Just Keep Swimming...
…Just Keep Swimming…
When life gets you down, do you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming, or walking, or biking, or hiking! Any kind of exercise to get and keep you motivated this Fall and anytime of the year!
Exercise is so important for your health happiness journey! It is not only good for you physically, but mentally as well.
Here are 10 top exercise facts (From WEBMD) that will transform how you think about exercise, and the benefits it plays on your bodies! Remember exercise to have fun and be healthy, not just to lose weight!
If you've been looking for the motivation to begin an exercise program or get back into working out regularly, here are 10 fitness facts that may help inspire you to get off the couch.
1. Exercise Boosts Brainpower
Not only does exercise improve your body, it helps your mental function. Exercise increases energy levels and increases serotonin in the brain, which leads to improved mental clarity. All that makes for a more productive day.
2. Movement Melts Away Stress
As much as it may stress you out just to think about exercising, once you actually start working out, you'll experience less stress in every part of your life.
3. Exercise Gives You Energy
You might be surprised at how, say, popping in a workout tape for 30 minutes in the morning can change your whole day. When endorphins are released into your bloodstream during exercise, you feel much more energized the rest of the day.
And when you improve your strength and stamina, it's easier to accomplish everyday tasks like carrying groceries and climbing stairs. This also helps you feel more energetic over the course of the day.
4. It's Not That Hard to Find Time for Fitness
Take your kids to the park or ride bikes together, and you're getting physical activity while enjoying family time. Beyond that, go for a hike, take the kids swimming, or play hide-and-seek, tag, softball, or horseshoes in the backyard.
Also, forget the idea that you have to trudge to the gym and spend an hour or more doing a formal workout. Instead, you can work short spurts of physical activity into your day.
"Everyone has 20 minutes”. Indeed, squeezing in two or three bouts of 15 or 20 minutes of activity is just as effective as doing it all at once. Vacuuming the house in the morning, riding bikes in the park with the kids in the afternoon, then taking a brisk walk in the evening can add up to an active day.
Recent U.S. government guidelines say that to lose weight and keep the weight off, you should accumulate at least 60 minutes of exercise a day. But half an hour a day is all you need to reap the health and disease-fighting benefits of exercise.
5. Fitness Can Help Build Relationships
Think of what exercising with a partner can do for a relationship, whether it's with a spouse, a sibling, or a friend you used to go to lunch with once a week.
Not only that, but exercise is always more fun when there's someone to do it with. So, plan to walk with your spouse after dinner every night. Meet your sister or that friend for tennis or an aerobics class instead of lunch.
6. Exercise Helps Ward Off Disease
Research has shown that exercise can slow or help prevent heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis (bone loss), and loss of muscle mass.
It also helps ease some aspects of the aging process. Because exercise strengthens the muscles and joints, it is going to reduce your odds of having some of those aches and pains and problems most adults have.
Provided you don't overdo it, exercise can even boost immune function -- so you spend less time down with a cold or flu.
"There isn't a major health problem where exercise cannot have a positive effect”
7. Fitness Pumps Up Your Heart
Not only does exercise help fight disease, it creates a stronger heart -- the most important muscle in the body. That helps makes exercise -- and the activities of daily life -- feel easier.
8. Exercise Lets You Eat More
Pound for pound, muscle burns more calories at rest than body fat. So, the more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate. And, of course, you also burn calories while you're actually exercising.
All this means that "cheating" with a cookie once in a while isn't going to take you back 10 steps. "Can you eat anything? No, but you can afford to enjoy some of the things you really like when you exercise regularly. You can better get away with those things in moderation than you can when you're not working out.
9. Exercise Boosts Performance
After a few weeks of consistent exercise, you may feel your clothes fitting differently and see that your muscle tone has improved.
You may also notice your newly pumped-up muscles in other ways, especially if you're a recreational golfer or tennis player, or like a friendly game of pick-up basketball. Exercising consistently will strengthen your muscles, increase flexibility, and improve your overall performance.
10. Weight Loss Is Not the Most Important Goal
Weight loss is the reason many people exercise in the first place. But it's certainly not the sole benefit of an exercise program. The long-term goal of weight loss is sold too heavily to people starting fitness programs, and that can be discouraging. People have trouble sticking with something if they don't see results quickly.
So whatever weight loss goal you have when starting a fitness program, don't make it your only goal. Strive to feel better, to have more energy, to be less stressed. Notice the small things that exercise does for you quickly, rather than getting hung up on the narrow goal of the number on a scale.
With a goal of losing weight and enhancing health, exercise has to become a part of your life, not an afterthought!
"Don’t wait another day to become active – START TODAY!"