Waking up early in the morning and doing exercises is a great way to start your day.

Exercising before anybody else is up in your household can have several short term and long-term benefits. Some short-term benefits include improvement of sleep patterns, reduced anxiety and depression due to a feeling of well-being, increased mental acuity for most of the day, increased energy levels for the day and increased calorie burning among others. The long-term effects of exercising in the morning are reduced risk of coronary heart disease, developing high blood pressure, developing type 2 diabetes, developing breast and colon cancer, obesity and having a stroke.

Most people who exercise in the morning benefit much in getting more things done in the day compared to waking up late. Even if you do not really do conventional exercises in the morning and just try to clean up the house, you are already exerting too much energy and burning calories. These simple and inexpensive exercises can help keep you trim and fit without you enrolling in some exercise training programs in gyms.

You might wonder what kinds of exercises are suitable for the early hours of the morning. You do not have to be a pro in learning the basic warm ups and stretching. You can do warm ups in repeating stretches and clutches for the first week before going out for a run or do cardiovascular exercises especially if you have not done any exercises previously, early morning or any other time. Remember, you can browse through simple and inexpensive exercise activities through the pages of magazines and Internet. You can follow through these simple exercises in keeping yourself fit and trim.

However, the best exercise there is, incomparable is waking up early in the morning and stimulate your mental powers. Positively welcoming the day is the critical part of the day. Next to optimism is your simple warm ups or stretches. Remember, there are many stretching exercises that could serve as warm ups before the main workout or training. However, using appropriate warm up exercise will help you best stimulates better functions of your body relieving tensions and lead to better feeling moving forward. With an intention to release stress and starting your day right, exercising anytime or stretching your muscles whenever there is a need will regulate your body weight and keep you from being unproductive.

Moreover, the danger of obesity is one of the primary causes of cancer and is also a cause for many illnesses. Considering the numbers of unhealthy big people in the society these times, make your resolve to go out of the sedentary lifestyle bandwagon. Do your cross country training and find time to jog in the early morning when all other people are still sleeping and while the streets are traffic-free—no traffic, less stress. The pollution level would most likely be down at this time of day compared to rush hours when people are getting to work and driving there. Supply your lungs with the early morning fresh air and embrace the day’s challenges right.

Yup! After several months off we decided to revive the project for the sake of humanity. Big things have happened: new habitaquo (new “home” for the non-iniciated into coloquial spanish), new work, new studies, new friends and new ideas!

We have changed the looks and the plan. New post series are underway that will blow your head clean off.

Thanks for your mails and comments and for those who stayed loyal to the bodytweaker’s way during all this time.

Welcom back and stay tuned!

You know, in many ways most of us, humans, are still simple animals. At least in the way we behave most of the time. Following the rules of operant conditioning we repeat behaviors that bring us small short-term satisfactions, but leaving us completely blind about our long-term goals.

The cake tastes good, it provides a simple and fast feeling of happiness and well-being. So, like animals, we follow that feeling (or should I say: like junkies?). On the other side, workouts are tiresome, they require energy and effort, sometimes even muscular pain. And the results are small and barely visible. So following the rules of operant conditioning we take the short-cut to find cheap and fast well-being in our lives.

In our subconsciousness we classified those two things as good and as bad. Although we may perfectly understand on our cognitive level that cake is “bad” for us and workouts are “good”, we let our subconscious take the control. And in that, ladies and gentlemen, we let our animal natures emerge. Animals don’t have a consciousness like we do, so they follow the calls of their subconsciousness. An animal will never have a long-term goal, an animal can’t plan years in advance nor execute that plan.

But we are still humans, we have an advantage over animals and that’s why we rule this planet. You see, whether it’s fitness, business management, poker or relationships,… sometimes you have to accept difficulties and loss on the short term, in order to win on the long-run.

• Your muscles have to tear first in order to grow bigger later
• You have to invest time and money in your business and accept up to 3 years of loss, before it starts feeding you
• Running a mathematically correct strategy in poker you may lose now and then, but on the long run you’ll still be much more successful than any other players
• In relationships you may have to leave your comfort zone, open your feelings, become emotionally vulnerable for some time and just give, before you receive anything back.
• There are others, in fact, endless examples in life of this principle.

I want you to take this very seriously. Sit down and write on a piece of paper where you want to be in 1, 3, 5, 10 years. How do you see yourself? Write down strategies how you want to reach those goals. Make a few copies of those plans and put them on the wall in your bedroom, your office, your toilet,… Remind your subconsciousness why you are willing to face difficulties, pain, loss, effort.

Approval of your subconsciousness may still be necessary in order to be motivated and energized. So use those tools to remind yourself why you are doing this. Why do you sacrifice yourself today. Why are you willing to face some pain. If you do this, after some time, things that felt “bad and painful” will instead motivate and energize you. You will just feel good about facing challenges and difficulties today and you will know that you’ll grow and become stronger tomorrow.

Yours truly,

- Wit