Do we get enough exercise from our daily activities?

I was scanning the Internet the other day and I came across this really interesting article on a US health & fitness club site. 24 Hour Fitness is a large chain of health and fitness clubs that spread right across the US. If you are interested to have a look at other articles they have on the site you can visit them at
http://www.24hourfitness.com/FitnessArticles.do
What really interested me about the article is that it captures the state of the western world today and the fact that time saving devices are causing us to do little or no exercise in our daily routines. The situation is now the same in the UK as it is the US. Most of the population does little vigorous exercise at work or even during leisure time. Where as 30 or even 20 years ago, more people were doing physical jobs, fewer people had cars and there were less labour saving devices available, which meant that we had no option but to do more physical activity. Even our leisure time today is often spent in a sedentary way. People have more choice on the TV. Kids are playing football on a game console rather than kicking a ball around in the street.

Our overall fitness and health can be improved by including some low to moderate intensity activities into our lives on a daily basis. Everyday simple activities can have both short and long-term health benefits. Walking to the shops, mowing the lawn, climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Also, household chores, such as cleaning, ironing and vacuuming etc. All these activities help to raise your heart and breathing rate improving your heart and lung fitness.

However, you can achieve a greater level of aerobic fitness by introducing regular vigorous exercise activities like swimming, circuit training, brisk walking, running or cycling. Performed 3 to 4 times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes each session at a high enough intensity will make a considerable difference to your aerobic fitness. Doing activities like these on a regular basis will help to reduce the risk of serious illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and many others.

A statement in the article I particularly like is, “You don’t have to train like a marathon runner to become more physically fit! Any activity that gets you moving around, even if it’s just for a few minutes each day is better than none at all. The trick is to at least get started. Start by taking a 10 to 15 minute walk during your lunch break.”

This is so true. A lot of people today have a poor vision of exercise from PE lessons at high school. They think you have to train like Rocky to see any results. Exercise doesn’t have to be hard. It’s as hard as you make it and you have the ability to be the best you can be. It’s important to push yourself a little so you make the necessary progress. But let’s face it, if you do nothing at the moment that 15-minute walk at lunch is going to do you the world of good.

There are so many benefits to regular exercise. You will feel and look better. Exercise helps you to relax and cope with stress. It improves your self-image and helps you to make new friends. Exercise also helps weight loss by increasing your metabolism, so you burn more calories at rest. It builds and tones muscle, which improves, posture and will help you to cope better with day-to-day activities.

Did you know that you have to burn 3,500 calories to lose 1lb of body fat? Before you can seriously start to lose weight you have to know how many calories you burn in an average day, this is called your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and this is the amount of calories your body will use just to function normally. A good BMR calculator can be found at http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/. It doesn’t take into account any additional daily physical activity. A rough guide would be adding on another 25% of your BMR to get an idea of your daily caloric needs. For example, if your BMR is 1800 calories per day, then your approximate daily calorie needs would be around 2250. This is a very rough guide. It will vary by the amount of physical activity that you do. Some people will need more or less calories than others.
Each type of physical activity burns a number of calories. So for example, if you carry on eating the same number of calories per day, but add a brisk 30-minute walk everyday, by the end of the year potentially you could lose around 16lbs in weight. The more vigorous the activity the more calories you burn. But increasing the duration is often more efficient than increasing the intensity.
Combine an increase in activity with a healthy balanced reduction in calorie intake and you can achieve the results much sooner.

Take this into consideration; Consider the benefits of a well-conditioned heart: In 1 minute with 45 to 50 beats, the heart of a well-conditioned person pumps the same amount of blood as an inactive person's heart pumps in 70 to 75 beats. Compared to the well-conditioned heart, the average heart pumps up to 36,000 more times per day, 13 million more times per year.

Isn’t it worth getting fit?

If you want to read the full article on line click on the link below,
http://www.24hourfitness.com/FitnessArticles.do