Are you feeling down? Then exercise! Are you stressed at work? Then exercise! Are you getting tired going up the stairs? Then walk on the treadmill, at an incline! Exercise can make your life amazing, not just for your mood, but for your overall well-being. Do you want to prevent pre-mature aging? Then exercise! Read on to find out how movement and exercise can improve these and other aspects of your life.
Decrease your Stress
If you want to decrease your stress, you should start walking, running and/or yoga. These three forms of exercise have shown that they can affect any kind of stress disorder, in a good way. It usually only take 10 minutes of light to moderate intense exercise to get you on your way to stress reduction.
Increase Your Mood
If you exercise for those 10 minutes, and you reduce your stress, your mood will automatically get better. Once you start moving, your brain releases serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphins. All of these natural brain chemicals make you feel good. So, even if you don’t really like moving, just going for a short 10 minute walk down the street will better your mood. Just stay safe on the streets.
Increase Your Mental Toughness
When you exercise that makes you get more physical, you get mentally tougher. When your mentality strengthens, you can handle more stress. Once you get into a rhythm of exercising, you automatically want to reach your goals and push yourself further. This mental toughness then can apply elsewhere in your life, allowing you to tackle any kind of stress in a calm manner.
Improve Your Immune system
Exercise helps by flushing out bacteria from the lungs as well as increasing the activity of your lymphatic system, which drains waste from your body. When your blood is pumping, you are also increasing the rate at which antibodies and white blood cells run through the body. They detect and attack illnesses.
Physical activity also slows down the release of stress-related hormones. Stress-related hormones are released when you are… stressed. These hormones can decrease your immune system. Light to moderate intense physical activity can slow down the release of these hormones, and improve your health. Make sure you get proper post-nutrition and rest after your workouts.
Prevent Pre-Mature Aging
Exercise improves circulation and refreshes skin, helps supply oxygen to skin cells, and is a great way to combat stress. All of these are great factors exercising when trying to maintain a youthful appearance.
Exercise also helps with maintaining a healthy weight. As you age, maintaining your weight becomes harder and harder to do without exercise. Light weight lifting can also prevent sarcopenia, which is when your muscles start to diminish.
Sleep Better at Night
When you sleep, your body temperature drops. This drop in body temperature helps you sleep. When you exercise for 20-30 minutes, 4-5 hours before want to sleep, your body temperature will then drop lower than when you don’t exercise. All of this lowering in body temperature helps you sleep better at night.
Increase Your Energy
If you remain fatigued throughout your day, every day, then you should exercise. Exercise even when you are tired and don’t feel like moving. This increases your energy. You might feel more tired for a week or so, but after your body gets used to it, you will start to feel more energized. Just don’t exercise 4 hours before you plan on sleeping, otherwise you’ll have the energy to not want to sleep!
Easier Life
Unless you live an absolutely sedentary life, where you don’t even get out of bed each day, chances are you need to move about and do work. Sometimes the work can be physical, and if you don’t have the strength or proper fitness, then that work can be strenuous. From carrying children around, to walking up the stairs, or moving things around the house, if you have a physically fit body and system, all of these can be accomplished easily without getting exhausted. Increase your strength, improve your cardiovascular fitness and your life can get easier.
Reduce Your Depression and Anxiety
Those who are chronically stressed, may form some kind of depression or anxiety. Studies have shown that those who are more physically active are less depressed than inactive people. Studies have also shown that those people who have been active at some time but stopped exercising for whatever reason, became even more depressed. The conclusion is, is that exercise is not only important for treating depression, but preventing depression to come back in a more severe form.
Enjoy your Life!
Once you have decreased your stress, reduced or treated depression, increased your energy, have better sleep, increased your mood and mental toughness, improved your immune system and prevented pre-mature aging through exercising, you can enjoy your life! You will be happier and you’ll be able to enjoy your family, spouse, kids, grandkids and friends and life will become amazing. So move and start exercising!
