Exercise, Fitness, and Beyond

It goes without saying that exercise and fitness is beneficial for your overall health. Benefits include weight control and preventing obesity, reducing the risks of cardiac-related diseases, managing blood sugar and insulin levels to prevent metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, strengthen bones and muscles to help better go about daily activities, and helps improve mental health, mood, and even sexual health.

Studies have shown that after using exercise, fitness, and nutritional intervention in overweight individuals had a significant weight reduction, improved body mass index, waist circumference, overall fat mass, and physical fitness and performance.

Now, committing to a exercise and adopting a healthy lifestyle is probably easier said than done. Like many Americans, chances are you are probably busy with other aspects of your life, such as family life, may have a sedentary job, or have yet to change or take up exercise habits. There’s good news in that it’s never too late to start and that there’s been new attitudes regarding exercise and increasing your physical activity output; cumulative activity over your day may be just as good as knocking out a workout in a single session.

Guidelines for Physical Activity
There are guidelines in place as established by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion that not only pertain to adults, but as well as children and the elderly.

Suggested guidelines for physical activity in adults are as follows:
- 150 minutes of moderate intensity of cardio-based physical activity or 75 minutes of high-intensity cardio-based physical activity over a one         week period.

Cardio-based exercises pertain to strengthening your cardiac function and endurance; increasing your cardiac output through these types of exercises will   improve your ability to deliver oxygen and nutrients to better meet the demands of your body when performing.The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion suggests that aerobic exercise should be broken down into ten minute intervals throughout the week. Cardio-based exercises doesn’t necessarily mean you need to get out and run, you can be creative with it and do activities that you enjoy, such as playing sports, dancing, swimming, or cycling.

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion also recommends two or more days of strength training. There was an old ideology in that strength training amounted to bodybuilding, however, strength training goes beyond aesthetics. The benefits of strength training are multi-fold; it stimulates bone and muscle growth and essentially protects us from tissue loss; as we age, after a certain point, there is a 3-5% annual loss in bone tissue with varying degrees of muscle loss in living a sedentary lifestyle. Strength training further helps us go about and better perform our activities of daily living as it improves coordination, muscular endurance, and may help prevent injury.

Beyond Physical Fitness
While it’s been well-established that there are tremendous benefits to exercise and fitness, did you know exercise has been shown to improve mental health and cognitive function? Physical fitness is commonly known to improve one’s outward appearance. There’s a psychological component where it also improves how an individual perceives themselves. In essence, when you look good, you feel good, and have a better sense of self-worth. This amounts to a decrease in feeling anxious or depressed.

 

Studies have also shown that increased physical activity spares age-related loss of brain tissue as we age. Exercise has been shown to activate and “exercise” the regions of the brain that are involved with cognition. It has been shown that active seniors were more capable in processing information and were more attentive and interacting with their surrounding environment, yielding better results in terms of tasks performance.