Exercise
We all must exercise to keep our bodies healthy. I don’t believe it is a choice. With so many fun choices, why not? and with so many fun activities to do in life, why miss out?
What are the benefits of regular exercise? Obviously the first benefit is to help lose weight and/or to maintain a healthy weight. There are also medical benefits such as reducing your risk of heart disease and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, cancer, and diabetes. Exercise can also help boost your mood, your energy level and improve sleep. Overall it just helps us feel better. I know I prefer feeling good!
You don’t have to run for an hour everyday either. What activities do you like to do? Go for a bike ride with your family. Play a game with friends. Take a dance class. Just go for a walk and enjoy the surroundings. Anything counts as long as you do it consistently.
Here is what truly motivates me to exercise. When I started researching exercise, more than 20 years ago, one thing I read really stuck in my mind. In a book, that is no longer in print, the author said we have to turn our bodies into “Fat Burning Machines”. What does that mean? When we are young our bodies are automatically programmed to burn fat. Children’s metabolisms are always on high. They can go all day without a break. My children never stop moving! You can just tell their metabolisms are going non stop. Not only do kids have a lot of energy but they are growing rapidly. Their bodies know that they need to always be stepping it up or else. Kids are natural fat burners unless too much sugar and screen time get in the way.
As adults this doesn’t happen naturally. In order to improve our fitness level or even stay the same we need to trick our bodies. Our bodies are programmed to basically be finished growing and improving at about age 35. If you don’t exercise your fitness level will decrease. I look at that statistic as a challenge. Because guess what? We can change that! We can trick our bodies to become fat burning machines just like we were when we were children. Other people refer to this as stimulating our HGH or Human Growth Hormone. By exercising and building muscle on a regular basis we trick our bodies into thinking that we are young and growing. We say to our bodies, “Wait a minute we need to increase our metabolisms! We need more muscle and we need to burn fat stat!” Our bodies then respond. “Oh I thought we were done. Sorry about that. I will get on that right away!” It is very exciting when you think about it. Or should I say “fascinating”!
What gets you excited? What can you do today?