Other than an unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle is one of the major causes of most ailments, whether something as common as a cold or as serious as heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, and some kinds of cancer. To be in good health, and to prevent being overweight, we need to burn about 700 to 1,000 calories in a week. This would mean getting about 30 minutes of moderate exercise for at least four days a week. Regular exercise ensures that the immune system remains vitalized and can save the body from all kinds of viral as well as bacterial infections. Whether it is your physical, mental or emotional health, a steady work out is one of the keys to living a longer and better life. Cardiovascular exercises promote the levels of good cholesterol, thereby preventing and treating diabetes, reducing the heart’s workload, and regularizing the body’s blood pressure. Problems like anxiety, stress, depression, and also low libido can all be tackled with if the sufferer gets regular exercise. It can also enhance memory and prevent ailments like Alzheimer’s Disease. Weight training exercises can reverse the process of reducing muscle strength and inflammation of the joints, thus preventing ailments like arthritis or osteoporosis. It also gives flexibility and mobility to the joints and maintains bone mass.
A question that is most likely to crop up is the quality and quantity when it comes to an exercise regime. It is not true that a person has to spend hours every day, jogging and sweating it out to be in good health. If you can maintain a regime of 30 minutes of jogging, brisk walking, cycling, skipping, or swimming, you will burn enough calories and also keep your body and mind in good health. For additional benefits, club together cardiovascular exercises with stretching and muscle-strengthening exercises like light weight training; and you would be warding off a number of ailments. What’s more, if you find working out for 30 minutes at a stretch a daunting exercise, you can break the exercises into segments of 10 minutes each. But, you do need to be disciplined about the regime and stick to it as much as possible. At the same time, make sure that you give your body time to recuperate from the workouts too. It’s advisable not to work out all seven days of the week. If you can manage four or five days, it would be enough to be in good health.