Are you taking your physical fitness for granted? If so, you could well be taking your good health for granted? Discover how physical fitness relates to your good health and turn the key to enjoying long life.
3 Benefits of staying physically fit at all ages:
- Physical fitness is one of the most important ingredients for achieving most any kind of success in life.
- Maintaining physical fitness helps reduce your risk of sickness, disease and injuries.
- Physical fitness improves your quality of life, health, life expectancy, and keeps you active.
In other words, the best health for most of us comes as a conscious effort and devotion.
It’s easy to take your health for granted, especially when you’re young, and ignore the signs your body sends you each day. In fact, most people seem to take their daily to do list a lot more serious than their ongoing health.
We all know that the things we take for granted winds up in the past. It’s always the things we pay attention to in our lives that reap the benefits that make life worth living.
And good health and physical fitness are the two primary components of a life worth living.
How Physical Fitness Relates to Your Good Health
Getting a grip on the fact that your own fitness levels are a determining factor in your good health is one of the keys to your best life.
Without good health you will be unable to live a satisfying life — and physical fitness is the core of good health. The same discipline you use to stay focused on your daily “to do list” must also be applied to preserving your physical health.
We all have our everyday list of chore and the easiest thing to put off is our fitness level and good health.
Let’s face it: there is no short cut to becoming physically fit. There is no quick fix for staying physically healthy.
It’s easy to take medication and energy drinks to relieve certain symptoms. But the truth is that energy drinks are not only bad for you, but give a false sense of good health and fitness.
No man made solution to staying active and energized comes with the benefits of staying physically fit.
I knew someone that was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease called lupus. She lived with symptoms resulting in an array of physical and emotional limitations. In fact, her day to day activities were seriously affected by the disease.
The illness and most of the symptoms of the illness remained active even with dedication to the many prescribed medications.
It was only after taking full responsibility for her own health that she discovered that the key to keeping the illness under control was to become physically fit.
That meant learning to live a healthy lifestyle through a proper diet and regular exercise.
Consequently, she made a conscious decision to change her lifestyle and was able to send the lupus the into remission.
Physical Fitness is Essential to Your Best Health
But first and foremost, physical fitness is a mental state of mind. It is about adopting a mentality that keeps you proactive.
It’s being constantly aware of the healthy habits you must stick to in order to maintain a healthy weight.
Decide what is important to you and take these two all important steps to a better life:
- Think about how you manage your time and consider how you can introduce more physical activity into your day.
- Learn how to become a better shopper when it comes to food and prepare your meals adequately in order to fuel your body with healthy foods.
Physical Fitness Sets the Pace for Your Life
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), regular exercise significantly reduces the risk of dying from coronary heart disease. The risk for colon cancer, stroke, diabetes, and high blood pressure is also reduced.
The CDC also concedes that physical activity leads to healthy bones, muscles, and joints and reduces the pain of arthritis and the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Fewer visits are made to the doctor, less medication is prescribed, and fewer hospital visits are required. .
“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease. “
Buddha
What is Physical Fitness?
What does physical fitness really mean? Many people believe that physical fitness is building muscle and developing a well-defined figure.
That’s because we tend to focus on the aesthetic benefits and lose sight of the importance of getting and remaining “fit” on the inside, as well.
Physical fitness means fitness in every sense of the word, both internally and externally. Physical fitness is really about having all of our vital organs, bones, and blood circulation performing at their optimum and working together as a whole, achieving overall health.
Often, we are not even aware that our body is not functioning at its optimum. We get an occasional ache and pain, and before long, we become accustomed to living with it.
Regardless of your name, fame, or other achievements, ill health will prevent you from enjoying your life. It will hold you back from reaching your true potential as a human being.
Awareness is the first step to achieving good physical health.
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Aristotle
5 Ways to Stay Physically Fit
1. Regular Exercise
Regular exercise is doing something that raises your heart rate 30-60 minutes 3-5 times a week. (5-7 times a week is even better)
Something as simple as walking at a brisk pace can turn your health and life around, and you’re never too young or too old to get started.
Whatever exercise you choose, it’s important to do it at a pace that gets your heart rate up and increases your breathing. It’s not necessary to start panting for air when your walk or jog, just enough exertion to cause you to take deeper breaths.
2. Quality Sleep is Essential
Is your life so fast paced you hardly have time to sleep? If so, you are putting your health at a serious risk.
Your body and mind need a time every day to completely shut down to rest, and rejuvenate, and that time is 7-9 hours of quality sleep every day.
Failure to get enough sleep and proper rest raises the risk of an array of chronic health problems, the way you react to life situations, how you think, and even your weight.
Having trouble with your sleep? Here’s 22 ways to help you get to sleep and sleep better.
3. Maintain a Healthy Weight
Eating a healthy diet is essential to staying physically fit. No one is physically fit, or healthy, when their 20 or more pounds overweight.
The best way to maintain a healthy weight is with a long term attitude of proper diet and regular exercise. Our bodies were never meant to live on refined sugar and flour or processed foods.
Most of us find it almost impossible to get all sugar, flour, and processed foods out of our life, but trying to build your diet around lean meats, fowl, fish, and fresh or frozen vegetables is the key.
And don’t forget that no matter who you are, your weight always depends on the balance between calories consumed and calories used for energy.
4. Stay Committed
Physical fitness and good health is usually easier when your young, and the desire seems to fade away with age.
But no matter what your age, you can commit to your good health by staying fit, and it takes a commitment.
The good news is that commitments are really just habits, and habits rule our lives. Here’s a post on staying motivated.
5. Stretching Every Day
Stretching is an often overlooked part of keeping your body agile, fit, mobile and alive.
Simple stretches one or several times a day that take no more than 3-5 minutes will get your entire system activated.
Yoga exercises are a form of stretching that has changed millions of lives, but you can also stretch and warm muscles and internal organs by just bending over for a few seconds.
Give stretching a try for staying physically fit and improving your health.
Summary
The body can heal itself when we practice healthy habits and we cannot achieve our true potential without sound physical health. Knowledge of your physical condition empowers you to take action. Remaining in denial and avoiding the facts can potentially destroy you.
Physical fitness means having all our vital organs our muscles, heart, lungs, bones, and blood circulation, performing at their optimum and working together as a whole to achieve overall optimum function.
We may not even be aware that our bodies are not functioning at its optimum. We get an occasional ache and pain and before long we become so accustomed to living with them.
Don’t do that! Don’t wait for your health to fail you to take action! Why do you think there is so much talk about physical fitness? It’s because of how vital it is to your overall success and fulfillment as a human being.