Ian Mackie

Want to live a more enjoyable life? Get out and exercise. Here’s how, without all fluff.

The key to improved overall health is making physical activity a part of your daily routine, as over 20 years of research has shown that aerobic exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health and well-being.

Any type of physical activity you choose to do--strenuous activities such as running or aerobic dancing or moderate-intensity activities such as walking or household work--will increase the number of calories your body uses (remember, calories in – calories out.) And the good news is it's easier than one thinks to perform numerous aerobic activities throughout the day.

So we all know we’re supposed to exercise. So what? Without getting to technical, here are a couple reasons we all need to get out and do it…NOW.

• Exercise improves the strength and pumping efficiency of the heart, enabling more blood to be pumped with each stroke. This improves the ability to more rapidly transport life sustaining oxygen from the lungs to the heart and to all parts of the body.
• Exercise tones up muscles throughout the body, thereby improving the general circulation, at times lowering the blood pressure and reducing the work on the heart.
• Exercise causes an increase in the total amount of blood circulating through the body and increases the number of red blood cells and the amount of hemoglobin (matter which conveys oxygen to tissues), making the blood a more efficient oxygen carrier.
• This increase in circulation has a twofold benefit to the body. First, an abundant supply of oxygen is taken not only to the muscles, but also to every part of the system.
• And second, the blood is circulated through the eliminating organs at a much greater amount, thus resulting in an increase in the elimination of the body's wastes. Both of these are essential for good health and healing.
• There’s been a lot of talk about good and bad cholesterol lately. Well, aerobic exercise can raise your body's high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels (good cholesterol) and lower your body's low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels (bad cholesterol), improving blood flow, and increasing your heart's working capacity.

To make a long story short, a physically fit person has greater ability to tolerate the physical challenges of daily life, whereas an unfit person would terminate activity because of fatigue. Trying to lose or maintain weight? Physical activity helps to control your weight by using excess calories that otherwise would be stored as fat. The number of calories you eat and use each day regulates your body weight. Everything you eat contains calories, and everything you do uses calories, including sleeping, breathing, and digesting food. Any physical activities in addition to what you normally do will use extra calories.

So now we have a little of the technical information on why exercise is good for the body (and soul we should add.) But where do we start and what types of exercise should we be focusing on?

First, your heart rate

While exercising, you want to work hard enough (intensity) for your heart rate to reach between 140 and 170, which is approximately double your resting rate. A person who is in poor physical condition will reach the Target Heart Rate with very little effort expended because the resting rate is high (80's or 90's) and the body does not have enough oxygen, so the person gets tired very quickly. On the other hand, the person in good physical condition will have to work harder to reach the target heart rate because the resting heart rate is low (50's). Remember, the heart becomes a more efficient pump - delivering the oxygen needed with fewer beats. Therefore, it takes more effort to get the heart rate up to 170.

Low impact versus High impact

Aerobic activity is often coined either High Impact or Low Impact. The basic difference is that one foot always stays on the floor and supports the weight of the body in low-impact aerobics. High-impact aerobics include actions that take both feet off the floor, thus causing more jarring of the joints when the body weight hits the floor again. An example of Low Impact is walking while High Impact is jogging or jumping up and down.

The point is not to make physical activity an unwelcome chore, but to make the most of the opportunities you have to be active.

It is important to start at a low intensity and increase this over the following few weeks as the exercise feels easier. For example, 20 minutes of walking, jogging or a combination of walking/jogging may be sufficient to leave you rather breathless and fairly tired at the start of your program, but as the weeks go by, you may need to increase the pace or introduce jogging up some shallow hills to achieve a further increase in fitness.

To continue to increase your fitness level, you will have to increase the time spent exercising aerobically to 30 minutes per session for up to five sessions per week.

Examples of mild to moderate aerobic activities:

• Take a short walk around the block
• Rake leaves
• Play actively with the kids
• Walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator
• Mow the lawn
• Take an activity break--get up and stretch or walk around
• Park your car a little farther away from your destination

Examples of higher intensity aerobic activities:

• Brisk walking
• Jogging
• Bicycling
• Swimming
• Aerobic dancing
• Racket sports
• Rowing
• Ice or roller-skating
• Cross-country or downhill skiing
• Using aerobic equipment (i.e., treadmill, stationary bike)

Exercise can have a surprising number of benefits: it can improve your cardiovascular fitness and muscular endurance, which translates into an increase in energy; it can dramatically reduce the risk of coronary artery disease; it may also help lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and aid in weight control; and it appears to give self-esteem a measurable boost, and in general to improve your sense of well-being.

Article Tags: Physical Activity, Heart Rate

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