As the New Year has emerged it is essential that you grasp the opportunity to start clean and provide yourself with a new start. It seems like the New Year is cluttered with goals of loosing weight, eating less, shedding the Christmas pounds or trying to get back into that special pair of skinny jeans. The problem is these goals loose their luster after a couple of weeks and are discarded with the previous year's goals. Why not give yourself a gift this year, a gift that will strengthen your heart, build muscles, fortify your bones, activate your mind and energize your being. The gift is Health. Avoid focusing on loosing inches or pounds and re-focus your attention on being healthy.

What does it mean to be healthy? A person's health is measured in several ways:

• Heart rate
• Muscle strength
• Exercise endurance
• Energy level
• Weight
• Nutrition

The heart is the center of health in the human body; it pumps oxygen around the body to organs and muscles. By increasing the hearts ability one will increase their ability to live healthily with an alert and strong immune system. Well, how does one give the gift of health? Start with small attainable goals and gradually build upon them. First focus your effort on the health of your heart. Take your resting heart rate take it in the morning when you are rested and calm, this will give you an idea of the health of your heart. Obviously ones heart rate is determined by age, sex, fitness, medication, anxiety and genetics but a generally a healthy resting heart rate beats between 60-80 beats per minute. It would be a smart idea to meet with a health care provider and have them take your heart rate and all other vital procedures. Share with them your desire to improve their health and ask them to direct your goals.

To improve the condition of the heart it must be worked. The heart is an intricate muscle and therefore must be challenged to improve its ability to pump blood throughout the body. Any type of cardiovascular exercise is a perfect tool to challenge the hearts ability to pump blood. As a beginner start at a low intensity and as your heart and other muscles strengthen you will be able to increase the intensity. Cardiovascular exercise not only trains the heart it challenges all major muscle groups and sheds unwanted weight when done for an hour 3-5 times a week.

As you focus on strengthening the miraculous working of the heart you will see a dramatic increase in energy and endurance. As you enjoy these glorious gifts of a healthy heart you can engage in other challenging exercise programs such as strength training, yoga, Pilates, kick boxing, circuit training etc...

Everyone should reward themselves with the gift of health. A healthy body will feel great, look stunning and radiate energy. A healthy body is a life long gift that will help you accomplish all that you desire. With the companion of a healthy body you will no longer be held because you lack energy, confidence or stamina rather the sky is your limit and your body will enable you to reach it! Make this New Years different; make the goal to be healthy. Create achievable goals and follow through to seize the healthy body that you deserve.