Benefits of Fitness 2

Benefits of Quitting Smoking

If you are a smoker, the best piece of fitness advice someone can give you is to quit. Surprisingly, the benefits of quitting smoking happen immediately. For example, 20 minutes after your final cigarette, your blood pressure and pulse rate will drop and the body temperature in your hands and feet will increase. After eight hours, the carbon monoxide level in your blood will drop towards normal, while the oxygen level in your blood will increase to normal. When you’ve made it to 24 hours without a cigarette, your chance of a heart attack has already begun to decrease. At 48 hours, you start to re-grow the nerve endings that have been damaged by smoking and your ability to smell and taste begins to improve.

Between the periods of two weeks to three months without a cigarette, you will start to notice that your circulation is improving. You will be coughing less, and you will have less of a tendency towards sinus infections. Shortness of breath will gradually disappear, which means that you will actually enjoy your aerobic workouts.

Hopefully, this has motivated you to substitute your smoking habit with your new exercise habit!

Exercise Increases Mental Agility

Exercise over the long term has been proven to improve brain function. It increases oxygen levels and blood flow to the brain while increasing levels of chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, which are associated with cognition.

Fitness workouts are also proven to prevent “senior moments.” After the age of 30, the brain starts to lose tissue in areas associated with cognition and memory. Exercise increases neurogenesis, the production of neurons, and thus prevents loss of tissue, improves memory and keeps the brain young. Physical activity has also been proven to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.

If you can’t fit in 30 minutes of exercise a day, make sure that you exercise for at least 20 minutes on most days of the week to ensure peak physical fitness and increase brain function.

Benefits of a Healthy Diet

Although this book is primarily about fitness advice, the benefits of a healthy diet should also be addressed. Your diet is your fuel for your fitness program. Without a healthy diet, your fitness performance will be less than optimal. Let’s look at some of the benefits of a healthy diet.

Weight Control: This is perhaps the most obvious benefit of a healthy diet. It stands to reason that if you feed your body food that is loaded with nutrients, you will use these nutrients for energy. In contrast, if your diet is loaded with empty calories, these calories will not be used. Instead, they will be converted to fat.

A diet rich in whole grains and fiber will prevent constipation, and thus aid in weight loss. Furthermore, the B vitamins found in whole grains help release the energy from protein, fats and carbohydrates. This will in turn speed up your metabolic rate. The result: You will burn more calories throughout the day.

Water is perhaps one of the most overlooked nutrients that aid in weight control. Water aids in elimination and makes us feel full after eating. Additionally, staying hydrated will give you more energy during your workouts.

Disease Prevention: A healthy diet will help prevent diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. A diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in salmon may alleviate the symptoms of inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis.

Be sure to read the section of this book about nutrition for women.

Health Benefits of Running: Weight Loss

It’s a warm summer day. You look out your window, and you see a women running up a hill. The glow of perspiration soaks her body. You wonder, “Why does she do it?” There are many good reasons. The health benefits of running far outweigh the initial discomfort that you might feel when you first begin a running program.

Many women’s health and fitness experts suggest running as an ideal activity for weight control. Provided that you do not have any chronic muscular-skeletal injuries, this is perhaps the best fitness advice you can get! Depending on your speed, a 130 pound woman can burn between 114 and 200 calories in a 20-minute running workout. If you add hill training, this number can be even higher! Running will also boost your metabolism, thereby elevating your metabolic rate for up to two hours after your workout. This means that you will be burning more calories even if you are sitting at your desk!

According to the National Weight Control Registry, an organization that tracks the progress of people who have successfully maintained a 30 pound weight loss, running 25 to 30 miles a week is the optimal mileage required for weight loss. Depending on your speed, this will amount to about 30 to 45 minutes daily.