Successful Weight Loss - The 39 Steps

When I was younger I read The Thirty-Nine Steps but much preferred the movie version. Calamity follows adventure and a sequence of unlikely escapes maintains the tension, along with the mystery of the 39 steps. It’s a good introduction to Hitchcock’s suspense-building technique.

Being handcuffed to a villain would be inconvenient but the heroine must have used up a few extra calories trying to keep up with her companion. With all the helter-skelter action in the movie it would be like being attached to a hyperactive toddler all day, rushing everywhere and never resting. Imagine having the activity level of the most active person you know. How many more calories a day would you use?

I’m not talking about exercise fanatics, just people who are always on the go. If the doorbell rings, they answer it. If the baby’s ball rolls across the floor, they rescue it. Hey, if the baby rolls across the floor they rescue him too!

Try being this active for a day. You don’t have to find babies to rescue, just move around more. If something needs taking upstairs do it straightaway rather than saving all those upstairs things for one trip. If the rubbish needs putting outside or the mailbox needs emptying you can volunteer. If the TV channel needs changing, pretend you’ve lost the remote and get up and press a few buttons on the box.

But the most obvious call to exercise in the movie is in the title. 39 steps. That’s three flights of stairs.

Imagine if before every meal and every coffee break you walk up three flights of stairs. That would nudge your calorie intake up a bit and keep you active. A flight of stairs is around thirteen steps, so go up and down stairs three times. If you live in a block with several floors available to you walk up three flights and then come back down. Go at a speed appropriate for you fitness level, but whatever speed you use, walking uphill will exercise the larger muscles in your body.

If you are feeling especially energetic you could do more than three flights of stairs – aim to be running up and down stairs 10 times before every meal. Exercise has the side effect that it tends to make you feel good – exercise has been shown to be more effective than medication in relieving depression. So with your circulation pepped up and all that feel-good stuff going on before a meal, you’ll be less likely to want to indulge in emotional eating.

And going upstairs is quite calorie-consuming. When you are moving your body weight against gravity you are also building up the biggest muscles in your body. These muscles continue to use calories even when you are at rest. Which means that once you have exercised and built up your muscles you will be using up a few more calories even when you are sitting around doing nothing in particular.

So you can, by beginning with 39 steps, gradually increase your activity level to become slimmer and fitter.

Try that today and everyday. It’s an easy way to increase your activity level, build up those fat-burning muscles and enables you to feel more energised in the middle of a busy day!

So get moving – you have nothing to lose but the weight!

(c) 2008 Liz Copeland

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