Have you yo-yo dieted all your life and are tired of the fluctuating numbers on the weighing scale? Are you frustrated with the way you look or feel and are suffering from medical ailments because of your eating and exercising habits? If so, try to turn over a new leaf by adopting a fitness for life program that will set you well on your way to physical, mental and emotional bliss.

Life Fitness Step One: Ditch the Numbers

At least on a daily basis, forget standing in the scale and starting your day on a bad note. Forget always looking at the nutritional label on the back of all packaged food and wondering if a single Oreo cookie is the difference between life and death? Forget about carb counts, glycemic index values, Weight Watchers points or any other such numbers. Eat sensibly; control your portions, include servings from all food groups and stop eating when you are nearly full. While it is important to check in with the weighing scale to see if you are on track, all experts recommend not doing it more than once a week. Water retention, the time of the month for women, bloating and other factors can mess your mind up if you stand on the scale every single day.

Similarly while you should make sensible eating choices, measuring every morsel you put into your mouth takes the fun out of most things. What happened to the impromptu plan for ice cream with your partner or movie theater popcorn once in a while?

Life Fitness Step Two: Move More

You don’t need to join an expensive gym or go all out on buying the latest home gm equipment to move more. You do not need to count steps, laps or calories burnt. You do not need to look at the treadmill clock like a watched pot that never boils. All you need to do in any fitness for life program is to get up and move more.

You could take the stairs at work, park further than you usually do, bike for errands, play tag with your dog, throw a Frisbee with your kids or take up a sport that you enjoy. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be very sporty or outdoorsy, there has to be some kind of activity that you like. It could be as simple as swimming or ping pong. The fact that you get off from in front of the TV is testimony that you are serious about the fitness for life program and want to make a difference in the quality of your life and in the lives of those around you. After all haven’t all studies repeated the mantra of ‘Monkey see, monkey do’? If you're active, your family will follow suit and you will be doing your children a service by not making them one of the statistics of obese American kids.

Staying fit for life doesn’t just entail physical health; it is a more holistic approach to total well being and is something definitely attainable if you have the will to do so.