So, you must have heard your loved ones tell you to stay fit and healthy but have you ever wondered what fitness and health mean? You have come to the right article if you are thinking about that. Experts define physical fitness as one’s ability to carry out daily activities with an optimized level of endurance, strength, and management of disease, fatigue, and stress. At the same time, health means a state of complete physical and emotional wellbeing. So, if you are still wondering why remaining fit and healthy is essential, keep reading this article until the end.
Why is physical fitness and health important?
You must be wondering by now why physical fitness and health are important in our daily lives? You don’t have to worry about it because we have got you covered. Here we are going to discuss with you nine amazing benefits that would help you stick to your goals of becoming fit and healthy.
1. Makes you feel happier
Physical fitness and health seem to improve your overall mood, thus reducing signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. Staying active stimulates certain parts of your brain that can cause the release of certain hormones like serotonin and norepinephrine that help alleviate the symptoms of depression. There is good news for you because it doesn’t really matter the intensity of the workout, but your mood can be improved just by doing physical activity of any intensity.
2. Beneficial for your muscles and bones
Staying healthy by doing physical activities helps improve your muscles and bone health. For example, getting engaged in weightlifting activities paired with high protein intake to remain fit can help improve your muscle build. As you age, you must remember that your muscles tend to lose muscle mass and function that can lead to an increased risk of injury. Therefore, by following a fitness regime, you can reduce muscle loss and maintain strength as you age. Also, getting yourself involved in sports like gymnastics, basketball may help promote a higher bone density.
3. Can reduce the risk of chronic diseases
If you want to avoid chronic health conditions, it is important to remain fit and healthy by doing physical activities. Do you know that physical fitness has improved heart health and body composition as a whole?
By doing exercises and remaining fit, you can combat the following chronic health conditions:
Hypertension: Participating in different physical activities like aerobic exercises may help lower the blood pressure by about 5-7 mmHg.
Heart Disease: If you are suffering from a heart-related condition. It’s time for you to be involved in exercises to reduce cardiovascular disease-causing risk factors.
High Cholesterol: High cholesterol levels can lead to hypertension and heart-related diseases, which can be avoided by doing moderate-intensity physical activity. It can increase the level of HDL cholesterol and, at the same time, decrease levels of LDL, which is known as bad cholesterol.
Type 2 Diabetes: By doing regular aerobic exercise, we can prevent or decrease the risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. Resistance workouts can improve fat mass, develop lean body mass, and improve glycemic control.
Therefore, it is essential to do regular physical activities to decrease the incidence of such chronic conditions.
4. Keep your skin fresh
Your skin can be affected by the amount of oxidative stress your body goes through. Oxidative stress happens when your body cannot repair the damage that has been caused by compounds known as free radicals and can negatively impact your skin. Regular moderate-intensity workouts can increase your body’s production of natural antioxidants that can protect your cells. It can also stimulate blood flow and help delay the process of aging.
5. May improve your brain health and memory
Physical fitness may help improve your brain health by increasing heart rate, increasing the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain cells, thus protecting your brain cells. Did you know that research has concluded that exercise can increase the size of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory, thus improving mental functions in adults? Also, exercise can reduce changes in the brain that can contribute to conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
6. Stay fit can increase your energy levels
Staying healthy and fit by doing exercises can be a natural energy booster for many people. Exercises can increase blood flow and oxygen supply to hearts and lungs, thus significantly helping with the energy levels. Also, if you have chronic fatigue syndrome and always feel fatigued and lazy, staying fit is another possible solution for your problems.
7. Helps with sleep quality and relaxation
Regular physical activity to remain fit and healthy can help you sleep better at night and make you feel more energized during the day. The research concluded that energy loss that happens when you exercise regularly enables you to sleep better at night. Also, your body temperature increases during the workout session, and when this body temperature drops when you are off to bed, it would help you sleep more peacefully. There is another research for people who have chronic insomnia in which people showed improvement in sleep by following stretching and resistance exercises.
9. Can reduce pain
You must think that if you are suffering from pain, you should take a rest and wait for the pain to go away. However, suppose you look forward to recent studies. In that case, it indicates that if you are a health freak and like to do exercises regularly, you are most likely to deal effectively with some chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic lower back pain. Physical activities can increase pain tolerance and decrease pain perception.
10. Can help you lose weight
If you are overweight, it can lead to various health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Being obese also decreases your enthusiasm for life; thus, you may find it challenging to perform your daily activities. Therefore, being fit and healthy can improve your confidence and accordingly encourage you to have an active and healthy lifestyle.
11. Increases life expectancy
There is no magic formula to increase the number of years you will live. But yes, following different physical fitness exercises to stay fit and healthy may improve your life expectancy and reduce the risk of premature mortality. You cannot tell how many hours of physical activities can get you hours of life gain. However, there is one thing that is true that healthier individuals who are active will live longer.
12. Social benefits
Fitness and health are important when you have to interact with many people. For example, your work requires you to stay fit to get more social experience. In that case, it builds your personality, enhances your belonging to a group of people, increases social and moral values, and improves your socializing experience with society.
Elements of physical fitness and health
So how do you know what makes a person fit and healthy? Don’t worry if you don’t know them yet as we are going to share with you some ingredients of fitness and health. You need to remember that the key point here is to keep a balance between these types to set your fitness and health goals.
1. Aerobic fitness: As its name indicates, it requires oxygen. Aerobic activities condition your lungs and heart. It makes sure that your muscles get oxygen for an extended period to work for a longer duration. To sum up, any physical activity that increases your heart rate and keeps it up for a longer time improves aerobic conditioning, thus improving your fitness and health overall.
2. Flexibility: Do you know that your muscles get shortened with physical activities? It is essential to get involved in exercises or stretches that would help you stretch your muscles to the standard lengths, and that is how you can achieve flexibility and your physical fitness goals.
3. Muscle-strengthening: Muscle strengthening either means bigger muscles that can do heavy jobs like weight lifting or muscles that can work for a longer duration without getting exhausted. However, you can always go for weight training resistant workouts or push-ups to increase the endurance of your muscles, thus remaining healthy and fit.
4. Body composition: Body composition involves the proportion of fat and non-fat mass in your body. You must know that a healthy body consists of less fat proportion and more non-fat contents, including muscles, organs, and bone. It is always good to know about your body composition to assess your health and fitness level.
5. Cardiovascular endurance: Cardiovascular endurance means how well you can do exercises that involve your whole body at moderate to high intensity for an extended time. The important fact here is that improving your cardiovascular endurance can make it easier to carry out your daily tasks. Different exercises can improve your cardiovascular endurance, including running, jogging, swimming, dancing, boxing, aerobics, or similar activities.
6. Speed fitness: Speed fitness requires exceptional muscle strength and power, a high number of fast-twitch muscle fibers, and efficient mechanics of movements to optimize muscle power for the most optimized movement techniques. However, you must know that body weight and air resistance can affect movement speed. However, once you have mastered the art then in no time you will be towards your goal of fitness and health.
7. Balance and coordination: Balance training and coordination are somehow related. Balance training involves you staying in control of your body, thus maintaining an upright posture without stumbling or falling. There are two types of balance: static balance is when you are static and not involved in any physical activity, and dynamic balance is when maintaining equilibrium while moving. Having a good balance and coordination is very important in our daily lives, like walking or moving up or down the stairs and thus making an important element of fitness and health.
8. Agility: Agility is the ability to change the direction of your body in the shortest possible time in space, and that is too with accuracy. The body’s agility is influenced by many factors involving muscle capacity, the nervous system’s integrity, type of activity, and the speed of the body’s response to it.
9. Neuromuscular coordination: Neuromuscular coordination is essential for carrying out complex movements or two movements simultaneously. Such training exercises stimulate nerves and muscles thus to react and communicate with each other. A simple example of this is when you squat down to pick up an object.
So all of these elements make your way to the fitness and health goals and it works better if you could strike a balance among these elements.
How to improve physical fitness level?
We will discuss with you five simple strategies that you can follow to improve your physical fitness level if you want to live a happy and healthy life.
1. Physical activity
If you are a person who does nothing when at home, then it is better to start doing something than nothing. You can work your way up to the top to increase your endurance and achieve your goal of being fit and healthy. You can start by switching to walking or cycling when going to work or shopping for groceries rather than using the car, tram or train.
2. Exercise
Endurance or aerobic activities can increase your heart rate and breathing. That can improve blood circulation to the heart, lungs, and brain, improving your overall fitness. It is important if you could only take out 30 minutes daily five times a day for exercise. To achieve your goal of staying fit and healthy.
3. Eating a healthy diet
The key to remaining fit is to start eating a balanced diet and avoid overeating. Try to add fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to your diet plan to achieve your fitness goals. Also, include a proteinaceous diet in your routine that would help you to get the muscle mass that you need. It is time for you to say goodbye to artificial sweeteners and unhealthy processed food.
4. Drinking plenty of water
Do you know that about 60% of our body weight is made up of water? Therefore, it is important to keep yourself hydrated by drinking a lot of water and having plenty of fluids. Water is the essential cleanser for your body and helps detoxify your body, thus improving digestive and overall health. In addition, you must know that being hydrated is also crucial for your brain cells. As it removes the toxins through skin and urine.
So now you know everything about why fitness and health are important in our lives. Staying fit changes your perspective about life, helps you tackle chronic health conditions, and regain the elasticity and freshness of your skin. It’s time for you to follow the different strategies to become goal-oriented. If you like this article, don’t forget to share it with your friends and loved ones.