It is a common misconception with many that only if you are fat or obese, you need to go on a diet and exercise vigorously. If you are one among those, then let me clear out to you dear that it is not true.
No matter how old you are or what is your age, you must maintain a well balanced diet and have some or the other form of exercise in your daily routine in order to keep yourself fit and healthy, free of any disease and illnesses.
However, when you are doing certain daily chores like moving the lawn or moving up and down the stairs, your body is in the workout mode. You work up your sweat, breathe heavy, hear throbbing and you still continue the activity.
This can be considered some form of physical exercise. Yes, these are aerobic exercise.
So who said you aren’t exercising? But, think about it…are you seriously doing these tasks daily? To what level are you performing these activities? Is it really sufficient to satisfy the needs of your daily workout?
If yes, then congratulations keep going with your daily form of aerobics. Even walking, swimming, bicycling, etc are all forms of aerobic workouts, also known as “CARDIO”.
But, if your job or business leaves you no time for these activities at home, then you must surely hit the gym or aerobics class every day. Like you plan your work schedule, similarly you must plan your exercise schedule and make sure you follow it.
When you know exercise is crucial for your well being, I am sure you can afford to take out just 20 – 45 mins during the entire day for your aerobics. Studies show that regular exercise boosts circulation, which helps keep inflammation under control.
Hence, perk up your routine with cardiovascular and resistance training to help yourself getting into inflammatory issues that leads to heart, joint and digestive diseases.
Building your endurance actually allows you to perform many of your daily activities well and also gives you a good break from your hectic work schedule for the day.
Now, depending on your body type and age, you can choose which form of exercise you want to opt for. You can say, exercise can be classified as aerobic exercise and anaerobic exercise. Here are the 7 good reasons to hit your aerobics today & know the Benefits of Exercise.
What Is Aerobic Exercise?
Aerobic exercise refers to any low-intensity activity that you can sustain for more than just a few minutes while your heart, lungs, and muscles work overtime, while the high-intensity physical activity is called anaerobic exercise (e.g. body building, muscle building).
How Your Body Reacts To It?
During aerobic activity, you constantly move large muscle groups of your body including arms, legs and hips.
Your breath becomes faster and deeper, increasing the amount of oxygen supply to your blood. Your heart gets thumping causing your blood to rush through your vessels, to your muscles and back to lungs.
Even the small blood vessels widen to get oxygen to your muscles and carry away the waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid. During this time, your body releases endorphins, natural painkillers that promote an increased sense of well-being.
There are many types of aerobic exercises, running, swimming, bicycling, dancing, playing basket ball or tennis etc, but to reap its benefits, having a structured exercise routine is necessary.
So, get your trainers ready, while you check out the benefits of exercise to get yourself motivated!
Benefits Of Exercise
#1. Improves Mental Health
As mentioned earlier, exercise releases the endorphins, the natural painkillers of the body and when done regularly helps you combat stress, anxiety and depression. It helps you relax from your work stress and rejuvenate yourself to start afresh.
A yearlong study conducted by the researches in an attempt to treat and prevent brain tissue degradation coupled with aging, supports that aerobic exercise helps maintain hippocampus volume in the later stages of life, thus improving spatial memory.
Spatial memory refers to our capacity to store and access information
#2. Strengthen your Heart
Benefits of aerobics is that it strengthens your heart by keeping it active and function more efficiently, improving blood flow to all parts of the body.
#3. Keeps your Pounds in Check
Exercise coupled with a healthy diet not only helps you drop your pounds but also keeps a check on your weight. Hence it aids in weight loss.
#4. Reduce your Health Risks
Aerobic exercise cuts down the risk of many conditions, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke and certain types of cancer. Weight-bearing aerobic exercises, such as walking, reduce the risk of osteoporosis.
#5. Improves Muscle Health
Health benefits of physical exercise includes the development of microscopic blood vessels that provide sufficient quantities of oxygen in the muscles and rids off the metabolic wastes such as lactic acid formed during exercise, from the muscles. This improves your muscle strength. This process also lessens the discomfort associated with chronic muscle pain and back pain.
#6. Stay Active and Independent as You Age
Aerobic exercise helps you maintain your muscles strength that keeps you physically active and delays cognitive decline as you get old. Minimum 30 minutes of aerobic exercise thrice a week can reduce cognitive decline in older adults.
#7. Live longer
Studies show that people who participate in regular aerobic exercise live longer than those who don’t regularly.
Exercise can be a breakthrough approach to delay or prevent many diseases, especially that are common in older adults such as diabetes and heart disease and thereby cut down the skyrocket healthcare costs required for its treatment. It can also help you socialize well, you never know, you may end up having a good friend circle in your jogging park, gym, aerobic class, etc.
So, Are you ready to run with me? Cool!
Do bear in mind, if you have not been active for a certain period or if you have any health condition, just seek your doctor’s approval before you begin.
For any sort of workout you opt for, you need to warm up the first 5-10 minutes and also at the end of your workout session.
Always start slowly, take fewer steps and gradually pick up the pace by adding a few more to each session.
Do follow regular exercises to lose weight, be it anything that keep you physically active, brisk walk, jogging, choose and always try to keep your workouts interesting and exciting by including strength, flexibility, balancing exercises.
To enjoy the benefits of exercise, you should make sure you eat healthy balanced diet. If you are doubtful about taking in all the essential vitamins and nutrients through your diet, then you may opt for their supplements in the form of multivitamins and antioxidants.
So, which form of exercise would you love to give it a shot and how will that help you? Let us know in the comments below….lets see what interesting answers do we get!
Dear Radhika,
Both are wonderful form of exercise as well as meditation.You can get involve in any physical activity provided you are keeping yourself fit.
I love swimming and prefer cycling as a form of exercise rather yoga and gym