Posted by Stephen Messineo on Thu, Apr 02, 2009 @ 11:14 AM
Regular exercise is an important part of effective weight loss. It helps to control your weight by using excess calories that otherwise would be stored as fat. Daily exercise also helps prevent many diseases and improve your overall health.
Did you know, your weight is determined by the number of calories you eat each day minus what your body uses? Everything you eat contains calories, and everything you do uses calories, including sleeping, breathing, and digesting food. Any physical activity in addition to what you normally do will burn those extra calories.
Balancing the number of calories you expend through exercise and physical activity with the calories you eat will help you achieve your desired weight. The key to successful weight loss and improved overall health is making physical activity a part of your daily routine.
Research consistently shows that regular exercise, combined with healthy eating, is the most efficient and healthful way to control your weight. Additionally, regular exercise can help prevent the following:
* Heart disease and stroke. Daily physical activity can help prevent heart disease and stroke by strengthening your heart muscle, raising your HDL ("good" cholesterol), and lowering LDL cholesterol ("bad" cholesterol), improving blood flow, and increasing your heart's working capacity.
* High blood pressure. Regular exercise reduces blood pressure in people with high blood pressure (hypertension).
* Diabetes. By reducing body fat, physical activity can help to prevent and control type 2 diabetes.
* Back pain. By increasing muscle strength and endurance and improving flexibility and posture, regular exercise will prevent back pain.
* Osteoporosis. Regular weight-bearing exercise promotes bone formation and may prevent many forms of bone loss associated with aging.
Regular physical activity can also help manage stress, decreased your risk for depression by improving how you feel about yourself, and improve your overall mood.
What Types of Exercise Should I Do?
There are a variety of different types of exercises or activities you can do to achieve the benefits mentioned above. The key is to do a variety of them and do them consistently. That means spending at least 30 minutes a day doing some sort of physical activity. It also means not doing the same exercise over and over. I have seen where people will only do cardiovascular exercise on a treadmill or elliptical trainer and get frustrated because they aren't seeing the results they were looking for from their exercise program.
You need to mix it up so that your body doesn't accommodate to one form of exercise. Mixing in weight training activities, aerobic exercise classes, speed and agility exercises, and sports participation will keep your body from getting used to one routine. This strategy will improve your metabolism and be more effective for achieving the benefits mentioned above.
Unfortunately, many people come up with reasons not to exercise. These include not having the time to do it, being intimidated working out in a fitness facility, not knowing what to do once they are there, and not being able to maintain their motivation to exercise.
If you find that any of these reasons apply to you, send me an e-mail @ smessineo@allaccesspt.com, and I will offer you some suggestions to overcome your reasons for not exercising and help you get into a fitness program.