Exercise & Fitness

There are 1,440 minutes in every day. Schedule 30 of them for physical activity!
Regular exercise is a critical part of staying healthy. People who are active live longer and feel better. Exercise can help you maintain a healthy weight. It can delay or prevent diabetes, some cancers and heart problems.
Most adults need at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity at least five days per week. Examples include walking briskly, mowing the lawn, dancing, swimming for recreation or bicycling. Stretching and weight training can also strengthen your body and improve your fitness level.
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The key is to find the right exercise for you. If it is fun, you are more likely to stay motivated. You may want to walk with a friend, join a class or plan a group bike ride. If you've been inactive for awhile, use a sensible approach and start out slowly.
Research has found that exercise when combined with a calorie reduced diet helps increase the amount of body fat burned and helps maintain lean muscle tissue. Lean muscle tissue is your muscles, organs and bones. Lean muscle tissue burns more calories than fat because lean tissue performs more work than fat. Fat just sits there like a dead weight.
Exercise also increases your basal metabolic rate for up to 15 hours after exercising. Your basal metabolic rate is the amount of calories your body burns, laying in bed, just to keep all your organs functioning. So exercise will increase the amount of calories you burn just doing your daily activities.
Exercise helps to suppress your appetite for food. That is, if you exercise correctly. You need to exercise at a rate that increases your heart rate and breathing, but not to a point where you can't catch your breath. Your body can run on three basic fuels: your blood sugar; your stored fat; your blood or tissue proteins. Your body prefers to run on glucose, but can run on fat or protein as well. However, glucose is the only fuel that can be burned without air, which is called anaerobic metabolism. In order for your body to burn fat, you need glucose and air, which is called aerobic metabolism. As long as you are able to take in enough air, you can burn some fat. If you can't carry on a conversation, you can't carry enough oxygen to your muscles to burn fat. When you exercise too intensely and are short of breath, glucose is the only fuel that you can burn. When your blood sugar gets low, a gland called the hypothalamus, sends a message to your brain that you are hungry and need to eat. So the next time you exercise and feel hungry afterwards, you exercised too hard and lowered your blood sugar to the point where your brain told you that you were hungry.
Exercise also helps fight depression. Your brain produces a hormone that gives you a good feeling. Exercise helps increase the amount of this hormone. It is the body's natural "feel good me". Exercise should make me feel good about me.
Think of ways you can increase your level of exercise. Increase your regular activity level by parking your car two blocks from your destination. This seems simple, yet even people at a health club will race to the closest parking spot. Take the stairs instead of an elevator or escalator. Walk up the stairs at a regular pace and remember to breathe in and out while climbing. Carry your own groceries out of the store rather than using the drive up door. Carrying grocery bags is similar to weight lifting!
Having an active and a busy lifestyle is not the same as exercising. Exercise benefits health by reducing fat, stress and depression.