There is always the sun behind the clouds. Living happily

If you can’t get up early to do the morning exercises,

if you don’t feel like torturing yourself with such exhausting things like colonetics… don’t despair and don’t lose heart!

First of all, try this very simple trick.

Make it a rule not to wait for a bus to go one or two stops but walk this short distance.

Don’t jump into your car each time you have to go to the chemist’s only two blocks away.

Go there on foot.

Just for a change, if not for other reasons.

Naturally, I wouldn’t recommend doing it on the coldest day of the year or when it’s pouring with rain. That would be the best way to kill any desire to travel otherwise than by car with a climate control on and could put you off walking for a long time, if not for the rest of your life.

It’s certainly best to turn over a new leaf in spring when the whole nature is waking up from its long winter sleep.

You fill up your lungs with fresh intoxicating spring air.

You can feel the winds of change blowing around you.

And it’s so much easier to follow the inspiring example of nature and change your way of life and your attitude to yourself and to the world around you.

But if you don’t want to wait till spring, if the whims of the changeable weather can’t frighten you off, don’t wait and start your new life TODAY!

Do it NOW!

Even if it’s a nasty autumn or a freezing winter day.

“There is no such thing as bad weather. Any kind of weather is a blessing”.

It’s a well-known fact that walking does you a lot of good.

It’s an extremely healthy and also a surprisingly easy and pleasant exercise.

It’s not a ten-kilometre cross-country race and not even jogging.

Nobody doubts that walking helps you to keep fit, and with the minimum effort on your part, too.

But as it turns out, this is not its only advantage.

Scientific research has proven that it also stimulates and impoves the functioning of your brain. But this refers mainly to women.

Which means it won’t help mental abilities of men, and the latter should look for other, probably more complicated ways of improving their thinking processes.

• Try to live a more active life and to move more!

It’s important not only for the slimness of your body and the firmness of your muscles.

It’s no less important for your general well-being and your mood.

Find your favourite ways and methods.

If you say that you are too busy to go in for sports, that you have no time for keep-fit activities, or that a year’s membership in a fitness-club costs a fortune, don’t fool yourself.

You are only looking for excuses.

This is nothing but your inner resistance to change and you have to overcome it.

You can do fitness virtually anywhere.

On your way to college or from work.

Even in the office if you lock yourself in for a least a quarter of an hour.

If you are interested and want to learn more about it, leaf through “Fit for Fun” magazine or other similar editions.

Some of the women I know are actively using its recommendations.

They have added some of their individual favourites and can now do a wonderful complex of exercises right in the office, practically at their working places.

A very simple exercise for home and office

When you sit in front of your PC or laptop the whole day, make a break from time to time and put one leg over the other thirty times in a row, in a high tempo.

Then do the same with the other leg and you’ll immediately feel the difference.

You’ll realise you’ve got muscles and they can hurt.

Naturally you shouldn’t do that during important negotiations with potential clients.

It can be grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted.

But whenever the boss leaves the office or turns his back, or your colleagues are going out for a smoke you can go ahead and exercise to your heart’s content.

There is one thing you can be a 100% sure of:

It’s much healthier than joining the others and poisoning yourself with a cigarette or yet another cup of coffee.

A few pieces of friendly advice

Here are some very simple ways to start moving more, practically for free, without any extra expenses and with minimal time losses.

• Walk more. It’s much more effective than you can imagine.

• Walk up and down the stairs, in the metro, in the office and at home.

Don’t use the lift (up to a point and within ⠀ reasonable limits, of course. I don’t mean climbing to the top floor of a skyscraper every day of the week) but if it’s only a matter of several flights of steps, don’t be lazy and use your feet.

By the way, here is an interesting fact:

It would appear that going downstairs is much easier than going upstairs.

But it turns out that, strange though it may seem, we are using up more calories when we go down and not up. Just bear it in mind, especially if you are planning to lose weight.

• Remember your childhood and jump the rope or do the hullahoop.

It’s good both for shaping your body and training your heart.

• Dance more.

Use every opportunity to dance – go to discos or take dancing lessons.

You can also dance at home to your favourite dancing music.

• Try to discover what your favourite sport is.

It can be anything whatsoever – skiing and snowboarding in winter or roller-skating and mountain-climbing in summer, swimming or cycling, Latino or belly dancing, Yoga or pilates.

The choice is entirely your own.

The only really important thing is that you have to enjoy doing it, it’s got to be fun.

• Choose the best time of the day to do sports.

If you are an incorrigible “owl” in your sleeping habits, you will find it terribly difficult to get up even fifteen minutes earlier in the morning.

No problem with that.

There is no rule about jogging or doing exercises only in the morning.

If you want to, you can just as well do it in the evening.

Moreover, American scientists have discovered that it’s even better to do jogging in the evening.

You may believe it or not, but why not try it yourself, especially if by nature you are definitely “an owl” and not “a lark”?

By the way, quite recently when I was in Paris, I was surprised by the number of people of both sexes, jogging in the evening, right in the centre of Paris, practically below the Eiffel Tower.

And shortly before that I witnessed a similar thing in the neigbouring Belgium – in the parks and boulevards of Brussels.

So it looks like jogging in the evening is quite in the spirit of the times.

Now it’s up to you to start jogging one beautiful morning or evening.

When you do it – is entirely up to you to decide.

It depends on your taste, your biological rhythm and sleeping habits.

Well…

It doesn’t matter where, how and what you do in terms of fitness and sports.

Likewise, it doesn’t matter what time of the day you choose for it.

There is only one thing that really matters: not to forget the important rule of well-being and high spirits, without which a woman simply can’t feel happy.

And that is…

The fourth commandment of a happy woman:

Try to lead a more active way if life.

Move more and stay in a good form!

(Naturally I mean your physical form and not the products of the leading producers of sports clothes!)

Chapter five

We are what we eat

Eat to live but don’t live to eat.

(English proverb)

The German proverb has it: “Man ist was man isst”, or “A man (=a person) is what he eats.”

This is largely true.

If you want to look and feel well, don’t harm yourself, which means:

• Don’t poison yourself with the so-called fast food.

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Примечания

1

In Russia we call the brave and cold-resistant people who swim in the ice-holes in winter “walruses”.