Exercise is a vital part of a healthy diet and healthy lifestyle. You expend calories when you exercise, the calories you have consumed as you eat. If you don’t exercise, the calories turn to fat, but when you exercise the calories turn to muscle and keep our bodies running smoothly.
Calories are the energy that food puts out. A high calorie meal will take a lot longer to burn or use up with exercise. Without exercise, those calories, no matter where they come from, will turn to fat.
If you’re new to exercise
If you have a sedentary lifestyle or you have avoided exercise because you don’t like it or you think it’s too much trouble, commit yourself to some exercise everyday.
Start out with ten minutes walking or even cleaning the house or raking the yard. Every day add a few more minutes until you are exercising thirty minutes a day.
You’ll find that exercising relieves depression, adds joy to your life, makes you feel better overall, helps in making your brain work better, lowers your blood pressure, and adds to your overall health.
Exercise as a way of life
If you are already exercising, keep going. Many people I know exercise an hour at a time, engaging in both aerobic and weight bearing exercise. You can alternate days with aerobic, such as walking briskly or running or taking an aerobics class, and days with weight bearing exercise, such as lifting weights or using a resistance tube or Thera-band for strengthening.
Work stretching into your exercise regime. You can stretch before you begin a session of either aerobic or strengthening exercise.
