heart and stave off heart disease and stroke. Do you know that it has been projected that by the year 2030, about 80% of all stroke cases will occur in low and middle income countries of the world? More than 17 million people worldwide die from cardiovascular diseases each year, roughly 31% of all deaths, and 75% of these deaths occur in developing countries according to WHO. 80% of these deaths are due to heart attacks and strokes. Specifically in Nigeria, it is estimated that hypertension, which is the leading cardiovascular disease, affects 30-40% of the population older than 15 years of age. Generally, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which include cardiovascular diseases, affect men and women almost equally. Fortunately, majority of NCDs are preventable as the contributing risk factors include unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and sedentary behavior, smoking, and high alcohol consumption.

A little medical lecture was important to provide additional context to why an effective weight loss plan MUST contain a strategy to increase physical activity. As a young girl, I was very active, my former classmates and old friends know that. I played almost every single sport all through primary and secondary school, except football. As I often jokingly quote, my physical activity started to hit the rocks when I started having boyfriends in the University! How I wish I knew better…..All these men, they chase after you when you are skinny, sexy and shapely (not knowing how much work it took). After falling, you dedicate your time to tending to them, missing out on your own body work, then when you pile on all the tyres, they are quick to tell you how unattractive you have become. It’s time to bring the sexy back! If you are shy of being seen running, lifting weights, doing aerobics because you care what people think or will say, then you can stop reading here. But if you choose to lose weight, regain your shape back, improve your sleep patterns, and improve your overall health, then it’s time to step up your physical activity game.

Physical activity is anything that makes you move your body and burn calories.

For the past five years before now, I would engage in intermittent fasting as a way to diet and lose some weight. In 2015, I even went as far as embarking on a fruit only diet for a whole week, during which I lost about 3kgs, but I never took exercises seriously. When I decided to take up the drop-your-weight-to-80kg challenge, I knew it was inevitable. Of course, I had been off any real physical activity for close to 10 years and had to start somewhere. I also had to push myself beyond my limits. If it does not hurt, it is not working! If your body does not feel the pain, then you are not using your muscles effectively. As mentioned in my last post, weight loss is the result of a deficit in calories. You have to increase the burn rate of the calories in your system while reducing your overall caloric intake to drive the needed fat burn required to lose weight. It also needs to be consistent, you can’t do it the first day and stop for another month before you start again. In fact, I will advise that you do it everyday until your body adapts. Even when your muscles ache, just do it! Just keep moving. This is one of the areas where the trackers help motivate you. They count the number of steps you take a day, and makes you often get up and move all in a bid to hit your daily step goal.

I recently got invited to join a work weekly hustle challenge with a group of friends. The challenge focuses on who can take the most number of steps a day during the work week. Hmmmmm, I joined thinking that as a fitness blogger, I will be the winner. O-Y-O! Some people are not smiling! In fact, if not because one of us left his or her tracker charger at home, I would have been at the bottom of the pack for the week. It is appalling. I had to ask my friend who invited me if the others work at all, and she said they do. Apparently, all because of the challenge, the two leading members wake up every morning to run for their first 10K steps, then after work, they run again to count an additional 5K or 10K steps. EVERY DAY! As I speak, the leading member is at 76K steps.  I have decided that next week, I will take up the challenge wholeheartedly! I must make it to the top. I must walk more, run more, and if I can hit 90K steps in 5 days, that will be a new record for me. Of course, I am delighted at the challenge because I can see some more kilos shedding………I still have to break my 80kg mark and start reaching for the 75kgs. Anything to move more, the better.

So dear friend, identify a good neighbourhood or area and start moving. You don’t have to live in a posh area, worst case scenario, walk round your house 100 times a day. Also create time during your busy 8-hour work day to walk around for at least 30 minutes. You will be amazed by how much of a difference it will make in a week. Just ensure that you set aside some time to move more. It can be dancing, house/spring cleaning, walking, aerobics, jumping, skipping, whatever makes your heart rate go up, and causes you to break sweat, do it! and Don’t stop. Keep moving……..I’ll be back soon.