What Fitness Can Do for You

Copyright (c) 2007 Jess Harley

The most common reason for exercising is to lose weight and get a thinner body. While this is a great reason to get fit, did you know that there are countless other reasons why you should get fit? We all know that exercise is good for you, but did you know just how good it really was? Exercise can help relieve depression, it can help you decrease your chance of cancer and it can boost your immune system. The best benefit of all is getting a healthy heart. Heart disease is becoming the number one killer in women and exercising can help prolong your life especially if heart disease runs in your family.

You do not have to run marathons or spend hours upon hours working out to see the benefits. Most experts say that regular moderate exercise will be fine. Though you will see more benefits from more vigorous exercise included faster weight loss and gaining more endurance. One study has shown that women who followed a vigorous program had lowered their rate of prostate cancer.

There have also been studies that have shown that regular activity may lower the risk of breast cancer for some of us. In the two dozen or so studies that have been done, results have shown that about two-thirds of women found a reduce risk of breast cancer at about 30-40 percent. One of the reasons why exercise may be so helpful in the fight against breast cancer is because it may help your body cut back on the production of estrogen by the ovaries and fat cells. Too much estrogen has been shown to be a cancer promoter, and exercise can help keep your estrogen levels in check.

Another benefit of exercise is that it can help you control or even prevent diabetes. Exercise burns energy in the form of blood sugar so it helps you lower your blood sugar level. However, if you have diabetes, you need take caution when it comes to exercise. Exercise can make your body much more sensitive to insulin and your blood sugar could drop to low after exercising. Talk to your doctor to find out what your blood sugar level should be before and after exercise. This way if you blood sugar level is too high or too low right before you start exercising, you might want to wait a little bit. Keep in mind though that this is a manageable risk and not one that should prevent you from exercising Once you start an exercise program it is important to eat healthy too. Exercise and eating healthy go hand in hand and in order to maximize your benefits it is a good idea to eat as healthy as possible. Make sure you eat lots of color as far as vegetables and fruit go. Try to make it as fresh as possible to make sure you can take advantage of all the nutrients that they contain. Eating lean protein will also benefit you and give you more energy to exercise. Stick with chicken, turkey breast or even ground turkey breast to make turkey burgers. Stick with whole grain carbs such as brown rice and whole grain bread and try to avoid whenever possible refined carbs like white bread and white rice.

You can still benefit from exercise even without following a good way of eating, but the benefits of eating healthy and exercising are to great to ignore. There are so many more reasons to get fit other than to be skinny. Your health should be the number one reason you decide to get fit and stay fit.