How Much Exercise Is Good Exercise?

Bette Dowdell

Exercise can kill you. Well, so can lots of other things, but people tout exercise as all good, all the time.

Before couch potatoes get excited here, life as an inanimate object doesn’t get excellent results either.

Well, then, obviously, some middle ground exists. However, since slugs receive unending, universal criticism while people who live at the gym reap admiration, I’ll talk about the exercise buffs.

Exercise stresses the body. It builds free radicals, those natural enemies that rust out our various and sundry parts.

Exercise’s benefits come from recovery. After you stop exercising, your body sets about making things right. Your feelings of well-being, even euphoria, come from recovery.

If exercise leaves you feeling exhausted, you’re doing yourself in. Your exercise created too deep a stress pit for recovery to dig out. Very bad idea.

Let your body tell you what to do. Exercise in short bursts and find your balance between exercise and recovery. This is especially essential for anybody with endocrine problems–thyroid, adrenals, etc. You’re in enough trouble without force-marching your body through rigorous exercise.

Walking can build you up. Just don’t walk so fast you can’t carry on a conversation as you go; that’s a sign you’ve passed the stress/recovery balance. And don’t go so far that your patooty’s dragging on the way home.

Lifting light weights as you watch TV helps. A few lifts with two-pound weights may be where you start. Not to worry. You’re doing something. Just let it build.

Don’t go at exercise to prove anything, just to bless your health.

The ideal is always to do what you can do without knocking the stress/recovery balance for a loop. Results happen wherever you start. The stress-recovery balance moves up as you keep on keeping on.

Let your body lead the way.