Getting started, part 4: Chart a course to move and build

One last note about exercise, before we turn our attention to diet. We have already established that you need to find something you love, and you need to start doing it slowly. But you are not going to stay there.

You must channel your spirit of competitiveness, and in this instance, your competitor is you. At the first week or two of exercise, after your body has begun to adjust to the new demands you are placing on it, you need to keep upping the ante. I suggest whatever form of exercise you are doing, you begin keeping a journal of your progress. Start charting each workout and how long, how far and/or how many times you did it. For example, if you are cycling, running, walking or hiking, you want to know how far you went and how long it took you.

Now, when I started keeping a record of my workouts, I went the old-fashioned route of using a pen and paper. But the problem with that is that you might not always have your notepad with you when you need it.

Then I discovered MapMyRide.com, which I think began for cyclists, but has expanded to include other types of exercise, such as running, walking, hiking and even swimming,
sports and gym workouts. For the outdoors activities, you can draw your routes on a map and get the exact distance of your course, and even changes in elevation. Then, when you enter your time and weight, it will even calculate the number of calories you burned.

You can join MapMyRide.com for free and have more than enough features to keep track of all of your workouts, although they do offer premium subscriptions that give you access to some pretty nifty features, such as printable maps with turn-by-turn directions and workout plans.

Anyway, however you keep track of your workouts, once you have built up enough to begin seeing patterns, start challenging yourself. Push yourself to go longer or faster or harder or more often than you have in the past. You always want to be improving.

Why? Because the body is a miraculous machine that is able to adjust to the demands placed on it. This is a good thing, because it means that if the workout you start doing is killing you, it will get easier over time. But the bad thing about that is that it will become less effective over time. Let's say that you choose running as your exercise, and you eventually build up to running 3 miles, three times a week. You will probably lose a few pounds and you'll be thinking, "Great! I'll just keep this up and I'll continue to lose weight." But that isn't quite what happens. Eventually, your body becomes accustomed to the exercise you are doing and begin making adjustments accomplish the same task more efficiently. That means you will need to burn less energy (i.e., fewer calories) to complete your workout, rendering it less effective.

There are several ways to avoid that. The simplest is to always be setting new goals. Turn that 3-mile run into a 4-mile run, and start doing it four times a week. And then keep building. Another trick is something called "muscle confusion," which operates under the principle that if you constantly change up the types of exercise you are doing, your body won't fall into a routine that renders your workouts less effective. In essence, this is sort of the same principle as cross-training, and that means that as you progress, you will need to be on the lookout for other types of exercise that you enjoy doing. If you are a cyclist, you might start adding some running, hiking, swimming, rock climbing, aerobics or weight training into the mix.

But that is on down the road. For now, as you are just getting started with fitness, one type of exercise will suffice. All you really need to remember for now is to keep track of your workouts, so that you will constantly be pushing yourself to do a little better.