Health: Balancing your Health Part III: Exercise and Activity

Left, right, left…. Left, right, left… Yep we have already talked a little bit about healthier food choices and small ways we have incorporated change to enhance our healthy eating and nutrition.

Have you thought about another small changes that can be incorporated into your lifestyle to help improve and optimize your health?

How about activity or exercise?

Yep, the one change some cannot stand and others love!  

Exercise

Remember the Car Analogy? How well do our cars run if we let them sit for months at a time and then try to drive them all over the place? Usually not very well. They need constant movement to maintain the parts in order to run effectively. The same is true of our own bodies. We need to keep muscles and joints moving to prevent them from becoming stiff, atrophied, and maintain lean muscle mass which is essential to our health. We need to keep blood flowing to help energize, provide nutrients, and improve heart health. Mobility helps prevent so many conditions combined with healthy nutrition. Activity also helps provide mental peace and clarity.

Let me be very clear! A huge mental barrier we are all – even I am – guilty of is thinking that the scale is determining our physical health. The number on the scale does NOT tell us if we are eating the right balance of vitamins/minerals/nutrition or if we are getting enough exercise to help keep our bodies running and functioning the best it can. The number on the scale plays a role, but is not the GOAL in determining health.

Person A may weigh 150 pounds, look healthy, but have most of that weight consisting of fat. Person B may weigh 250 pounds, but look extremely fit and healthy because they are made up more of muscle.

Compare the difference between 5 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of muscle:

See how the muscle (weighing the same as the fat) looks nice and neat, smooth, and trim? The fat looks plump, chunky, and takes up much more space than the muscle.

How do we build muscle and limit fat (limit because we do need a certain amount of good fat to be healthy). We implement strategies with healthy eating and incorporate regular exercise.

HOW DO WE INCREASE ACTIVITY OR EXERCISE? WE ARE TOO BUSY!

We have made activity a part of our daily life and we are not perfect! We definitely fail and fall out of routine, start to feel lousy, and get back on the activity train.

The American Heart Association recommends that every adult exercises at a moderate activity level 150 minutes a week. That is only 21-22 minutes a day! Moderate exercise includes activities such as:

• Walking briskly (3 miles per hour or faster, but not race-walking)

• Water aerobics

• Bicycling slower than 10 miles per hour

• Tennis (doubles)

• Ballroom dancing

• General gardening

Another option is 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week or about 11 minutes a day! Vigorous exercise includes:

• Race walking, jogging, or running

• Swimming laps

• Tennis (singles)

• Aerobic dancing

• Bicycling 10 miles per hour or faster

• Jumping rope

• Heavy gardening (continuous digging or hoeing)

• Hiking uphill or with a heavy backpack

 Our family enjoys friendly competition. Some ways our family incorporates regular exercise independently and as a family include:

• Going for a walk (talking, listening to music of choice, or enjoying the silence and nature)

• Interval races – who can reach this point first? I bet I can still beat you!

• Going for a run to prepare for a fun run (this is AWESOME – they have such a great time at the event! Making all the practice worth it!)

• Playing sports – football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, tennis (we try – but isn’t that the nice part! You don’t have to be good – enjoy what you do while getting in that activity!)

• Bike Rides

• Home training videos – whether it is Pilates, Yoga, Plyometrics, Piyo, Beachbody, Jillian Michaels we make it fun and then you get to share a yummy, nutritious protein shake you made together

• Gardening and Yard work – some people dislike it – we love working together doing these tasks

• Walking the Dogs and going to the park

• Going for hikes

• Push up competitions

• Dance offs in the living room

• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator

• Parking at the far end of the parking lot to get in more steps (recommended by American Heart Association to have at least 10,000 steps per day)

• Exercise during commercials or challenge someone to do 10 push-ups for every touchdown the opposite team scores (you can make it what you want it to be)

• Going to the gym or lifting weights at home together

• Meeting up with family or friends for a group fitness class like yoga, zumba, or kickboxing

• Going swimming

One of our recent favorite activities we did together was hiking 7 miles round trip with our 15, 14, 9, and 6 year old to the Old Tin Mines in the mountains. We were able to talk, joke, incorporate nature and history into a fun activity with an adventure! It was AMAZING!

The point is to be active, incorporate it into your life instead of feeling like it is another thing you have to do, and make it fun!  You will notice that you will look leaner, feel better, and have more energy!

Tell me some things you and your family do for fun involving activity below! It’s always fun to try new ideas and we look forward to hearing them! 

PRAISE. ENCOURAGE. STAY POSITIVE. FOCUS. PURPOSE. LIFESTYLE.