With all the options available to help you improve the way you look and feel, purchasing a piece of home equipment is a viable solution for those who are disciplined enough to use it consistently. Unfortunately, most home exercise equipment is left to collect dust because people buy the wrong equipment that won't help them achieve their fitness goals. Slick marketing campaigns and infomercials that use deceptive claims have tricked people into thinking that they can achieve fast results with little effort.

If you are like most people, you want to improve the way you look and feel. but you are confused by all the options available and fed up with false promises. Not having enough time is the number one reason people say they do not exercise. The simple convenience of squeezing in a quick workout in your own home takes the time excuse out of the equation.

You need to remember that when you've made the decision to buy exercise equipment for your home, the key is to make the right purchase from the beginning. If you buy something that doesn't work even once, you will be less likely to try again, and you will ruin a great opportunity to improve your health. Here are some of the top Do's and Don'ts on your path to improved health and fitness.

-Include strength training in your physical activity routine. Strength training helps build lean muscle tissue, which is your body's fat-burning machinery, and will allow you to burn more calories at rest.

-Include cardio exercise in your physical activity routine. Walking is a good start but losing a single pound of fat equals 3,500 calories burned, and walking will yield limited results, compared to other forms of higher-intensity cardio exercise. For example, walking at a slow pace of less than 2.0 mph for an hour will burn approximately 175 calories for a person who weighs 155 pounds. Higher-intensity exercise, like running or using an elliptical trainer at approximately 70% of your maximum heart rate, can burn over twice the calories in half the time.

-The most effective, non-impact piece of equipment available is a good elliptical trainer.

-Choose short workouts - you will have a better chance of sticking with your routine. Start out with 20 minutes of cardio exercise four times per week and 10 minutes of strength training, focusing on only two muscle groups with each workout, for a total of 30 minutes. Long-term fitness results will happen only if you include physical activity in the form of regular exercise as a part of your routines and habits. There are 168 hours in a week. Give just two of these hours per week to exercise to improve your health with this simple system.

-Hastily make purchasing decisions.

-Be tricked into buying a piece of abdominal equipment as the solution for achieving your fitness goals. The Ab Lounger, Ab Roller, Ab Rocker, Ab Doer, the Bean, Red Exerciser and other abdominal equipment claim that you can lose inches and get washboard abs by using their products. This is one of the biggest deceptions in the fitness industry. It doesn't work that way. There isn't anything on the market that will magically melt away fat or reduce inches from your midsection. The human body does not have a mechanism to selectively burn fat in specific areas. You can do abdominal exercises until the cows come home, but you will never lose inches around your mid-section or see "washboard abs" until the fat around your waistline is gone. Spot reduction is a lie, and any product that claims or implies otherwise is a scam and a big, fat rip-off.

-Waste your money on electrical muscle stimulators (EMS). For years, manufacturers of ab belts that stimulate muscles using small currents of electricity made distorted claims, including weight loss, spot reduction, shaping and contouring, and cellulite removal. Claims by these manufacturers were so outrageous that the FDA filed litigation to protect consumers and halt the use of deceptive claims. Amazingly (and shamefully), the FDA then approved the Slendertone (EMS), but the manufacturer still uses deceptive before-and-after images to make people think that they can lose weight and drop inches by using their product.

-Be taken by false promises made by manufacturers of sauna belts that claim or imply they will help you lose inches around your midsection. You won't lose much of anything when buying this device, except your hard earned money and temporary water weight. Sauna belts are a complete and total lie and will not help you achieve your health and fitness goals.