Benefits of exercise: Limit weight gain, support skeleton, decrease anxiety & depression.
For years I’ve talked about the importance of holistic approaches to managing weight. My version of holistic approach consists of conscious eating, healthy relationships, and physical activity that includes both cardio for aerobic strength and weight/resistance. This blog entry will discuss the benefits of exercise. Females will not get bulky because of the physiological make up of our muscles: Women do not have the muscle mass that men have nor do they have as many fast twitch muscles. Women do have a bigger abundance of slow twitch muscles which a play significant role in endurance, in our hearts!
Cardio influences our body in 2 major ways: Healthy heart and happy mind! What more could define a great quality of life? It’s the only exercise the heart muscle responds to. The more intense your cardio the lower your resting heart rate will be. A healthy adults’ heart rate falls between 60-100BPM or beats per minute. You can take your pulse touching your wrist by placing 2 fingers between bone and tendon over the radial artery near your thumb. Another area to check pulse is your neck. Place first 2 fingers to the side of the wind pipe where the carotid artery pulses. Look at the time for 10 seconds and count the pulses. Times by 6 and you have BPM! A low resting heart rate means the heart beats fewer times per minute but, is strong enough to push the same amount of blood as someone with a less efficient heart rate. Dance to music you love! Play catch with a frisbee, baseball, or soccer ball … using your feet! Walk briskly around your neighborhood. The 2nd benefit of cardio exercise is a good mood. We know that going for a run, hitting a tennis ball, or walking in a park after a stressful day at work makes us feel better. I like swinging on a swing! There are long term benefits too: after observing groups taking an oral placebo, an anti-depressant, exercise in gym, and exercise in home, the researchers found activity works just as well as an anti-depressant! A follow up one year later showed decreased depression scores among those who maintained consistent daily movement! I’ve literally known this for about a few decades now. I battle depression and when active every day I have very few dark episodes. I call my afternoon workouts my mid-day sanity saver! The covid virus makes this more of a challenge. Most gyms are closed or have very limited hours. I’m sure not just for me either! Currently, I work out on a friend’s rowing machine, doing push-ups, biceps and triceps with exercise bands, and great music in my ear buds. I find I still get the boundless, positive energy I recall from pre COVID days. Also, I have a stair stepper and jump rope available to me! The endorphins kick in shortly after a good combination of great upbeat playlist, light streaming in and ability to “dance” while working out. By the time I stretch, at the end of my workout, the ‘happy” chemicals of dopamine and serotonin kick in and stay all day, even when I am teleworking from home! The ‘happy’ chemicals allow me to take a breath and tell myself to be patient with house hold members that act like adolescents!
When the gyms were open with regular, consistent hours, pre COVID, I would get comments about how intense my workouts are. I am always challenging myself. I started somewhere just like we all do with so many things in our life: job, cooking, sports, kids…retirement! Grab a friend or cheap pair of headphones and just get out and walk. A walk on a sunny afternoon can be the break you need for a stressful day. I know people now not only listen to music but also podcasts! SiriusXM has them on the app now! Some like treadmill in gym to watch their favorite show…or walk their dog or push kids in stroller! 15-20 minutes a few days weekly; it’s a start, a healthy start! You may be surprised when you increase your time or intensity! Or even find activity you really enjoy and can do daily! It always starts with little steps!
The World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes brisk walking (30 minutes daily for 5 days or 21 minutes daily for 7 days) or 75 minutes running weekly. This study involved 1,500 Australians over 10 years. The results illustrate that high levels of activity significantly decreases chances of cognitive impairment such as Dementia & chronic diseases like obesity, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis. More startling results showed significant likelihood of surviving an extra 10 years!
Cardio benefits mental health and your actual heart …. consider your heart is made of muscle, slow twitch muscle fibers. Our bodies also contain fast twitch muscles which provides the functions of strength and agility, another component of holistic health!
Weight lifting also uses our fast twitch muscles to increase muscle fiber size. As women, we will not gain more muscle but, expand what we already have. Think of a fist full of straws: Your fist represents the muscle and straws are fibers that make up muscle. Amount of fibers is limited: if you were born with ten fibers in your bicep then as adult you still have ten straws in your bicep. When you lift weights, you expand the size of each straw. Exercise to build muscle helps reverse weight gain because muscle burns fat in your body all day even after your workout is ended. Some studies found muscle burning fat 38 hours after workout ends. Don’t worry! As one woman who is in the gym every morning lifting weights told me, “it isn’t weights that give you a big behind, cupcakes do that!” Adding weight lifting program to cardio increases weight loss by almost 30%! Pure cardio burns both fat and muscle. In dieters who concentrate only on cardio fat loss equaled about 75% and muscle loss totaled about 25%. The scale shows your body weight going down but, it is also muscle being lost. That is not so good for you bones. Bones like developed muscles.
A routine of lifting weights helps bone density, mitigating osteoporosis disease. I’ve written about this in other blogs and news letters but, it is worth repeating: Weight bearing exercise puts pressure on bone. Gentle stress on bone adds to bone density allowing the bone to utilize both the breakdown and building up processes. WebMd has an article on benefits of weight lifting for post-menopausal women who have osteoporosis. This is not just science-based information…. It is real life! Those women who participated in weight lifting for one year saw significant increases in bone density in the spine and hip.
Women’s wellness includes healthy bone density, strong heart and happy mind! Activity/exercise is a real component of good quality of life and prime element of Glorious Gals
