Benefits of Exercise
No matter what your age or shape, you should exercise daily. Not only does exercise tone your body, it strengthens your muscles, keeps your bones strong, and improves your skin. And there are more benefits to exercise– increased relaxation, better sleep and mood, strong immune function, and more. Who wouldn’t want all those? Let’s look at some of the incredible benefits of exercise, then talk about how you can get started.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Weight Control
Because exercise helps use up oxygen, it causes your body to burn stored fat and helps you maintain a normal weight. For instance, if you walk 4 miles a day, four times a week, you can burn about 1,600 calories, or nearly half a pound a week. If you don’t change your diet at all and keep walking the same distance over six months, you’ll lose 12 pounds. Walk the same distance for a year and you’ll drop 24 pounds!
The neat thing about exercise is you don’t have to do it all at one time. After all, not many adults with a family and full time job have time to walk 4 miles! But you can do 4 miles in short bursts throughout your day. You can break up the 4 miles into different times of the day.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Stronger Muscles
Most people know that exercise keeps muscles strong. But did you know that strong muscles burn more calories? Muscle mass is metabolically active tissue. In other words, the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn even when you’re not working out.
Studies estimate that for each pound of muscle you add to your body, you will burn an additional 35-50 calories per day. So an extra 5 pounds of muscle will burn about 175-250 calories a day, or an extra pound of fat every 14-20 days. So you can burn more calories sitting down!
Because guys have more muscle mass, they burn calories faster and lose weight more easily than girls. So girls need to work out daily to stay strong and in shape.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Stronger Bones
Regular, moderate exercise — particularly weight-bearing exercises like walking, running, jogging, and dancing — keeps your bones strong. Studies show that resistance (strengthening) exercises also boost bone mass and keep muscles strong.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Strengthens your heart and lungs.
Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Don’t throw in the towel. Regular exercise can leave you breathing easier.
Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. In fact, regular exercise helps your entire cardiovascular system — the circulation of blood through your heart and blood vessels — work more efficiently. Big deal? You bet! When your heart and lungs work more efficiently, you’ll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Better Skin
Exercise also boosts circulation and the delivery of nutrients to your skin, helping to detoxify the body by removing toxins (poisons).
As exercise boosts oxygen to the skin, it also helps increase the natural production of collagen, the connective tissue that plumps your skin. Your skin color is also improved after exercise because of the increase in blood flow.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Less Stress
Regular exercise reduces the amount of stress hormones in the body, resulting in a slower heart rate, relaxed blood vessels, and lower blood pressure. Increased relaxation after exercise shows on your face with reduced muscle tension.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Improved Mood
Need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A workout at the gym or a brisk 30-minute walk can help you calm down.
Exercise stimulates various brain chemicals, which may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out. Endorphins are hormones in the brain associated with a happy, positive feeling. A low level of endorphins is associated with depression. During exercise, plasma levels of this substance increase. This may help to ease symptoms of depression. A recent National Health and Nutrition survey found that physically active people were half as likely to be depressed.
Exercise also boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that send specific messages from one brain cell to another. Though only a small percentage of all serotonin is located in the brain, this neurotransmitter is thought to play a key role in keeping your mood calm.
You’ll also look better and feel better when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem. Exercise even reduces feelings of depression and anxiety.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Better Sleep
Struggling to fall asleep? Or stay asleep? It might help to boost your physical activity during the day.
A good night’s sleep can improve your concentration, productivity and mood. And, you guessed it, exercise is sometimes the key to better sleep. Regular exercise can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. The timing is up to you — but if you’re having trouble sleeping, you might want to try late afternoon workouts. The natural dip in body temperature five to six hours after you exercise might help you fall asleep.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: Fewer Colds
Regular exercise appears to help jump-start the immune system, thus helping to reduce the number of colds, flu, and other viruses.
Benefits of Regular Exercise: More Brainpower
Exercise boosts blood flow to the brain and helps it receive oxygen and nutrients. The better shape you’re in, the faster you fire brain waves that are responsible for quick thinking.
So, for example, if math is a real problem, you may find that daily exercise helps to solve it!
The benefits of daily exercise are incredible, and to think that they are free! Start a daily exercise regimen today, and enjoy all the proven “extras” that come with moving around more.
