National Women’s Health Week: Get Active! The Importance of Regular Exercise

It’s no suprise to most of us that there are many benefits to staying active and incorporating

a regular fitness routine into your life.

Exercising regularly will have ongoing positive effects on the quality of your life so it’s great

that National Women’s Health Week is raising awareness of the importance of exercise.

Prevention of illness is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a healthy body.

It has been proven that regular exercise and the heightened levels of health that develops from

this exercise can help to reduce the incidence of diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases and

strokes.

Exercise can reduce hypertension and many other ailments.

As well as this, fitness training can help people have a more positive outlook on life and improve

their self-confidence.

Regular exercise releases endorphins in the body that help to fight the symptoms of

depression and give us a feeling of happiness.

It only takes a little more than 10 minutes of continuous exercise for the body to start releasing

endorphins.

Another chemical that is increased in the body during and after exercise is serotonin.

This occurs in the central nervous system and is also responsible for making us feel happier and

reducing the possibility of depression.

Serotonin also assists in getting better sleep and that in turn helps with better workouts

through increased energy.

Fitness can become addictive as we start to realize these benefits of feeling better in both the

mind and the body.

The more fitness training we do the more of these ‘positive’ chemicals are released into our

body and we get happier and healthier with each passing day.

By reshaping our body with exercise, and particularly resistance training, we feel better about

ourselves and this also helps to build self-esteem and self-confidence.

This flows over into all aspects of life and we begin to find that even work and family life benefit

from the more positive energy that fitness training brings.

Regular exercise is the key to success as energy builds with consistency and this makes the

training easier to handle and more enjoyable.

 

“Fitness can become addictive

as we start to realize the benefits

of feeling better in both the

mind and the body.”

 

Simple Fitness Action Steps You Can Take

For many people the hardest part of any fitness program is getting started.

Sometimes we place too much pressure on ourselves and rather than doing something,

no matter how small that might be, we end up doing nothing at all.

Here are some steps to help you get started.

The first thing to do is to not place any great expectations on what you want to achieve.

Even simply walking to the local shops will improve your fitness and this might be all that

you need to do for a while just to get into the mood to take your fitness to the next level.

*Find a friend who also wants to get fitter and ask them to walk with you.

Step up the pace after a while and maybe even record the time it takes to complete your walks.

All these small changes can eventually lead to bigger and better things.

Stretching is something that can be done almost anywhere and at any time and it is good to

get into the habit of stretching, particularly before and after exercise.

Stretching increases your flexibility and reduces the chance of injury.

It makes training easier and therefore you will get more benefit from the time that you are

training.

Join a gym and encourage your friends to join with you or get a home gym and invite

them to train with you at home.

You can workout at your own pace and having a training partner will be good for both safety

with helping to control weights and encouragement to train better.

Get inspirational fitness magazines and videos that will give you something to strive

for, and last but certainly not least, eat the right food so you have the energy to perform well

at all times.

“If you devise a fitness program

that is complimentary to your

lifestyle  you are more likely to

continue doing it and reaping the

benefits that you require.”

 

Planning Your Fitness Program

You need to establish a plan of attack for your training regime.

Unless you know what you are going to do next, you are liable to start floundering around and

miss workouts or worse still, give up altogether.

The best way to decide on a training process is to prepare a program that is not only

designed to achieve the results that you are after, but also to fit in with your lifestyle.

If you devise a fitness program that is complimentary to your lifestyle then you are more

likely to continue doing it and getting the benefits that you require.

If you work particular hours at a job, then you need to know that you will have the free time to

exercise without it encroaching on other aspects of your life.

Once something becomes difficult to maintain, it is unlikely that you will continue to do it for

any length of time.

While you might like to have a gym membership and workout for 2 hours every day, that

might not be possible with your other commitments and rather than doing nothing at all you

can still benefit from something more convenient that you can do regularly.

You might only have the time for a half hour walk every second day and that is OK because

you are still getting exercise and it is adding to the quality of your life.

Any exercise is better than none at all.

*To get the best out of your exercise, whether it is walking or lifting weights it is a good

idea to record your progress.

Mark down each time you trained and what results you got from it.

Time your walks and see if you can do the same walk in less time or walk further in the same time.

Record how much weight you are lifting at the gym and how many repetitions you can achieve

and then see if you can better those marks when you return.

Constant improvement no matter how small can lead to major changes over the course of a year.

 

“The time we put into fitness

 throughout our life is an

investment in our future.”

 

Fitness is a Lifetime Investment

The time we put into our fitness at any time throughout our life is an investment in our future.

Just as we try to build up our financial wealth, we should be doing the same with our health, as

this will determine the quality of life as we age.

Consider the compound effect that smoking can have over the lifetime of a smoker and how

detrimental it can be to their health.

The opposite effect occurs when we do any form of fitness training even if it is only for a few

minutes a day, or for short periods a few times a week.

We don’t have to do hours of long intensive weight training 7 days a week to get fit.

To lose weight we don’t need to go on strict diets that are too hard to maintain.

It takes a long time for most people to get fat and this usually occurs from eating just a little

too much of the wrong foods too often.

If we are to reverse that situation and only reduce our calories by 100 per day, which is

something that most people can achieve without too much difficulty, then the effect after a

year or so can be quite dramatic.

If we were to walk for twenty minutes three or fours times a week, we would be a lot healthier

after a year of such exercise.

All these small changes won’t encroach on our lifestyle to any extent but they can make the

difference between normal activity when we age and the inability to get the most out of life.

The sooner we start to make these changes the more health we are investing in for

our future.

One of the best things about easy fitness like this is the fact that it gets even easier the more

we do it.

Just Get Active!

Want more compelling reasons to make regular exercise a significant part of your life?

Check out infographic below from National Women’s Health Week. #NWHW

 Photos: Freedigitalphotos.net

 

Are you as active as you want to be?

Do you have a regular fitness routine?

What’s your fitness routine like?

Share your suggestions, thoughts and comments with us.

 “Shared on #wowlinkup Workout Wednesdays”