Importance of Physical Exercise

Firstly, I know you are probably starting to read this and go, well of course he is going to go on about the importance of physical exercise, it’s his job.

So, why should I carry on reading?

Well, to be honest, you will get a lot of the usual stuff about the benefits etc and we will go into that but realistically if you want to go scroll straight down for the money shot, it’s right towards the end.

In the meantime, for all those that want to have a little read over their afternoon brew, here you go.

Getting healthy isn’t just about eating well and losing weight, it’s about overall health, eating well on its own will make you feel better, combining it with physical movement is always a great added extra.

Just moving more though has a superb effect and yes, you can’t outtrain a bad diet, but we are not looking at just training like a fucking beast etc, this is going to be aimed at those people that are overweight or considered clinically obese and in fact some of you out there considered morbidly obese.

I know some of you will either have a really hard time to try to lose weight to get into the so-called healthy weight or just don’t want too, some of you out there reading this may have a health condition which makes it hard to lose weight.

This is aimed at you.

The benefits of physical activity are immense, it is realistically the miracle, the magic pill so to speak that a lot of people have been aching for.

The following benefits of physical activity are from the World Health Organization.

• Physical activity has significant health benefits for hearts, bodies and minds.
• Physical activity contributes to preventing and managing noncommunicable. diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes.
• Physical activity reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety.
• Physical activity enhances thinking, learning, and judgment skills.
• Physical activity ensures healthy growth and development in young people.
• Physical activity improves overall well-being.

We can break each of those down and go into them in a lot more detail but seriously you can just read that and then read it again and you will get everything you need.

People in general are moving less now than at any other time in history, we in general don’t have physically demanding jobs and spend a lot of time sitting at computers or on sofas watching screens.

This sedentary lifestyle is the so-called silent killer in our world right now.

The following is also from the World Health Organisation

• More than a quarter of the world’s adult population (1.4 billion adults) are insufficiently active.
• Worldwide, around 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men do not do enough physical activity to stay healthy.
• Levels of inactivity are twice as high in high-income countries compared to low-income countries,
• There has been no improvement in global levels of physical activity since 2001
• Insufficient activity increased by 5% (from 31.6% to 36.8%) in high-income countries between 2001 and 2016.

What is physical activity?

It’s not something you have to go to the gym to do, you don’t even have to spend money on doing it.

Physical activity is classified as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure.

Physical activity refers to all movement including during leisure time, for transport to get to and from places, or as part of your work.

However, both moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity improve health.

Moderate Physical activity is when you are moving fast enough to raise your heart rate, you tend to breathe faster and you become warmer, you can still talk and hold a conversation.

Vigorous Physical activity is where your heart rate has increased a lot, you are breathing faster, and you can’t really hold a conversation apart from the odd word here and there.

There are various ways to become more physically active and the easiest way to do more is to incorporate it as part of your day-to-day lifestyle, set some walking time in throughout your day.

Some physical activity is better than none, just by doing some can have so much benefit to you and your health.

The guidelines for Physical activity for an adult in the UK is 150 minutes a week, less than 30 minutes a day. A walk at lunchtime anyone?

Now, we know there are people out there that struggle to lose weight because of health conditions or their relationship with food isn’t brilliant and in fact there are people out there that just don’t want to lose weight.

To help them become healthier they just need to move more, do more physical activity because and here comes the money shot.

Overweight and obese individuals who are physically active and are hitting their guidelines have been shown in studies to have the same mortality rate as normal weight individuals who are doing the same.

Whereas those overweight and obese individuals who are not physically fit and live a sedentary lifestyle have been shown to have a mortality rate as twice as high as those individuals of normal weight and that are physically fit. This mortality rate is for Cardiovascular disease etc.

Realistically, you can worry as much as you want about losing weight and constantly go up and down like a yo yo but if you were to take the stress out of that and just got moving more then you will just start to feel so much better.

Day to day life becomes easier.

A by product of that and feeling better is generally you start to eat better then who knows the weight you were looking to lose may just bugger off anyway.