Exercise for Whole Body Health

Working out is about more than losing weight—it’s an essential part of living a happy, healthy life.

If you’re a patient of LAP-BAND in Macon, there’s one thing you need to know about exercise: it is absolutely vital to your efforts to become healthier. Though many people have a difficult time finding the motivation to exercise, it’s often because they don’t think of it as an essential part of their daily lives.

With so many different priorities competing for our attention, anything that isn’t at the top of our to-do lists often gets pushed off the bottom. You need to make sure this doesn’t happen to your workout routine after weight loss surgery, or it will become very difficult to maintain your progress.

Exercise: Crucial to Your Well-Being

Physical activity, like breathing, eating and sleeping, should be viewed as an essential and consistent part of every person’s daily life. Though weight loss is an exercise motivator for many people, viewing your workout as a means to lose weight can become frustrating, causing you to harbor unrealistic expectations about the efficacy of exercise in progressing towards your goals

Your LAP-BAND will help you lose weight. Physical activity will help you maintain and enhance the benefits of that weight loss. This doesn’t just mean forcing yourself into a 30-minute daily sweat session, which can increasingly feel like a chore. It means incorporating movement into your daily life at every opportunity to benefit your overall well-being. It means improving your mental health, cardiovascular health and energy levels. Once you get started, exercise will improve your mood and motivation to continue—the tricky part is staying dedicated enough to get over that first plateau and start the snowball effect that will keep you going.

Exercise motivation comes in different forms for everyone. For some, proving to yourself or others that you can become fitter and healthier is enough. For others, apathy and pessimism rear their heads at every turn.

Just remember that, like weight loss surgery, exercise is all about improving your health and well-being. Yes, there may be cosmetic advantages, but focusing on that aspect will make you unfairly compare yourself to others and fall victim to the inflated stereotypes of physical fitness imposed by society.

Because there’s no one miracle way to motivate yourself to work out, finding your perfect motivator is up to you. The basis of any fitness routine should be a focus on better health, but that may not always be enough. Try these tips to keep yourself interested in working out.

• Track your progress. Many people expect to see immediate and drastic results from exercise, but its benefits are typically slow and incremental. Though it is important to track your weight loss progress after bariatric surgery, you should also keep a record of your athletic progress as you exercise more and more after LAP-BAND. Keep a journal or use a fitness tracker on your phone or computer. This will give you visual evidence that your exercise is working as you see yourself gradually increase reps, improve your time, or increase the frequency of your workouts.
• Have fun. Pounding out miles on the treadmill is something that few of us actually enjoy. If you keep forcing yourself to do an activity you don’t like, you’ll keep finding excuses to avoid it. Instead, find something that actually calls to you, something you’d want to do even if it didn’t provide you with exercise. For many, the structure and social nature of a fitness class, like those centered around Zumba or Pilates at your local gym, provide environment that makes working out more interesting and entertaining. For others who may be more interested in the outdoors than the gym, walking, hiking or kayaking may be great options.
• Keep it convenient. Though hitting the gym or taking a hike may be viable options on the weekend, they demand a certain amount of time that you may not have every day. If you find yourself unable to do your full routine, squeeze in little bits of exercise where convenient. Try quick workouts with home exercise DVDs or taking walks on your lunch breaks. Don’t be frustrated if you can’t fit a full workout in every day—every little bit counts.

Though exercise is important after LAP-BAND, you need to make sure that you’ve fully recovered from surgery before any strenuous activity. If you continue to have trouble with workout motivation, talk to Dr. Bagnato about more strategies for staying active.