February 15, 2020

Exercise. It’s a scary word for many of us. For some, it conjures up unpleasant memories of under achieving embarrassment during those excruciating PE sessions that we’ve spent years trying to erase from our minds. It is associated with pain, fatigue, exhaustion and all kinds of other unpleasantness. And it has always been something we struggled with. Imagine though that exercise is different. Think of it as something that you look forward to. Picture that it is your special time to maintain, shape and create the type of body and mind that you know you deserve to live inside of. Think of exercise as the vehicle to a new, enhanced, more vibrant, self fulfilled version of you. Having the exercise benefits in mind will move you past the excuses.

The problem has been that too few people have had the key to unlocking the door to exercise fulfillment and achieving the exercise benefits which we will talk about in this article. What are the exercise benefits, how much do you need, and is there a thing of exercising too much? Those are the topics we will be covering in this article …

The Exercise Benefits

Exercise will do the following for you:

· Improve your Mood
· Make it easier for you to learn
· Build self-esteem
· Keep you grain fit
· Keep you fit, functional and agile
· Improve your mental well being
· Heighten your immune system
· Reduce your stress level
· Bring happiness
· Slows down the aging process
· Gives you a better quality of sleep
· Enhance joint mobility
· Gives you better skin tone and color
· Ward off strokes
· Makes you stronger
· Reduces anxiety
· Improves your memory
· Help you kick unhealthy addictions
· Makes you more productive
· Improves your creative thinking ability
· Improve your body image
· Boost confidence
· Helps keep you focused
· Improve your nutritional practices
· Make your bones stronger

Having considered this exhaustive list of exercise benefits, you now know just how valuable regular exercise time really is. Yet, despite the many intrinsic rewards that come with exercising, the vast majority of people work out because they want to look better. And the majority of them want to exercise to help them to lose weight. So, let’s take a moment to find out just how exercise can help you on your journey to a new, slimmer you.

Your body is constantly managing the balance between energy intake and energy expenditure. You take energy in in the form of food and you expend it by way of your basal metabolic rate and physical activity. The difference between the two is your net energy balance. If intake exceeds expenditure, then a positive net energy balance occurs and energy gets stored as body fat.

The energy expenditure of your body depends upon

· Your starting body weight
· Your basal metabolic rate
· Physical activity

The level of physical activity is dependent upon the following factors:

· Frequency of the activity
· The intensity of the exercise
· The duration of the activity
· The type of activity performed

By creating a negative net energy balance through exercise, you will lose body fat. Of course, this pre-supposes that you don’t eat extra calories to offset the amount of calories burned through the exercise that you are doing. For example, it would take a person 30 minutes of moderate walking to burn off the calories in a plain donut.

Basic Recommendations for Exercise

The basic recommendations for physical activity are 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity exercise. That equates to about half an hour a day, five days a week. Recent studies, however, indicate that more is better. Our bodies were not designed to sit around all day under artificial light tapping away at a keyboard.

Coupled with a proper nutritional program, the right type of exercise will allow you to lose body fat consistently as you strip away the layers to reveal a leaner, meaner you.

We were made to move, to jump and to run. No magic pill, vitamin, drug or app can negate that simple fact. By embracing a lifestyle which is grounded in fitness and exercise, you will be giving yourself the greatest gift of all – a fuller, more satisfying life.

Don’t Let Procrastination Get to You

Procrastination affects all of us. We seem to have an inbuilt tendency to put off the things we know we have to do, even when we appreciate how good they are for us.

Here’s a good way to get past procrastination

The Ten Minute Rule – If we perceive that a job is going to be hard work, we develop an aversion to it in our minds that leads us to keep putting it off. However, when we break the larger task down into smaller, more manageable chunks, it suddenly becomes much easier to think about. With your exercise sessions, rather than thinking of a 34 minute workout, chunk it out to a 7 minute warm up, 10 minutes of resistance training, 10 minutes of cardio and then a 7 minute warm down. This makes the task seem far easier to achieve.

Time and Exercise

A lot of people tell themselves that they don’t have time for exercise. We’re all incredibly busy with more and more demands coming in on us all the time. But, exercise needs to be a priority in your schedule. It is, after all, the key to everything else. Unless your body is maintained you will not be able to do all of those other things that are tugging at your time. For that reason you must schedule your workout into your calendar as non-negotiable ‘you’ time. Let people know that you are not available during those times.

Now that you have read through this article, learn about the most effective exercises that have shown time and time again just how powerful they are. You can read more by going to "Best Exercises for Building Muscle and Lose Weight Fast".

Are you ready to embrace the exercise benefits and break through your plateau? Learn more by downloading our free 12-week workout guide. 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

1. Heather Hatfield, Your Exercise Routine: How much is enough?, WedMD - http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/your-exercise-routine-how-much-is-enough#1
2. Physical Exercise – Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise
3. The Benefits Physical Activity – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/pa-health/
4. Sophia Breene - 13 Mental Health Benefits of Exercise – Shape - http://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/13-mental-health-benefits-exercise


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