Top 8 Benefits of Physical Activity
Evaluate your activity level, in your own mind. Visualize a scale from 1 to 10, one being on the couch to 10 full-on daily exercises. Where on that scale do you fall?
If you are looking for long-term health benefits get active. By increasing your physical activity level, you will burn more calories than you store from eating during the day – it’s never too late to jumpstart a healthy lifestyle.
Need more convincing to get moving? Check out these 10 ways physical exercise can lead to a happier, healthier you.
1. Exercise Helps with Weight Control. Along with diet, exercise can help prevent excess weight gain or help maintain weight loss. To lose weight, you must use more calories than you eat and drink. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn. But exercising takes time, how much time is your health worth?
2. Improve your Mental Health and Mood. Basically, during exercise, your body releases chemicals that can improve your mood and make you feel more relaxed. Get that emotional lift, blow off steam or just feel better after a good work out. When you exercise regularly it will boost your confidence and help with self-esteem. Just start moving.
3. Combat Disease and other Health Conditions. Heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol are all impacted with exercise. Physical activity strengthens your heart and improves your circulation. This increased blood flow raises oxygen levels in your body which aids in decreasing your risk of cardiovascular diseases.
4. Improve Your Sleep. Have trouble sleeping? Exercise can help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer and deepen your sleep. Spending time on physical activity gets the body pumped up, the juices flowing and feeling good. Good sleep impacts all aspects of your health – physical, mental and emotional.
5. Boost Your Energy with Physical Activity. Do you feel tired just doing regular chores around the house? Regular physical activity can improve your muscle strength and boost your endurance. When you exercise, oxygen and nutrients are delivered to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently. When your heart and lung health improve, your energy improves to tackle those daily chores.
6. Let Exercise Put a Spark Back in Your Sex Life. I’m just too tired. Ever heard that one in the bedroom? We already know that regular exercise improves energy levels which may boost your sex life. But regular physical activity may enhance arousal for women and men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don’t exercise.
7. Increase your life expectancy. Studies have shown that exercise can reduce your risk of dying early from the leading causes of death, like heart disease, high blood pressure, and some cancers.
8. Exercise can be Social
Any amount of activity is better than nothing. Just get up and be more active throughout your day — take the stairs, walk the dog around the block, get into the weight room, join a running club – just do something and do it consistently.
Make it fun. Unwind, enjoy the outdoors or engage in activities that make you happy. Connect with family or friends in a fun, exercise-based, social setting. Let’s dance, hike, run, cycle, or join a soccer team. Find something you enjoy, and just go do it!
