Do you really need exercise?

 Add to :

We all know that exercise is an essential part of healthy living. But how many of us actually follow a daily exercise regime? It is general mentality that exercise is mainly needed for people who want to loose weight or are in some profession or sports that require it. The second question is that how does one determine the amount and kind of exercise he/ she needs? Read on to know the answers.

Why exercise?
Apart from helping burn body fat and keeping your body in shape, exercise energises the body and increases the sense of vitality. It also helps reduce stress and makes one feel happier because of its anti-depressant effect. Not only this, exercise helps in improving cardiovascular functions, lowers cholestrol and blood pressure and reduces the risk of developing diabeties and colon cancer.

How much execise do you need?
This widely depends on your goal – whether you want o be fit or healthy. Usually, being fit and healthy  are used  interchangeably to mean the same thing. But they are quite different.

Difference between being fit and healthy
Fitness has been defined in relation to a concept called physical work capacity, or how much work the body can do. A person’s fitness can be determined in a laboratory by looking at how much energy they can produce on a cycle ergometer when cycling at a specific heart rate, or on an athletic track by looking at how far they can run in a set time.

Health, on the other hand, is a broader concept that includes being free from and resilient to disease, mental and spiritual wellbeing, and the quality of our social relationships. Normally, being fit and being healthy go hand in hand, but this isn’t always the case. For example, you can be very fit, through playing football, but suffer a major health problem such as alcoholism.

Understanding the difference between fitness and health is important because the level of exercise you need to be healthy is less than that needed to get and keep you fit.

Exercise for being fit vs. exercise for being healthy
Many people want or need to be fit because of the job they do (eg, police officers), the sport they play (eg, basketball) or the body shape they want to achieve (eg, through resistance training).

To be fit, one normally needs to follow a structured training programme supervised by an exercise leader. The key variable in achieving high levels of fitness is the intensity of the exercise programme. In achieving fitness goals, most people also become healthier. However, if you don’t want to be fit but just healthy, you don’t have to exercise as hard.

If the main goal is to improve health, it doesn’t require the same intensity of training as becoming fit. You can simply build physical activity into your daily routine, either as a form of ‘active commuting’ (walking or cycling, perhaps) or in the comfort of a health club. Most experts agree that moderate exercise for 30 minutes to an hour every other day is good enough. This amount of exercise has been linked with improving cardiovascular function, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, losing weight, and reducing stress.

Tags: body, Exercise, fitness, health, healthy, ICICI Lombard, weight